Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for Rivian's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, I'm joined by R.J. Scaringe, our CEO and Founder, Claire McDonough, our Chief Financial Officer, and Javier Varela, our Chief Operations Officer. Before we begin, matters discussed on this call, including comments and responses to questions, reflect management's views as of today. We will also be making statements related to our business, operations, and financial performance that may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are described in our SEC filings and the earnings presentation we filed with the SEC today. During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of historical non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is provided in our earnings presentation and press release.
Just before the earnings call, we posted our earnings presentation, which includes an overview of our progress over the recent months and replaces our shareholder letter. I encourage you to read it for additional details around some of the items we will cover on today's call. Following our prepared remarks, we will be taking questions from sell-side analysts. In the interest of keeping our call to one hour, we would ask these analysts to limit any follow-on questions to 1. With that, I'll turn the call over to R.J.
Thanks, Chip. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for today's call. Last week, I was thrilled to celebrate the start of saleable R2 production with our team at our plant in Normal, Illinois. It's an exciting milestone in Rivian's history and the culmination of all the hard work and energy from so many people across the company. As I've said before, I believe the R2 will be a game changer for our customers and will be a key driver of our company's long-term growth and profitability. In an American automotive marketplace starved for high-quality EV choice, I believe R2 is an attractively priced option sized for everyday ventures, from school pickups to weekend trips, that is targeting the very popular five-passenger SUV and crossover segment.
With R2, we are taking our design, performance, and technology and bringing it to a significantly broader audience without losing what makes Rivian unmistakably Rivian. We've started R2 deliveries to our employees, and I have to say, I absolutely love having R2 as my daily driver. I could not be more excited to get this vehicle into the hands of lots of customers starting this spring. In developing R2, our team relentlessly focused on achieving structural cost reductions while maintaining the desirability of the product. For R2, our bill of materials is expected to be approximately half of our R1 platform. For non-BOM cost of goods sold, we expect to see a reduction of more than 50%, resulting from a focus on design for manufacturing and leverage fixed cost efficiencies through higher production volumes.
This is how we expect to profitably deliver R2 at an accessible price point at scale without compromising performance and utility customers love from Rivian. Key design changes for R2 include part eliminations and reductions through the introduction of large die castings, a structural battery pack, a new highly efficient drive unit, the evolution of our next-generation electrical architecture, which removes miles of copper wire, and the consolidation of our high voltage electronics into a single enclosure. We are also seeing significant sourcing leverage relative to R1 across a variety of components. As we begin to scale our operations in Normal with R2, we're very excited to partner with the U.S. Department of Energy to grow our manufacturing footprint in Georgia. R2 provides the opportunity to expand the Rivian brand to millions of drivers.
As a result, we made the strategic decision to increase the production capacity for the first phase of our Georgia plant by 50%, bringing it to 300,000 units of annual production capacity for our midsize vehicle platform. This change is expected to boost cost efficiency while still providing significant room for future expansion in later phases and support thousands of jobs in Georgia as we grow American manufacturing and work to ensure the U.S. retains its leadership in innovation in technology and transportation. We remain on track for the production of our midsize vehicle platform to begin in Georgia in late 2028. Turning to our technology roadmap, in March, we were excited to announce a new strategic partnership with Uber to accelerate our shared autonomous vehicle goals.
In the not-too-distant future, I believe advanced autonomy capabilities will be a key differentiator for customers and the driver of market share. At the core of our Gen 3 autonomy hardware is the Rivian Autonomy Processor, or RAP1. The development of our RAP1 chip is on track. We are progressing well on validation and reliability testing. Our integrated approach allows our hardware team to rapidly iterate with our software team, and our autonomy feature development is progressing well, and we continue to expect to begin rolling out point-to-point capabilities by the end of the year. Finally, in the coming weeks, we are excited to launch the Rivian Assistant on R1 and R2 vehicles. The Rivian Assistant is our new AI-powered voice assistant that is built to be a digital copilot with integration into the vehicle ecosystem and other external apps.
In closing, this quarter, our team has executed across many fronts, laying a strong foundation for the years ahead. As an American automotive technology company, we're building for a future that we believe will be fully electric, autonomous, and AI defined. With our category defining brand, the launch of R2, which is our first mass market vehicle, vertically integrated and extensible technology, and a direct-to-consumer sales model, I couldn't be more excited about the opportunity ahead for our customers and for our business. With that, I'll pass the call over to Claire to discuss our financial results.
Thanks, R.J. Good afternoon, everyone. As R.J Shared, the start of saleable R2 production and initial employee deliveries are a landmark moment for Rivian. By building R2 in Normal, we are strategically leveraging our existing manufacturing footprint in Illinois to drive greater fixed cost absorption across our entire vehicle portfolio.
As discussed previously, R2 production is starting with a single shift operation, and we expect to scale to two shifts by the end of 2026 as we ramp towards our North Star target of profitably delivering 4,000 vehicles per week in Normal. Delivering a strong 2026 exit rate for R2 production and deliveries is a key focus for our team, as we believe it will directly translate into positive automotive gross profit for the business. Turning to the results for the first quarter, as depicted on slide 11 of the earnings presentation, our consolidated revenue in the first quarter was approximately $1.4 billion, an 11% increase over the same quarter last year. Consolidated gross profit was $119 million, and our gross margin was 9%.
