Rivian Automotive Inc (RIVN) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rivian Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions)

美好的一天，感謝您的支持。歡迎參加 Rivian 2022 年第三季度收益電話會議。 （操作員說明）

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker for today, Tim Bei. You may begin.

我現在想把會議交給你今天的演講者 Tim Bei。你可以開始了。

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Rivian's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Joining us on today's call, we have RJ Scaringe, our Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Claire McDonough, our Chief Financial Officer. A copy of today's shareholder letter is available on our Investor Relations website.

下午好，感謝您參加 Rivian 的 2022 年第三季度財報電話會議。加入我們今天的電話會議的還有我們的創始人、董事長兼首席執行官 RJ Scaringe；和我們的首席財務官 Claire McDonough。今天的股東信的副本可在我們的投資者關係網站上找到。

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, our comments and responses to your questions reflect management's views as of today only and will include statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements regarding our market opportunity, industry trends, business operations, strategy and goals, our production ramp and manufacturing capacity expansion, our proposed joint venture with Mercedes-Benz, our future products and product enhancements, including R2, and our expectations regarding vehicle deliveries. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in or implied by these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with our business, which are described in our SEC filings and today's shareholder letter.

在開始之前，我想提醒您，在本次電話會議期間，我們對您的問題的評論和回复僅反映管理層截至今天的觀點，並將包括與我們業務相關的聲明，這些聲明是聯邦證券下的前瞻性聲明法律，包括但不限於關於我們的市場機會、行業趨勢、業務運營、戰略和目標、我們的生產坡道和製造能力擴張、我們與梅賽德斯-奔馳擬議的合資企業、我們未來的產品和產品改進（包括 R2）的聲明，以及我們對車輛交付的期望。由於與我們的業務相關的風險和不確定性，實際結果可能與這些前瞻性陳述中包含或暗示的結果存在重大差異，這些風險和不確定性在我們提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件和今天的股東信中有所描述。

During this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is provided in today's shareholder letter.

在本次電話會議中，我們將討論 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務指標。今天的股東信中提供了 GAAP 與非 GAAP 財務指標的對賬。

With that, I'll turn the call over to RJ who will begin with a few opening remarks.

有了這個，我將把電話轉給 RJ，他將首先發表一些開場白。

Thanks, Tim. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Just before the call, we published our shareholder letter, which includes an overview of our progress over the recent months. I encourage you to read it for additional details around some of the items we'll cover on today's call.

謝謝，蒂姆。大家好，感謝您今天加入我們。就在電話會議之前，我們發布了我們的股東信函，其中概述了我們最近幾個月的進展。我鼓勵您閱讀它以了解有關我們將在今天的電話會議中介紹的一些項目的更多詳細信息。

Having just passed the 1-year anniversary of the start of production for the R1T, I want to take this opportunity to highlight the progress our team has made this past year. We launched 4 variants across our consumer and commercial vehicle platforms. We were awarded MotorTrend's Truck of the Year, along with other media accolades. We produced more than 15,000 vehicles as of September 30, and we continue to ramp our production to fully utilize our Normal facility. In addition, we also launched our go-to-market operations and services, which include our physical service centers and mobile service vehicles, delivery operations, FleetOS, financing, insurance, remarketing and the Rivian Adventure Network, our in-house developed and produced network of DC fast chargers. It's been rewarding to see the excitement and enthusiasm for our first generation of products.

剛剛過了 R1T 開始生產一周年，我想藉此機會強調我們團隊在過去一年中取得的進展。我們在消費者和商用車平台上推出了 4 個變體。我們獲得了 MotorTrend 的年度卡車以及其他媒體的讚譽。截至 9 月 30 日，我們生產了超過 15,000 輛汽車，我們將繼續提高產量以充分利用我們的 Normal 工廠。此外，我們還推出了進入市場的運營和服務，包括我們的實體服務中心和移動服務車輛、交付運營、FleetOS、融資、保險、再營銷和我們內部開發和生產的 Rivian Adventure Network直流快速充電器網絡。看到我們對第一代產品的興奮和熱情是值得的。

We believe we're in a unique position during a transformational time for the auto industry. Production of our designed and developed products continues to ramp at our large-scale, vertically integrated production facility in Normal. We have significant demand visibility as evidenced by our consumer and commercial backlog. We have a strong balance sheet with $14 billion of cash that offers us the flexibility to navigate these uncertain economic times and look for capital-efficient methods to drive growth. We remain focused on ramping production in a cost-efficient manner, and we've seen improvement across our cost of goods sold, operating expenses and capital expenditures over the past quarter.

