Rivian Cuts 600 Jobs Amid Fading EV Demand And Mounting Losses

The Green Dream Deferred: Inside Rivian’s Harsh Reality Check

NORMAL, Illinois – The news came quietly today, landing in inboxes like a gut punch. For more than 600 Rivian employees, the dream of driving America’s electric revolution forward ended not with the roar of innovation but with the cold click of a corporate email. Those jobs—roughly 4% of Rivian’s workforce—weren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They represented people who believed they were helping build a cleaner, smarter future. Instead, they became the latest casualties in the electric vehicle industry’s growing turbulence.

This marks Rivian’s second round of layoffs in just a month, a sign that the once-blazing EV boom is sputtering. The industry that once sprinted toward the future is now hitting potholes—political headwinds from Washington, softening demand, and rising costs. Rivian, once a darling of green-tech optimism, now finds itself fighting for more than market share. It’s fighting for survival.

The company’s latest cuts are a brutal acknowledgment of what’s ahead. The looming end of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit at the close of 2025—a policy the Trump administration and House Republicans are working to dismantle—has thrown the market into chaos. Buyers rushed to cash in while they still could, driving a 32% spike in Rivian’s third-quarter deliveries. But that surge may soon give way to what one executive grimly called a “demand air pocket” in 2026. When that happens, the fall could be swift and painful.

“This isn’t a market correction—it’s a policy disaster wearing a market mask,” said a former senior Rivian sales executive who lost their job in the recent cuts. “We built our infrastructure for a world of 50,000 vehicles a year. Then the policy rug got yanked out from under us, and now we’re trying to rebuild mid-crash.”

The numbers tell the same story. In August, Rivian walked back its forecast for turning a small profit in 2025, warning investors it now expects to just “break even.” That shift rattled Wall Street. Revenue from selling emissions credits to legacy automakers dropped by nearly half—from an expected $300 million to $160 million—after federal regulators relaxed standards. At the same time, new tariffs on Chinese-made parts could add thousands to the price tag of each R1T truck and R1S SUV.

Since 2021, Rivian has burned through roughly $18 billion, and its losses per vehicle remain sky-high. With projected 2025 losses reaching up to $2.5 billion, trimming its sales and service teams became less a choice than a survival tactic. The irony stings: the very employees hired to create a best-in-class customer experience—the thing that set Rivian apart from Tesla—were the ones shown the door.

Rivian’s troubles mirror an industry in retreat. General Motors recently took a $1.6 billion write-down tied to its EV ventures. Ford pushed back its next big electric platform. Lucid trimmed 6% of its workforce in September. EV sales growth, once soaring at over 50% in 2023, slowed to a crawl last quarter—barely hitting 7%—as high interest rates and political uncertainty spooked buyers.

Pure EV startups like Rivian face an especially cruel dilemma. Unlike auto giants with profitable gas-hybrid fallbacks or Tesla with its scale and war chest, Rivian has no safety net. Its entire future depends on one bet: the R2, a smaller, cheaper SUV aimed squarely at the mass market. Expected to launch in 2026 at around $45,000, the R2 isn’t just another model—it’s the company’s lifeline.

But getting there won’t be easy. Cutting sales and service staff could hurt Rivian’s reputation for top-tier customer care, and that reputation is the glue holding its loyal early adopters. Inside the company, morale has cratered. Employees on social media vent about tone-deaf leadership, unclear strategy, and the feeling that the mission they joined for has been lost in the fog.

The factory floors in Normal, Illinois—once a proud emblem of America’s green manufacturing revival—now feel more like a high-stakes gamble. Every shift, every assembly, is a bet that Rivian can survive the political storms, outlast the market freeze, and deliver a vehicle that keeps the lights on when the federal subsidies vanish.

The green dream isn’t dead. But for the hundreds of workers now polishing résumés and the thousands still clinging to hope on the factory line, it’s a dream on pause—one that may never fully wake.