Gross profit included $122 million of depreciation and $27 million of stock-based compensation expense. Adjusted EBITDA losses for the first quarter were $472 million, driven by our $119 million of gross profit and increased adjusted operating expenses as we prepare to scale R2 and invest in our autonomy roadmap. In the first quarter, we produced 10,236 vehicles and delivered 10,365 vehicles, which was the primary driver of our $908 million of automotive revenue.
Automotive gross profit loss was $62 million compared to $92 million of gross profit for the same quarter last year, primarily driven by the $100 million decrease in sales of automotive regulatory credits and lower production volumes, which resulted in a $45 million increase in depreciation and stock-based compensation expense combined. While current macro and geopolitical factors are creating added complexity, cost, and uncertainty, our team continues to work hard to manage supply chain risks and offset elevated costs. Our software and services segment reported another strong quarter, as depicted on slide 13. During the first quarter, the segment generated $473 million of revenue, a 49% year-over-year increase, and $181 million of gross profit.
$282 million, or approximately 60% of software and services revenue, was attributable to our joint venture with Volkswagen Group. We also experienced strong growth from remarketing and parts and service. During the quarter, we also recognized a $506 million gain in other income in our financials related to the Series A capital raise and related deconsolidation of Mind Robotics from our financial statements. We currently own approximately 38% of Mind Robotics on a shares outstanding basis. Looking at our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with approximately $4.8 billion of cash equivalents, and short-term investments. With regard to our funding roadmap, in 2026, we expect to receive a total of $2.55 billion of capital from our strategic partners.
Today, we received $1 billion from Volkswagen Group in exchange for equity following successful completion of the winter testing milestone by RV Tech. The testing program spanned several months, utilizing reference vehicles from the Volkswagen, Audi, and Scout brands. Later this quarter, we expect to receive $300 million from Uber in exchange for equity related to the signing of our partnership agreement, subject to certain conditions. Later this year, we expect to receive $1 billion in non-recourse debt from Volkswagen Group and an additional $250 million from Uber in exchange for equity, subject to the completion of certain milestones and conditions related to robotaxi development. As outlined on slide 14, this brings total available liquidity and expected capital in 2026 of nearly $8 billion.
Additionally, we're very excited to partner with the U.S. Department of Energy to grow our U.S. manufacturing footprint. The up to $4.5 billion DOE loan, which consists of approximately $4 billion of principal and approximately $500 million of capitalized interest, provides low cost financing for our 300,000 unit capacity greenfield expansion in Georgia, bringing Rivian to meaningful scale. We expect the 515,000 total units of capacity between our Illinois and Georgia plants will provide Rivian a path to free cash flow positive once fully ramped. We expect to draw on the loan by early 2027, subject to certain conditions. Two weeks ago, our Normal factory sustained damage from a tornado. I'm proud of the way our teams have rallied together to get production back up and running while we repair the damages.
Despite the weather impact, our 2026 guidance remains unchanged. We continue to expect full year deliveries of between 62,000 and 67,000 total vehicles across R1, R2, and our commercial vans. We also continue to expect to deliver approximately 9,000-11,000 vehicles in Q2 as we expect the ramp of R2 deliveries will be back half weighted. While we continue to believe our gross profit will increase year-over-year, we expect the complexity of a new vehicle launch will negatively impact our automotive gross profit in the second and third quarters before becoming a benefit for our overall operations in the fourth quarter as we ramp production and deliveries. As a reminder, we believe this is a transition year for the automotive segment's path towards long-term profitability as we scale R2.
For 2026, we continue to expect an Adjusted EBITDA loss of between $2.1 billion-$1.8 billion. While economic and geopolitical conditions, including supply chain and international conflicts, pose risks, we remain steadfast in our plans to invest behind key growth drivers. We continue to progress our autonomy roadmap and the expansion of our sales and service footprint as we scale with R2. We believe these strategic investments will deliver long-term value to our shareholders. Finally, for 2026, we are maintaining our capital expenditure guidance of $1.95 billion-$2.05 billion. Our CapEx spend primarily relates to finalizing construction and tooling for R2 in Normal, the continued build out of our sales, service, and charging infrastructure, and kicking off construction of our greenfield plant in Georgia.
In closing, I'd like to congratulate our teams again for the successful start of salable R2 production and the strong execution in the first quarter. We continue to believe that R2 and our technology roadmap will be truly transformative for the growth and profitability of our business. I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator to open the line for Q&A.
Thank you. For the Q&A section of today's session, we will be utilizing the raise hand feature. If you would like to ask a question, click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Once prompted, please unmute yourself and begin with your question. We will now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Thank you. Our first question comes from Kalpit Patel from Wolfe Research. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hey, hey, thanks so much. Appreciate you taking the questions. Maybe first, just picking up on a comment that you made earlier, Claire. If you could help give us some more color on some of the actions you're taking to mitigate the increase in commodity costs and some of the metals prices that we've seen increase recently. What's been the magnitude of increase, if you could help frame that?