我們相信，在汽車行業的轉型時期，我們處於獨特的地位。我們設計和開發的產品的生產繼續在我們位於 Normal 的大型垂直整合生產設施中增加。我們的消費者和商業積壓證明了我們有顯著的需求可見性。我們擁有強大的資產負債表，擁有 140 億美元的現金，這使我們能夠靈活應對這些不確定的經濟時期，並尋找資本效率高的方法來推動增長。我們仍然專注於以具有成本效益的方式提高產量，並且在過去一個季度中，我們的銷售成本、運營費用和資本支出都有所改善。

The third quarter was another record for the Rivian team. We produced over 7,300 vehicles across the R1T, R1S and EDV product lines. Our key focus remains ramping our Normal facility to achieve the targeted annual capacity. As part of this progress, we reached a key milestone recently as our second manufacturing shift started producing vehicles. It takes extraordinary coordination to ramp a highly vertically integrated facility of this size, and I'm grateful for all the hard work that has gone into it.

第三節是里維安隊的另一項紀錄。我們在 R1T、R1S 和 EDV 產品線上生產了 7,300 多輛汽車。我們的重點仍然是擴大我們的正常設施，以實現目標年產能。作為這一進展的一部分，我們最近達到了一個關鍵的里程碑，因為我們的第二次製造轉變開始生產車輛。建立如此規模的高度垂直整合的設施需要非凡的協調，我感謝所有投入其中的辛勤工作。

We continue to see strong demand for our products. As of November 7, we had over 114,000 net preorders and reservations for our R1 vehicles. As a reminder, these orders are from the United States and Canada only and are net of deliveries and cancellations. The third quarter was also important for our commercial business. In early September, we announced the signing of an MOU with Mercedes-Benz for a strategic partnership for commercial electric vans in Europe, the world's largest van market.

我們繼續看到對我們產品的強勁需求。截至 11 月 7 日，我們的 R1 車輛淨預購和預訂量超過 114,000 輛。提醒一下，這些訂單僅來自美國和加拿大，不含交貨和取消。第三季度對我們的商業業務也很重要。 9 月初，我們宣布與梅賽德斯-奔馳簽署諒解備忘錄，在全球最大的貨車市場歐洲建立商用電動貨車戰略合作夥伴關係。

We continue to deliver EDVs to Amazon and expand our FleetOS offering. Amazon has delivered over 5 million packages with the EDVs and is now making deliveries in over 100 cities. Every 2 weeks, I spend a few days driving the EDV as my daily driver. It's a great way for me to personally experience what the drivers of these vans actually experience, everything from the seating position to the unique pocket door to the overall vehicle dynamics. It's a really exciting package. And at stoplights or parking lots, the enthusiasm I get to see firsthand from folks that are seeing it for the first time or asking questions about it, it's really exciting, and we're happy to be able to help raise the bar for electrifying logistics.

我們繼續向亞馬遜提供 EDV 並擴展我們的 FleetOS 產品。亞馬遜已經使用 EDV 交付了超過 500 萬個包裹，目前正在 100 多個城市進行交付。每兩週，我會花幾天時間駕駛 EDV 作為我的日常司機。這是我親自體驗這些貨車司機實際體驗的好方法，從座椅位置到獨特的口袋門再到整體車輛動力。這是一個非常令人興奮的包。在紅綠燈或停車場，我親眼目睹了那些第一次看到它或提出問題的人們的熱情，這真的很令人興奮，我們很高興能夠幫助提高電氣化物流的標準.

As we continue to look for opportunities to scale our platforms' production and technologies in capital-efficient ways, we're strategically investing in our in-house technologies, which will enable differentiated product performance and capabilities while also delivering structural cost advantages. Our in-house software capabilities allow us to be agile and provide customers with an improved experience.

