On September 14th, 2024, Jeff Gorrie travelled to Peoria, Illinois to Visit Family. While in Illinois, Jeff went to a Movie Night hosted by his dad’s employer, The EV Manufacturer Rivian. In 2017 Rivian acquired the old Mitsubishi Motors manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois, and retooled the factory to begin manufacturing electric vehicles. Since then, Rivian has manufactured and shipped over 100,000 electric vehicles from this location.
Driving up to the facility was an overwhelming experience – the building is enormous, and their plot of land stretches for more than a mile long. There are staged electric vehicles awaiting shipping as far as the eye can see. The Rivian facility in Normal, Illinois is currently building their electric Truck (The R1T and the R1S), and their commercial fleet van (The EDV 500 and the EVD 700), with plans to start manufacturing the R2 SUV in 2026. You’ve likely seen their trucks being driven by private owners, and their commercial fleet vans being driven by Amazon delivery drivers.
Looking inside of the manufacturing plant, it’s one of the cleanest, brightest, biggest manufacturing plants Jeff has ever been inside of. It is interesting to see this level of high-tech manufacturing happening in the Midwest in 2024. Jeff’s overall takeaways from the visit are that Rivian is spending a lot of money (they just got a $4 Billion Investment from Volkswagen), they treat their employees well, there’s an interesting mix of robotic and human manufacturing in the plant, and there were a lot of EV’s just sitting around that hadn’t been shipped yet.
Jeff Gorrie is currently working on a transformer toolkit APPA DEED grant to help municipal electric utilities accommodate EV charging on the grid. IAMU is keeping an eye on EV adoption rates, transformer issues, and EV charging standards. Jeff will be meeting with Rivian Employees VIA Zoom in the coming weeks to discuss utility concerns with EV charging, transformer issues, and other EV topics. If you have any questions you’d like Jeff to ask the Rivian folks, shoot him an email at [email protected].
To see more pictures of Jeff’s Rivian visit, click the following link.
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