Well, thanks, Kalpit, for the question. Yeah, we're spending a lot of time, of course, focused on all the changes that are happening from a supply chain point of view. You know, in terms of raw materials and some of the cost of metals, specifically aluminum, this has been a big focus for us. Fortunately, We've grown our sourcing team and evolved our sourcing team over the last handful of years, where supply chain continues to be an area where there's a lot of unknowns, there's a lot of variability, and a lot of, you know, a need for us to be very hands-on and very proactive.
We've been proactive in both our relationship with existing suppliers, but also in making sure we have, particularly in some of these key commodities, alternative sources of supply.
Okay, great. And then maybe, Claire, just to clarify, I think you had made a comment about how when Normal and the Georgia facility are fully ramped, you'd be getting to free cash flow positive. I just wanna make sure if I understood that correctly. If that's the case, you know, that could be quite a while from now. Maybe just help us understand sort of the trajectory of CapEx, maybe near term, but then also as you kind of think ahead and you start to kind of put more in the ground at Georgia.
Sure. Kalpit, the comment that I made on the Rivian's ramp of its Normal facility plus Georgia facility is what takes Rivian to free cash flow positive in the future. As we talked a little bit about in our prepared remarks, importantly, we have the $4.5 billion of capital from the Department of Energy loan, which provides up to 80% loan to value against the build-out of our future Georgia facility.
While we certainly will see an anticipated increase in our capital expenditures as we approach the start of production in Georgia, we do have significant offsets from a capital roadmap, the $4.5 billion is just one component of the full $13.6 billion of total liquidity and expected capital through both the cash that we have on hand on our balance sheet, the added availability of our ABL facility, and then the expected capital from our partners, with both Volkswagen and Uber, that we expect to receive over the coming years as well.
Okay, great. Maybe just one quick clarification. The DOE loan, has there been any change to that? I think the original amount was $6.6 billion that was available. Just curious if there any change there.
Yeah. Included within our financial release today, we provided an update on the Department of Energy loan. We'll now have $4.5 billion of loan capacity that will go towards the build-out of our first phase of capacity expansion in Georgia. We've also increased the capacity of the Georgia site, the initial capacity from 200,000 units to 300,000 units. The comment that I made in my prepared remarks is really the importance of the funding roadmap, especially as we think about the Georgia site specifically taking Rivian to meaningful scale in the future.
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Our next question is from Joe Spak from UBS.
Thank you. Claire, just to maybe pick up on that, on the DOE loan part, and to clarify, like, obviously this first phase is an increase from that $200 to $300. Again, admittedly just being able to skim the document, it does seem like maybe the total project scope is now capped at $300 versus, you know, before it was supposed to be $200 in phase I, $200 phase II for $400. I wanna make sure I understand that and then if that you could still see an opportunity, you know, over time to, you know, grow further in Georgia.
The strategic decision that we took was to increase the initial phase of production capacity to the 300,000 units. On our Georgia site, the full initial capacity will be put on the upper pad at the site. We have the lower pad, which is still gonna be entirely untouched greenfield for future expansion.
Okay. That might be funded more organically in the future, not necessarily with the loan or it's TBD, I guess. The loan is really only up for the $300, correct?
The loan is for the initial phase. The important piece is we've increased the loan size associated with the initial phase.
Mm-hmm.
As we've also scaled the production volume as well.
Okay. Just, you know, I appreciate the comments on input costs and, you know, I guess the other thing that I was wondering about was with tariffs, and this is sort of, you know, common bullet with a lot of companies thus far. Can you remind us, like, what you've paid in IEPA roundabout over the past year, and have you filed for any reimbursement, and was anything booked in the quarter, related to any potential reimbursements?
We did not book anything this quarter associated with IEPA tariffs, we do believe that we the recovery of those IEPA tariffs is possible in the future.
Mm-hmm.
I contextualize the sizing to be in the tens of millions of dollars in future benefits.
Okay. Is that considered at all in your, kind of, area of Outlook or that would be, you know, outside? I guess it's not significant.
I would characterize it as considered within our current outlook.
Okay. Then just lastly, like I know you talked with Uber, you talked about pulling forward, you know, raising R&D in 2027. Does any of that work start to seep into to 2026 and is there a change to the R&D outlook for this year or it's really more of a 2027 factor?
You'll see the pace of acceleration increase in terms of the spend towards autonomy in 2027, but we'll certainly see acceleration throughout the course of this year as well. If you look at Q1, our cash R&D expense increased about 22% this year for that quarter. You could directionally think about that as being, you know, more of a year-over-year type run rate as we look out over the remainder of the year.
Thank you. Very helpful. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question is from Itay Michaeli from TD Cowen. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Great. Thanks. Hi, everybody. Just first, going back to the Georgia capacity optimization. Curious if it has any impact on your previous long-term financial targets of 25% gross margin. Maybe on that as well, if you can maybe share your initial kind of takeaways on kinda R2 demand generation since you kinda launched the trims.
