Rivian has released its Q1 2024 results, slightly beating analyst estimates on revenue, which grew sharply year-over-year, but with wider losses than expected and only slight gross margin improvement as it still hopes to turn some quarterly profit by the end of the year.

Electric truck maker Rivian announced its results after the bell today, capping off a quarter that has seen difficulty for some EV makers.

Rivian previously announced that deliveries remained flat between Q4 and Q1 at 13,588 units, but were up 71% since the same quarter last year. Rivian says it achieved 5.1% market share in US EVs in Q1, quite a feat for a company that sells only upmarket vehicles, with the R1S being the best-selling EV over $70k

Q1 tends to be a down quarter for vehicle deliveries, so year-over-year numbers are often used – though with EV makers experiencing rapid growth, quarterly numbers can still be useful.

Analysts estimated that Rivian would bring in $1.175 billion in revenue this quarter, with a loss of $1.15 per share.

Rivian’s actual results, announced today, show that it beat the analysts with $1.204 billion in revenue, but had wider losses than expected at -$1.48 per share. Revenue improved by 82% year-over-year. Rivian ended the quarter with $7,858 billion in cash, down from $9,368 billion at the end of Q4 2023.

Gross margin on vehicles improved slightly, with a loss of $38,784 per vehicle as opposed to $43,372 per vehicle in the previous quarter. The gross margin improvement shows progress, but gross margins are still worse than they were in Q2 and Q3 of last year, at -$32k and -$30k respectively.

However, Rivian has just completed a plant shutdown, which started on April 5, and thus isn’t captured in this quarter’s results. The plant reopened on May 1.

This shutdown was focused on retooling to improve margins, and Rivian says it could increase efficiency by 30%. Rivian sees “significant progress” on cost optimization already, and says that it expects slight positive gross profit in Q4 of this year. We’ll expect to hear more about how the shutdown went on the company’s earnings call at 2PM PDT/5PM EDT today.

It’s also the first earnings call since Rivian’s R2/R3 unveiling event. These are Rivian’s two upcoming vehicles, with which it plans to move downmarket and into higher volume spaces. The R2 will start around $45k in the first half of 2026, while the R3 timeline and cost have not yet been announced.

Along with that event, Rivian announced that it would move production forward for the R2, by building it at its existing plant in Normal, IL, rather than a planned future plant in Georgia. This will bring Normal’s production numbers up to 215k units of total capacity per year across all products.

The main reason for this is to reduce capex in the short-term by $2.25 billion, saving the company cash in a time where fundraising is more difficult than it has been in the past. Rivian also recently cut 1% of jobs in service of these cost savings.

As part of today’s release, Rivian also reduced capex guidance for 2024 to $1.2 billion, down from $1.75 billion. It expects to save money in 2025 and 2026 from the decision to move R2 production to Normal, as well.

Otherwise, Rivian reaffirmed its full year 2024 guidance of 57,000 units production and a $2.7 billion loss, though it expects slight gross profit in Q4.

Rivian (RIVN) closed down 0.77% today, after opening high in response to rumors about a partnership with Apple, but giving back the gains throughout the day. RIVN is currently down 2-3% in aftermarket trading as we await the earnings call, where we expect a question (and likely non-answer) about the Apple rumors.

Shenzhen, the home of Chinese EV giant BYD, says it’s become the first in China to have more supercharging plugs than gas pumps.

As Electrek reported in April, BYD received direct government subsidies of “at least” $3.7 billion to grow its EV business and undercut the competition with aggressively low pricing. So all those cheap EVs need to be fast-charged, and what better place to expand than BYD’s home city?

In June 2023, Shenzhen unveiled its first fully liquid-cooled supercharging prototype station as part of its “City of Supercharging” plan, in which it set a goal to build as many supercharging stations as gas stations by 2025. And these “superchargers” aren’t just DC fast chargers – they can charge EVs to 80% in just 10 minutes.

Shenzhen had 362 supercharging stations as of April 30, according to the latest data released by the city, but it didn’t say how many gas pumps there are. They’ve been conveniently sited in commercial complexes, bus stops, and industrial parks.