隨著我們繼續尋找機會以節省資本的方式擴展我們平台的生產和技術，我們正在戰略性地投資於我們的內部技術，這將實現差異化的產品性能和功能，同時提供結構性成本優勢。我們的內部軟件功能使我們能夠敏捷並為客戶提供更好的體驗。

On the hardware side, we're excited to ramp production of our fully in-house drive unit. The Enduro production lines are coming to life now. It's great to see not only the vertically integrated motor but also the design of our manufacturing lines. In early 2023, we plan to introduce the Enduro motor and our first LFP battery pack into the commercial van line in Normal.

在硬件方面，我們很高興能夠增加我們完全內部驅動單元的生產。 Enduro 生產線現在正在投入使用。很高興不僅能看到垂直集成的電機，還能看到我們生產線的設計。 2023 年初，我們計劃將 Enduro 電機和我們的第一個 LFP 電池組引入 Normal 的商用貨車生產線。

These changes will enable optimized performance at a significantly lower cost. It's imperative that we get the introduction of these new technologies right. So we have allocated meaningful time to quality loops and process checks in the first quarter. We are excited about the progress our teams are making across future vehicles and technologies as well as improving the performance and cost of our current offerings. While we haven't shown any of our future products yet, I couldn't be more excited about the work happening on our next platform. The smaller size of this platform is enabling some wonderfully unique products, and we are looking forward to be able to show these to the world.

這些變化將以顯著降低的成本實現優化性能。我們必須正確地引入這些新技術。因此，我們在第一季度為質量循環和流程檢查分配了有意義的時間。我們對我們的團隊在未來車輛和技術方面取得的進展以及提高我們當前產品的性能和成本感到興奮。雖然我們還沒有展示我們未來的任何產品，但我對我們下一個平台上發生的工作感到非常興奮。這個平台的較小尺寸正在實現一些非常獨特的產品，我們期待能夠向世界展示這些產品。

I want to thank our dedicated team members, suppliers and importantly, our customers and communities for the tremendous support you continue to show us. With that, I'll pass the call over to Claire.

我要感謝我們敬業的團隊成員、供應商，重要的是，感謝我們的客戶和社區，感謝你們繼續向我們提供的巨大支持。有了這個，我會把電話轉給克萊爾。

Thanks, RJ. I want to echo your excitement around the third quarter results and the progress the team is making. During the third quarter, we produced over 7,300 vehicles and delivered nearly 6,600 vehicles, which was the primary driver of the $536 million of revenue we generated. We recorded negative gross profit of $917 million in the third quarter. We continue to be impacted by the high fixed cost structure associated with running high-volume production lines at low volumes while we ramp.

謝謝，RJ。我想回應您對第三季度業績和團隊正在取得的進展的興奮。在第三季度，我們生產了 7,300 多輛汽車並交付了近 6,600 輛汽車，這是我們產生 5.36 億美元收入的主要驅動力。我們在第三季度錄得 9.17 億美元的負毛利潤。我們繼續受到與以小批量運行大批量生產線相關的高固定成本結構的影響。

We recorded a $696 million accounting adjustment in the third quarter related to LCNRV. As discussed on prior calls, the LCNRV adjustment writes down the value of certain inventory to the amount we anticipate receiving upon vehicle sale after considering the future costs necessary to ready the inventory for sale. The increase in our LCNRV charge represents the vast majority of the increase in cost of goods sold as compared to the second quarter of 2022. The increase in LCNRV compared to the second quarter is primarily due to an increase in overall inventory and firm purchase commitment values ahead of the start of our second manufacturing shift. In addition, similar to prior quarters, gross profit for the quarter was also impacted by the inflation of our raw materials as well as supply chain challenges, which caused the need for expedited shipping.