Thanks, Itay. I think obviously the decision to increase the capacity of the first phase in Georgia coincides with the or I should say, reflects a level of confidence in our products and our business. I think most importantly, we've just started production on R2 out of our existing Normal, Illinois, facility, and we've had early media events and early customer events, and the level of enthusiasm for the product has just been outstanding. Everything from the packaging of the vehicle to the way that it drives to the integration of technology, the overall response has been overwhelmingly positive. That bodes extremely well for the ramp-up, you know, happening over the course of this year and into next year.
It also sets up a wonderful foundation for us as we think about further capacity on this platform, both for R2, as well as R3 and variants of those vehicles out of the Georgia facility.
Terrific. Maybe as a follow-up, on the Uber announcement. I'm curious whether the robotaxis themselves that will go into the Uber network will have the kind of exact same hardware set as the personal vehicles. I ask because if you're going to launch in 2028 in complex domains like San Francisco and Miami, would that not also imply a pretty wide ODD for the personal vehicles if they're both operating on the same hardware?
Yeah, we talked about this during our Autonomy Day late last year. I think it's important to recognize there's going to be a whole series of steps we make in terms of progressing towards Level 4. In that series of steps, the first later this year on our consumer vehicles is launching our point-to-point capability. That's the ability for the vehicle to drive entirely on its own to an address. You know, I just this week had lots of regular rides internally, and I had a great ride with James and the team, and it's so exciting to see how much it's progressed and our technology's progressed even since our Autonomy Day late last year. We're very encouraged by this.
That first step of making point-to-point available to customers is going to be a really important step for our consumer vehicles. As we continue to go into 2027, we'll be allowing in specific areas, eyes off, it's hands-off, eyes off. That's a Level 3 capability. As we go into 2028, as you said, that's when we'll have our first deployments of a Level 4 capability in a robotaxi. In the robotaxi variant, there will be some additional sensing on the vehicle, so it will be different than the pure consumer vehicle. We are planning to have a personal version of Level 4 as well. We've talked about that quite a bit.
We think the market for a vehicle that you own being able to completely drive itself, do things like drop you at the airport, you know, go to the grocery store, get groceries for you, pick up kids from a sports event. These are really high value, creating activities for the Level 4 capability, and we see them on, you know, both robotaxi applications and on personally owned applications.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Dan Levy from Barclays. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to first start with R2 and the path to getting to a positive gross margin, which I think you said would be by the end of the year. Maybe you could just walk through, you know, the gating factors. Even with the roadmaps, do you still have the confidence you have the right BOM to achieve this? And what milestones do we need to see to make sure that the production ramp is still on track? What are the sort of most limiting factors that you still have to address on this ramp?
Yeah. We've talked a lot about the cost structure of a vehicle, and a huge component of this is, of course, the bill of materials. The bill of materials, different than the non-bill of materials cost, is contractual. These are, you know, these are negotiations that happen across hundreds of suppliers, and, you know, get very different than when we sourced R1. We went into the R2 sourcing with a lot of momentum and much better supplier leverage. Just the level of confidence and readiness of business and the level of excitement around R2 helped us, you know, put together a set of suppliers that are both very enthusiastic but that's demonstrated through attractive commercial terms. As it stands, the bill of materials for R2 is about half that of R1.
There's of course things we can't predict, like raw material changes and DRAM shortages, but the vast majority of the BOM is very stable and we have a lot of confidence in being able to achieve that, the target BOM, which supports the very healthy gross margins we've talked about in the past. With regards to the plant, I would like Javier just to comment on some of the progress that's happening in terms of ramping up over the course of the next several months.
Yeah. Thank you, R.J. Indeed, as you explained some minutes ago, we had last week the celebration of the first sellable builds and delivers to customers this week. Very proud of the situation we are achieving now. The industrial process is ready. The people is ready as well. We have been through the right training and build cycles. I would say plan is prepared, process are defined, and we are very confident in our capability to deliver. I feel confident as well regarding what is our team in place. We have brought in a group of seasoned leaders that they have done launches back in the past and big experience on that area.
We are, on the other hand, managing the supply chain, making sure every supplier scales with us. We have boots on the ground supporting some key suppliers. We are doing this with our mindset in supplier relationship of transparency and collaboration. Resilient supply chain agility and intelligence are key factors for success.
Great. Thank you. As a follow-up, R.J, I wanted to double-click on the point you gave in the prior question from Itay Michaeli about getting to L4. You'll have point-to-point at the end of this year, and you'll only have the vehicles with the LiDAR end of this year, beginning of next year. It does seem like there's probably a lot of testing that has to happen between when you get those cars with the LiDAR out to the point where you have, you know, a launch.
Just help us understand, you know, what the testing curve looks like, what you need to do from when you have the cars with the LiDAR to, you know, being able to unlock L4 because it does seem like, you know, there's a lot of miles that have to be driven on that new vehicle?