According to data from the Southern Power Grid Shenzhen Power Supply Bureau, Shenzhen’s EV charging volume reached 670 million kilowatt-hours in Q1 2024, an 11% increase year-over-year. So, the city has to plan carefully so as not to overburden the grid as both EVs and superchargers rapidly come online.

The city of 12.5 million people has been an electrification leader for some time; in 2017, it completely electrified its bus fleet with more than 16,000 electric buses, and its taxis became electrified in 2019.

China leads the world in renewables and EV growth, but it’s also the No 1 emitter of harmful greenhouse gases.

Read more: In 2023, investment in clean energy manufacturing shot up 70% from 2022

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is causing chaos in the EV industry by firing Tesla’s entire charging team, which may lead some automakers to reconsider their plans to adopt the NACS plug. But NACS is just a better standard, and the industry should move forward on it, even if Tesla waffles with its commitment.

Last week, Tesla abruptly fired its entire Supercharging team, leading to an immediate pullback in Supercharger installation plans. The explanation we’ve heard for these firings is that CEO Elon Musk was unhappy with EV Charging lead Rebecca Tinucci for not firing enough people, and retaliated by suddenly firing her and her entire team.

The firing was so ill-considered that the company has even had to send out an email blast to suppliers and contractors, seemingly confused about which companies it’s even working with on site development.

The abrupt firing has caused a lot of chaos and reconsideration in the EV industry, with some automakers reportedly having meetings about whether to proceed with the planned NACS transition or pull back on their plans.

Currently, EVs from Ford and Rivian can charge on Tesla’s Supercharger network through adapters, but other automakers can’t yet. Tesla planned to roll out support to more brands this spring (GM, Volvo, Polestar), with more coming later. Virtually every brand has announced they will adopt NACS in the next couple years.

But this Supercharger rollout to other automakers will likely be slowed down, as the Supercharger team was the group responsible for onboarding other automakers, and for advancing the whole idea of NACS in the first place.

As a result there have been questions swirling about whether this could spell doom for NACS, potentially being an end to the standard as everyone switches back to CCS.

Is NACS going to die? It shouldn’t, here’s why

First, I don’t think NACS is going to die. Tesla will still use it, and is still the biggest EV brand in North America. While firing the whole team is a petty and incomprehensible move, I expect that the company will eventually come to its senses and hire some people back into that department, and continue to develop and install its charging system, though this will still be a huge setback.

The thing is – NACS is overall just a better standard than CCS. That’s why, when SAE certified the standard, we wrote that “it’ll fix every charging problem at once” (maybe not quite every problem, but close). The cable and connector are easier to use, its 277V support is better for commercial installations, its provision for carry-along cables is better for public infrastructure (especially street parking) and more interoperable with international receptacles.

Also, NACS is now out of Tesla’s hands. The SAE certification for NACS, which it calls J3400, is already finished. So it’s a real standard, and it’s a standard that Tesla no longer has control over. Other companies can make NACS ports and NACS chargers and all the technical information needed is out there and open for use. It’s only Supercharger network compatibility that is in Tesla’s hands (and if they want NEVI funds, they’re going to have to allow other brands to charge at their chargers).

And now that the whole industry already decided to convert to NACS (which is a tough thing to get everyone to agree on), it also puts to bed the format war that we might have had between Superchargers and CCS.

It would be one thing to convert from one standard to another and leave everyone out in the cold, but the industry has already started planning this conversion, and adapters are available. There will be a transition period where CCS and NACS chargers both remain available, so most people shouldn’t have trouble finding a charge.

But it does make sense to collapse down to one standard, and it makes sense to collapse down to the better one.

And so, rumors that manufacturers are considering reversing their NACS transition plans will hopefully not come true. Manufacturers should continue forward in transitioning and getting NACS ports on their vehicles as soon as possible, third parties should focus primarily on installing NACS chargers to pick up the slack left by Tesla’s pullback (with some CCS during the transitionary period), and Tesla should rehire a division to ensure that the transition goes smoothly (you already had one and firing them was stupid).