我們在第三季度記錄了與 LCNRV 相關的 6.96 億美元的會計調整。正如之前的電話會議所討論的，在考慮準備好待售庫存所需的未來成本後，LCNRV 調整將某些庫存的價值減記為我們預計在車輛銷售時收到的金額。與 2022 年第二季度相比，我們 LCNRV 費用的增加佔已售商品成本增加的絕大部分。與第二季度相比 LCNRV 的增加主要是由於整體庫存增加和確定的採購承諾價值增加在我們的第二次製造轉移開始之前。此外，與前幾個季度類似，本季度的毛利潤也受到原材料通脹以及供應鏈挑戰的影響，這導致需要加快運輸。

Operating expenses grew by an approximate $160 million as compared to the same quarter last year. The primary driver of this increase is stock-based compensation expense, which we did not recognize prior to our November 2021 IPO. When looking at our operating expense this past quarter versus the second quarter of 2022, we saw a nearly $150 million decrease. Our Q3 operating expenses reflect our ongoing prioritization of investment in our core and vehicle technologies and customer experience while continuing to drive additional focus and cost optimization across the business. We continue to focus on deploying capital in the most efficient way and ensuring that every dollar spent helps us towards our long-term financial targets, which in turn helps accelerate the impact we can deliver.

與去年同期相比，運營費用增加了約 1.6 億美元。這種增長的主要驅動力是基於股票的薪酬費用，我們在 2021 年 11 月 IPO 之前沒有認識到這一點。在查看我們上一季度與 2022 年第二季度的運營費用時，我們看到減少了近 1.5 億美元。我們的第三季度運營費用反映了我們對核心和車輛技術以及客戶體驗的持續投資優先級，同時繼續推動整個業務的更多關注和成本優化。我們將繼續專注於以最有效的方式部署資本，並確保所花的每一美元都有助於我們實現長期財務目標，這反過來又有助於加速我們能夠產生的影響。

Our adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was negative $1.3 billion, which is flat to the second quarter of 2022. We ended the third quarter with about $14 billion of cash on hand. We continue to monitor the economic environment and believe we have a high level of flexibility regarding the cadence of our growth investments. We remain confident in our ability to fund operations with cash on hand through 2025, excluding the impact of our investment in the contemplated joint venture with Mercedes-Benz.

我們第三季度調整後的 EBITDA 為負 13 億美元，與 2022 年第二季度持平。第三季度末我們手頭有約 140 億美元的現金。我們將繼續監測經濟環境，並相信我們在增長投資的節奏方面具有高度的靈活性。我們對到 2025 年之前用手頭現金為運營提供資金的能力仍然充滿信心，不包括我們對與梅賽德斯-奔馳擬成立的合資企業的投資的影響。

We continue to work with the state of Georgia and the Joint Development Authority on our second domestic production facility. We are adjusting the time line for launching the R2 platform and expect it will launch in 2026. We expect the R2 platform will unlock a massive global market expansion opportunity for Rivian and are excited about the development work that's underway.

我們將繼續與佐治亞州和聯合發展局合作建設我們的第二個國內生產設施。我們正在調整推出 R2 平台的時間線，預計將於 2026 年推出。我們預計 R2 平台將為 Rivian 帶來巨大的全球市場擴張機會，並對正在進行的開發工作感到興奮。

We are also reaffirming our 2022 full year guidance of 25,000 total vehicles produced. The supply chain continues to be our largest source of uncertainty as we continue to ramp production. We've experienced 5 days of production downtime in October and November due to a lack of supply of a key component, which limited our quarter-to-date production. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we expect the in-transit time from rail shipments, coupled with an increase in volumes from the ramp of our second shift towards the end of the quarter, will cause a significant discrepancy between production and deliveries.

我們還重申了 2022 年全年生產 25,000 輛汽車的指導。隨著我們繼續提高產量，供應鏈仍然是我們最大的不確定性來源。由於關鍵部件供應不足，我們在 10 月和 11 月經歷了 5 天的生產停工期，這限制了我們季度至今的生產。在 2022 年第四季度，我們預計鐵路運輸的在途時間，加上我們從第二班到本季度末的斜坡增加量，將導致生產和交付之間的顯著差異。

In addition, we're reaffirming our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance of negative $5.45 billion. We're lowering our capital expenditure guidance to $1.75 billion due to our streamlined product road map and the shift of certain capital expenditures to 2023.