Yeah. I think a really important point to make here is just the way the self-driving system is architected. This is the platform that we've launched actually on our Gen 2 R1 vehicles is designed around an end-to-end approach, where we're building really a, what we call a large driving model, but think of it as a neural net or a foundation model for driving. That model is being fed with all of our Gen 2 R1 vehicles and of course, our launch R2 vehicles, and ultimately, as you said, our R2 vehicles that include a LiDAR. Very different than previous architectures around self-driving, where they were rules based and, you know, more classically controlled. As you add more perception and as you add more compute, the capability of the model only grows.
You don't lose the previous knowledge embedded in the model. In fact, I often sort of compare it to imagine if you learned to drive without vision, and then I handed you a pair of glasses. You wouldn't forget your knowledge as a driver. You'd just suddenly be able to see and perceive things that you may have missed previously, so you become a better driver. Imagine we could hand you a 10x multiplier to your compute capability, effectively makes your brain 10 times smarter. Again, you wouldn't forget what you knew before, but suddenly you'd start to notice new patterns and more nuance in ways that you hadn't in the past.
It's very important to recognize there's a very fundamental difference in how the model is built today and what we're creating versus the more AV 1.0 stack, where they were, as I described it, very rules-based and very classically controlled. Because of that, the data accumulation that's happened already on R1, and that will continue with the growth in our car park with R2, all feeds into our overall LDM, into this large driving model. Even as we think about introducing new sensors, things like our LiDAR, this is not as if it's first on the vehicle when it's delivered to customers. We have lots of prototypes today that are running with those. If you're in the Bay Area and happen to be anywhere around Palo Alto, you'll probably see lots of Rivians with a lot of additional sensors.
That's part of our ground truth fleet that again, is feeding into this large driving model to accelerate the speed at which that model is learning. You know, think of it as the brain or the speed at which we're teaching it to drive. The work that will go into ultimately launching a customer-facing version of point to point, which today, you know, as I said, I was in one of our cars driving around both point to point earlier this week. It's really exciting. We wanna have when it launches to customer, have it be extremely robust. All that work is accretive to what ultimately will be going into our Level 4 platform.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Andrew Percoco from Morgan Stanley. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Great. Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe just to start on the commercial side of your business, it looks like Amazon made up almost 50% of your auto revenue in the quarter. A little bit above, you know, historical run rates. Can you just maybe talk to what you're seeing with that relationship and maybe even outside of Amazon, the level of maybe interest you're seeing in the commercial product since you launched that, you know, extended range version of the commercial vehicle?
Yeah, our relationship with Amazon continues to be something that we're very proud of. We've spent a lot of time on this program, from its initial kickoff, quite some time ago in 2019 through its initial launch and now ramping, deploying. You know, that's everything from not only building the vehicles, but on the Amazon side, getting their operations and their infrastructure ready to ingest a lot of EVs. What we're now seeing is a reflection of all that work, all the cumulative work that's happened to date that's allowing deployment for our van program, within Amazon to grow, as you pointed out, pretty meaningfully. We expect that increased demand for our vans to continue. You know, it's super rewarding to see. It's fun to see all the vans on the road.
That's gonna continue to ramp up with Amazon. In terms of other customers and other applications, of course, Amazon's by a few things, agree the largest operator. They're the ideal lead customer, if you will. There are lots of other opportunities we see. In the immediate term, our focus remains on Amazon and ramping to support them.
Okay. That makes sense. Maybe just, I just wanna ask one more question on the DOE revised loan piece here. Understand that the movement in phase I and upsizing that. I'm curious why you might not want to use the DOE funding for the eventual phase II. Is this something initiated on your end, or did maybe they approach you in terms of revising that? Just kind of curious the thought process around why not, you know, tap that low cost funding for the eventual phase II, whenever that comes about. Thank you.
Thanks, Adam Jonas. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we're really excited to partner with the Department of Energy on Rivian's $4.5 billion loan, which enables thousands of American jobs and helps us establish the U.S.'s strength in technology and manufacturing leadership. The DOE loan is uniquely a very cost efficient form of capital as we spent a little bit of time walking through Rivian's broader roadmap. Specifically, the importance of this $4.5 billion is the funding of Rivian's scaling its operation up to, you know, 515,000 units of overall capacity and the opportunity with that installed capacity base to be, you know, free cash flow positive in the future.
We'll continue to be opportunistic as it pertains to our capital roadmap, beyond the components that I have outlined in the existing $13.6 billion of liquidity and total expected capital that we've outlined today.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions.
Thank you. Our next question is from George Gianarikas from Canaccord. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I know it's early days, but I was wondering if you could please give us any color on R2 order trends and maybe some color on the conversion ratios relative to previous orders. Thank you.
Yeah, George, as you said, it is early days for deliveries, you know, the signals I'd be looking at are just the reception around the product and how, you know, whether it's expert journalists, automotive journalists or lifestyle journalists or customers that are getting to experience the vehicle. The overall excitement around what we've been able to put together in terms of content, features, packaging, just the overall value proposition is really resonating. I'm, you know, I'm really pleased with having, you know, spent, you know, a very large amount of time in the car and, you know, it's my daily driver. I couldn't be more pleased with the result. The work that the teams did to make something that's truly remarkable.
