Rivian reportedly picks Georgia for second plant; R1T wins MotorTrend Truck of the Year

The electric automaker Rivian started the week by earning MotorTrend’s Truck of the Year honors. It might end the week with a major announcement about its second manufacturing plant.

Rivian plans to announce Thursday that it will be building the second plant in Georgia, east of Atlanta, according to reporting from Bloomberg and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). The project is “said to be a multibillion-dollar investment that would ultimately produce 200,000 vehicles a year and employ perhaps 8,000 people at full production before the end of the decade,” the AJC reported. It will be a vehicle-assembly and battery plant, Bloomberg reported.

Rivian’s first plant, of course, is in Normal, where production is already underway. Rivian is making its R1T truck, R1S SUV, and Amazon delivery vans here, with over 3,700 employees.

For its second plant, Rivian was reportedly considering sites in Georgia, Texas and Arizona. The incentive package used by Georgia to land Rivian is not yet known, but it’s likely to be much larger than the one that brought Rivian to Illinois when the company was still a mysterious startup eager to stay in stealth mode. Aside from state incentives, Rivian has already received $1.8 million in local property tax breaks in McLean County, and it declined the $1 million Town of Normal grant it earned as part of the original 2016 agreement.

Thursday stands to be a busy day. Rivian will also release its third-quarter earnings report (its first since becoming a publicly traded company) on Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, MotorTrend on Monday announced that R1T had earned Truck of the Year honors. It’s the first electric vehicle to earn that distinction.

“The Rivian R1T would win praise if it were merely a credible pickup truck that is also an electric vehicle, but it's far more. Not content to simply mount an electric motor or two under the hood or box of a traditional pickup, Rivian used the opportunity to re-examine what a modern pickup truck could be,” MotorTrend said in its announcement.