此外，我們重申 2022 年調整後的 EBITDA 指引為負 54.5 億美元。由於我們簡化了產品路線圖以及將某些資本支出轉移到 2023 年，我們將資本支出指導下調至 17.5 億美元。

As RJ mentioned, we have over 114,000 net R1 preorders as of November 7. As we ramp our production and deliveries, we believe preorders will become an increasingly less important measure of our fundamental progress as a business. Going forward, we no longer plan to provide an updated preorder number during our quarterly earnings calls.

正如 RJ 所提到的，截至 11 月 7 日，我們有超過 114,000 個淨 R1 預購。隨著我們增加生產和交付，我們相信預購將成為衡量我們作為一家企業的基本進展的一個越來越不重要的衡量標準。展望未來，我們不再計劃在季度財報電話會議期間提供更新的預購編號。

In closing, I want to reiterate our confidence in our long-term financial targets. We see a clear path to our approximately 25% gross margin target, high teens EBITDA target and approximately 10% free cash flow margin target. With that, let me turn the call back to the operator to open the line for Q&A.

最後，我想重申我們對長期財務目標的信心。我們看到了實現約 25% 毛利率目標、高青少年 EBITDA 目標和約 10% 自由現金流利潤率目標的清晰道路。有了這個，讓我將電話轉回接線員以打開問答線路。

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of John Murphy with Bank of America.

（操作員說明）我們的第一個問題來自美國銀行的 John Murphy。

Just a couple of quick ones. That announcement that you're not going to provide the preorders anymore, I'm just curious what the motivation is for that. Are we getting to a point where the preorders are getting so robust or long that ebbs and flows in those relative to production might not actually be that informative? I mean, what's kind of the driving factor in that change in communication?

只是幾個快速的。宣布您不再提供預訂單，我只是好奇這樣做的動機是什麼。我們是否已經到了這樣一個地步，即預訂變得如此強勁或長期如此，以至於與生產相關的起起落落實際上可能並沒有那麼豐富？我的意思是，這種溝通方式發生變化的驅動因素是什麼？

Thanks, John. This is Claire. As it pertains to the preorders, our sentiment was more so that we're 1 year post our start of production as an organization. We're starting to really ramp up our production and the deliveries associated with our R1 platform, so don't feel like it's really a meaningful metric for us to continue to provide overall to the market. Obviously, given the 114,000-unit backlog that we currently have, that extends us into 2024 as well as it's a robust backlog of demand that we have for our vehicles. And this is going to be consistent with what you'll see from us on a go-forward basis as it pertains to additional new product launches as well.

謝謝，約翰。這是克萊爾。因為它與預購有關，所以我們的情緒更多的是，我們作為一個組織開始生產一年後。我們開始真正提高與我們的 R1 平台相關的產量和交付量，所以不要覺得這對我們繼續向市場提供整體來說真的是一個有意義的指標。顯然，鑑於我們目前擁有 114,000 輛的積壓，這將我們延長到 2024 年，而且我們對車輛的需求強勁。這將與您在未來的基礎上從我們那裡看到的一致，因為它也與其他新產品的發布有關。

Okay. That's helpful. And then RJ, on the Mercedes JV, I just wonder if you could give us an update there. I mean, I think a skeptic could say, hey, listen, you would have been able to enter and be successful in the European market ultimately on your own over time, just given your product. But an optimist might say, hey, listen, that opens up that market that much faster and provides more robust growth sooner. Just curious if you can kind of maybe couch the direction there on the optimist versus skeptic and any other updates you might be able to give us there.

好的。這很有幫助。然後 RJ，關於梅賽德斯合資企業，我只是想知道你是否可以在那裡給我們提供更新。我的意思是，我認為懷疑論者可能會說，嘿，聽著，隨著時間的推移，只要有你的產品，你就可以進入歐洲市場並最終在歐洲市場取得成功。但樂觀主義者可能會說，嘿，聽著，這會更快地打開這個市場，並更快地提供更強勁的增長。只是好奇您是否可以在樂觀主義者與懷疑論者以及您可以在那裡向我們提供的任何其他更新方面提出方向。

Sure, John. Yes, Mercedes is, in terms of a partner and somewhat to be looking at how do we accelerate electrification faster, there's very much aligned mentality, aligned mentality around the need to electrify, aligned mentality on how we think about products and the position of products and the execution of products. So it's a relationship and a partnership that we're working towards that we think kind of allow both sides to accomplish more together. Ultimately, as we think about this and as we look at this market, it is an important and large space for the commercial van space in Europe. And we felt Mercedes was a great partner to be looking at this with.