We had a few journalists say this might be the best vehicle ever made. That's wonderful for the teams to hear, and it's really encouraging for us as we get ready to ramp the vehicle.
Thank you. Maybe just as a follow-up, I just wanted to confirm that the Gen 3 sensor suite was going to be available later this year on the R2. Thanks.
That's correct. Yeah. The Gen 3 autonomy hardware suite, which is both our in-house RAP1 platform, this is our in-house inference platform, 800 tops per chip. We have 2 of those chips in the vehicle, it's extremely powerful. It's a big increase, roughly a 4X increase relative to the NVIDIA-based platform. The inclusion of LiDAR, as was referenced before, along with some other enhancements across the rest of the perception stack.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking the questions. Starting on autonomy, I'm hoping you can provide more details on the monetization of Autonomy+ so far and any data points you can share on that, and what that might mean for growth in the software and services business more generally, including if you still think you can grow that segment revenue by about 60% this year.
We're encouraged by what we're seeing in the, you know, as you noted at the start of having paid Autonomy+ and, you know, it's exceeding our own models on this. It's the take rate's higher than what we expected. That bodes really well for us as we're gonna be growing the feature set quite significantly over the course of this year. The introduction of point-to-point, we think is a major value driver for customers. You know, to be clear, this is, you know, as I said, you can put the address for the location you're going to into the car, and the car will fully drive you there.
Following that, allowing you to go eyes off in highway conditions and ultimately everywhere, that means you get your time back. We're very bullish on the long-term trajectory to monetize our autonomy on the consumer side. That's for both, you know, hands-off, eyes on, hands-off, eyes off, and then ultimately, Level 4 for personal consumption we see as a really key driver of value in the long term. In terms of what that does for our software and services growth, that is gonna start to be something we'll see, but it's not something that we're gonna be breaking out separately.
Thanks for that, R.J. My other question was on demand for the R1. I'm curious if Rivian has seen any improvement in order rates for R1, maybe in response to the recent increase in gasoline prices and what that might all mean for R1 volumes this year. I think the company had assumed R1 would decline. Is that still your expectation? Thanks.
We're encouraged by the continued enthusiasm for R1. It continues to be one of the market share leaders in the premium category. You know, in a number of states, it's the best, not just the one of the best-selling premium electric cars, but the one of the best-selling premium SUVs, electric or non-electric. That's true in a handful of states. We've talked about that in the past. I think it's hard to say ultimately what's gonna happen around demand with the impact of gas prices going up. Of course, it's a consideration, and we do see that manifest in what people are trading in. We're seeing more trades of gasoline vehicles or vehicles that are less efficient than what we're building.
We do see that on the rise, but, you know, and I think a lot of folks are wondering how long fuel prices are gonna stay high like this.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hey, everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for taking our questions and congratulations on the quarter and all the great progress. I think a lot of our questions have been asked. R.J, I want to go back to a topic I know you're very passionate about, which is autonomy. I guess with R2 beginning customer deliveries over the coming weeks and with the Autonomy+ now having started this month, just curious on kind of your vision and how you are thinking about that autonomy customer adoption. You know, what type of autonomy penetration rate do you expect for your customer-owned vehicles? Do you expect customers will prefer the monthly subscription or the one-time purchase? Just any color here on your overall vision and customer penetration adoption that you might be expecting. Thank you.
Yeah, well, Andres , we're very, we're extremely bullish on the importance of autonomy for customers over the next, call it, five years. The rate at which we see customers adopting and selecting Autonomy+, ultimately, as the feature set grows and the capability grows, that, you know, adoption rate growing with it. I think that there's an even bigger question, just from a society point of view. We've been on a journey of, you know, when we think about autonomy, where Level 2 is, you know, where your eyes are still on the road, but you're still responsible for driving the vehicle.
That's like a small appetizer for what you can actually achieve when you get to higher levels of autonomy, where you can take your eyes off the road and truly get your time back. Get your time back without the car, you know, dinging you to say, "Hey, look back at the road," or, "Pay attention," or, "Put your hands on the wheel." As that starts to occur, and as people start to experience what it's like to truly have your time back, so take, you know, a 40-minute commute and the idea of getting those 40 minutes back in both directions, we think it's gonna be a very sticky experience. It's gonna be something that once you experience it, even if it's indirect, let's say in a friend's car, it's going to become a very important purchase criteria.
The reason I call this out is we really believe over the next five years, the rate of progress of what we're going to achieve with autonomy will look very, very different. I'm talking here at an industry level versus what we've achieved over the last five years, means that the topology of customer expectations and therefore the way that the vehicle purchases are made and the criteria that are being used to make those vehicles is gonna look very, very different in 2030, 2031 than it does today, where autonomy will be a very critical criteria. Where customers are willing to pay for it because they want their time back. They want to not have to be paying attention.
They wanna be able to be on their phone, reading a book, you know, taking a nap, truly getting time back while you're in the car. As a result, as you've heard a few times, throughout this call, this is an enormous focus area for us as a business. We're very much, deploying a lot of our R&D dollars towards this category, and we've made, you know, long-term investments in the hardware, and in the vehicles to support that.
Got it. That's super helpful. I really appreciate all that color. Maybe just as a quick follow-up, one for Claire. Just regarding your delivery guidance for this year, which is unchanged. I know in the past you've given us some cadence for deliveries in Q2. I think you reaffirmed that on the call just now. Can you just remind us, you know, what kind of unit mix we should be expecting for the year across R2, R1 and EDVs? I think in the past you might have mentioned R1 and EDV is relatively flat, so the delta should be the R2. I guess with the R2, the $45,000 price range, right? That's on track for next year. Just curious if you can maybe remind us how we should think about unit mix for the rest of this year.
Thank you.
Sure. As you reiterated, as you think about the composition of the 62,000-67,000 deliveries, we anticipate, you know, R1 combined with the commercial vans to be roughly flat relative to our 2025 delivery results. Then the remainder being comprised of the, you know, introduction and ramp of R2, which as implied by the 9,000-11,000 of Q2 deliveries, suggests more of a, you know, back half weighted ramp associated with R2, which is implied within our outlook and guidance.
Wonderful. Thank you so much and congrats again. We'll pass it on.
Thank you. Our next question is from Edison Yu from Deutsche Bank. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hey, thanks for taking our questions. Wanted to come back on Robotaxi. Are there any sort of KPIs that you're sort of tracking or that you need to hit for some of the milestones with Uber? I think in the past, you know, the industry has kind of turned to disengagements or miles between intervention. Any flavor on that'd be great.
On the path to deploying in 2028 there are a number of milestones, and some of those tie to the investment unlocks with Uber. The first of those is later this year, we'll be deploying vehicles in both San Francisco and Miami with a safety driver. So the vehicles will be running, but with the benefit of a safety driver in the vehicle with them. There's a handful of additional milestones ramping up to ultimately having the vehicles operate fully on their own as part of a service in 2028. As we get closer and closer to that date, there will be, you know, there'll be lots of proof points, if you will, of the progress that's being made that'll manifest on the road.
That you'll actually see them, not only being tested, but you'll see them as part of some of these deployed fleets.
Understood. Just a kind of separate question on more autonomy more broadly. I think there was some reports that, you know, you guys were looking to potentially license some tech to other OEMs. Just wondering anything you can say about that. Is that something that we could potentially expect, you know, this year?
Anything that would be great. Thanks.
I think there's two broad categories of technology we think, that as I referenced earlier, that will be very, very important for growing or maintaining market share in the next several years. The first of those is shifting away from a domain-based network architecture where you have a very large number of suppliers for ECUs that are, you know, think of them as little islands of code on little small computers where you might have, depending on the car, anywhere from 50 to 150 of those little ECUs, those little computers, that are, you know, in aggregate providing the software for the vehicle. You know, that architecture is incredibly hard to do updates on. It's very, very difficult to do cross-platform or cross-domain integrations.
It makes the idea of integrating in a deep way AI into the vehicle and the vehicle experience, very difficult, you know, borderline impossible, to do it well. Our view is every vehicle on the road will need to shift to a much more centralized compute where you have more of a zonal architecture. Essentially think of it as a large consolidation of all those little computers into a single or a very small number of large computers that runs a common operating system, and for which the code base that's running on the vehicle can be very easily updated without coordinating among, you know, among, let's say, 50 to 150 suppliers. That, that architecture I just described is of course what's in a Rivian vehicle today.
It's also the basis of our relationship that we forged with Volkswagen Group to deploy that technology. The first application of that technology being deployed outside of Rivian as part of our partnership with Volkswagen Group is gonna be in the ID.1, which is a, you know, it's a EV that'll be launched in Europe with a price point of just over $20,000. I can't wait for people to buy this car. I'm sure lots of people will buy it and take it apart and tear it down. I'm certain they'll be blown away with the elegance of how we've executed the ECU or the, I should say, the network architecture and the compute stack topology. That's one technology category or one area that we think has a lot of opportunity to be deployed in other manufacturers.
Of course, the proof point that we're successfully deploying this into a very large, established manufacturer within Volkswagen Group, across multiple brands, across multiple price points, different form factors, different geographies is the, is the proof point or the existence proof that the technology is scalable and that we're capable of supporting these types of complex deployments. With that said, the other large category of technology that we see opportunities to have licensing deals, is in the autonomy realm. Here it's in a similar way. It's not just hardware, it's not just software, it's the two of them together. It's the combination of our compute platform that we've developed, this RAP1 in-house inference platform I talked about, and the associated computing platform we've designed around that, along with our perception platform.
It's, you know, the cameras, radar, LiDAR that exists. Very importantly, the large driving model. There's, you know, this foundation model, this neural net that we've created, that defines and what driving or how to, how to drive a vehicle. That's as hopefully I made it clear before, is a much more flexible architecture to deploy into different vehicle embodiments. We're doing that already within Rivian. We'll be deploying that across R1T, R1S, R2, ultimately on our commercial vans, robotaxi applications. We, we do see this as a very scalable technology that can be deployed in many ways.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Perry from Bank of America. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question here. just one, I guess a little bit further on the robotaxi strategy. You had the Uber deal announcement. I guess, is the plan to pursue a partnership model for now? does the deal with Uber have sort of any exclusivity? how else will you sort of look to tap into this important market?
You know, when you think about the robotaxi space as a business, putting aside the technology for a moment, and I should say, and putting aside and recognizing that the technology for Level 4 in a robotaxi or in a personally owned vehicle is the same. Meaning, a personally owned Level 4 vehicle, can't drive or should not drive worse than a robotaxi Level 4 vehicle. They're both very capable of managing the same levels of complexity and the same types of driving situations. It's the same tech stack. When you think of it through the lens of a business model, the benefit of working to deploy this first with Uber is you have very large density of choice.
If you're deploying entirely on your own, you have to build enough vehicles to have in the fleet or in the car park such that if you're a user, when you say, "I want to have a vehicle available," it's immediately available, or it's available in a matter of minutes. The scale of Uber's platform and the success they've had in creating a really healthy marketplace, it really makes them an ideal partner for us as we think about launching this technology in R2 to deploy into providing robotaxi services.
As you've heard me say a couple times, and we've talked about this in the past, that technology is gonna also underpin a consumer, you know, personally owned variant as well. I think we have to recognize that there's gonna be lots of innovation around business model that start to emerge as we have Level 4. If you think of it in a very simple sense, the two bookends in terms of business model are pure ownership or the vehicles dedicated entirely to your household. The other end of the spectrum is purely mobility as a service, where you don't own the vehicle, you're not using the same vehicle every time, but you ask for a vehicle on a purely variable basis, and it shows up.
There will be things that emerge in the middle, and, you know, not to be exhaustive here in the types of things, but you can imagine different forms of sharing vehicles amongst families or within neighborhoods or within apartment buildings. There's going to be a very exciting time of innovation in terms of how we think about consuming mobility or consuming transportation. With all that said, just recognizing the trillions of miles that are driven today, the vast majority of those are driven in personally owned vehicles. Robotaxi represents a portion of those, but we think, there will be lots of new models that start to make up the topology of those trillions of miles that are driven.
Perfect. That's incredibly helpful. Best of luck going forward.
Thank you. Our final question comes from James Picariello from BNP Paribas. Please unmute your line and ask your question. James, to unmute your line, please press star six.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Sorry about that. Great. I wanna ask about the Uber partnership. Can you share any color on the milestones that are associated with the four tranches of funding, right? Regarding the $950 million in additional additive liquidity. It does appear, right, that one of the tranches is already expected to hit this year, $250 million.
Yes. As R.J had just mentioned, there are a handful of milestones. The milestone that we more specifically expect to be in position to unlock the initial $250 million this year will be the operation of, you know, some Rivian vehicles in San Francisco and Miami with safety drivers later this year. Then as you think about the subsequent years, you can think about the ongoing trajectory towards full deployment in, you know, a couple of cities in 2028 and then 25 cities by 2031 that would, you know, fully unlock the remaining $700 million of capital from Uber.
Excellent. No, that's great color. Thank you. Just to maybe level set expectations on automotive gross margins for the second and third quarters. Like, this quarter was yet again another strong showcasing, right, of the company's momentum toward positive auto gross profit, right? This is the last quarter before the R2. Like, is there anything you could share for these next two quarters regarding the temporary order of magnitude impact we can expect auto profitability? Thanks.
Sure. As we think about the subsequent quarters of Q2 and Q3, we'll see the introduction and turn on of both all of the depreciation expense, the, you know, new manufacturing team that is established that will be producing the vehicles. As they're in the process of ramping up the first shift of operation, we'll see some of the complexity associated with lower volumes on the new R2 line. As a result of those attributes, we do anticipate seeing an impact to our automotive gross profit over Q2 and Q3 before we start to see the overall benefits of the ramp, not just on the R2's unit economic profile, but also importantly the fixed cost leverage that we'll see across the R1 program and EDV program, overall.
In total, we still anticipate that we'll exit 2026 with a trajectory of positive automotive gross profit, with that being, you know, both R2 as well as total Rivian automotive gross profit being positive, which is important for us as we go into 2027 and really fully ramp up the R2 capacity in Normal.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes the Q&A section of the call. I would now like to turn the call back to R.J Scaringe for closing remarks.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. Hopefully, you can tell we're really looking forward to getting R2s into customer hands. We're, you know, we're very pleased and excited with the product that we've developed and proud of the team for all the great work that went into creating such a special vehicle. Along with that, we are very much focused on the development of our autonomy platform. With that, we'll be starting to see some of the fruit of that significant effort, as I said, first with our point-to-point capabilities later this year, then adding more functionality, more capabilities over the course of 2027 and 2028. Again, thank you, everybody, for joining this call.
We're excited for all of you to hopefully experience an R2 and see them on the roads here very soon.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us.