當然，約翰。是的，就合作夥伴而言，梅賽德斯在某種程度上正在研究我們如何更快地加速電氣化，有非常一致的心態，圍繞電氣化需求的一致心態，關於我們如何看待產品和產品位置的一致心態和產品的執行。因此，我們正在努力建立一種關係和夥伴關係，我們認為這可以讓雙方共同完成更多的工作。歸根結底，當我們思考這個問題並審視這個市場時，它對於歐洲的商用貨車空間來說是一個重要而巨大的空間。我們認為梅賽德斯是一個很好的合作夥伴。

Okay. And then if I could just sneak one more in. The delta in deliveries versus production, Claire, will that continue to expand over time? Or are we kind of looking at sort of a onetime gap opening up here in the fourth quarter? I'm just trying to gauge the revenue recognition versus the production so we can think about that for our models go forward.

好的。然後，如果我可以再偷偷溜進去一個。交付與生產的增量，克萊爾，會隨著時間的推移繼續擴大嗎？或者我們是否正在考慮在第四季度出現一次性缺口？我只是想衡量收入確認與產量，這樣我們就可以為我們的模型繼續前進。

The Q4 gap will be exacerbated here in particular because we have the second shift that's coming online and really ramping from a production perspective that back-weights the volumes from a production perspective in the second half of the quarter. And then that, coupled obviously with the shift that we had to rail and then the holiday period where customers are a little bit harder to find in that last week of December, that will be a driver of that core shift for us. Obviously, what we don't deliver in Q4 rolls into the upcoming quarter. So you start to normalize over time as we ramp closer to the installed capacity within the plant in Normal. So the gap should narrow on a percent basis on a go-forward basis.

第四季度的差距將在這裡加劇，特別是因為我們有第二個班次即將上線，並且從生產的角度來看確實在增加，從生產的角度來看，在本季度的後半段，我們會從產量的角度對產量進行加權。然後，很明顯，再加上我們不得不進行的轉變，以及在 12 月的最後一周很難找到客戶的假期期間，這將成為我們核心轉變的驅動力。顯然，我們在第四季度沒有交付的東西會進入下一個季度。因此，隨著我們逐漸接近正常工廠內的裝機容量，隨著時間的推移，您開始正常化。因此，差距應該在未來的基礎上按百分比縮小。

Our next question comes from the line of Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根士丹利的亞當喬納斯。

So my first question, Claire, is if I do the calculation quarter-on-quarter sequentially from 2Q to 3Q, your revenue increased $172 million. And your gross loss, if you will, improved by $182 million if you exclude LCNRV, okay, which is substantial -- more substantial this quarter than the last quarter. So on my math, your improvement in gross profit ex LCNRV was actually greater than your change of revenue.

所以我的第一個問題，克萊爾，如果我從第二季度到第三季度按季度進行計算，你的收入增加了 1.72 億美元。如果排除 LCNRV，您的總損失將減少 1.82 億美元，這非常可觀——本季度比上一季度更加可觀。因此，根據我的數學計算，您在除 LCNRV 之外的毛利潤的改善實際上大於您的收入變化。

Now there may be some stuff going on sequentially and maybe there were some really unusual other knocks on gross profit last quarter, but I just wanted to kind of make sure my math is right and to see if there was what you could highlight sequentially that got a lot better underlying, excluding the LCNRV, to draw that improvement of gross profit that actually exceeded the change in revenue.

現在可能有一些事情是按順序發生的，也許上個季度毛利潤有一些非常不尋常的其他敲門聲，但我只是想確保我的數學是正確的，看看是否有你可以按順序突出顯示的內容更好的基礎，不包括 LCNRV，毛利潤的提高實際上超過了收入的變化。

Thanks, Adam. So unpacking the question first about LCNRV itself, it's important to understand there are different components. So the way to your calculation, which is entirely excluding it, is not necessarily the way that I would direct you to look at it. The segment you may want to look at instead is really looking, in particular, at the change -- an increase in LCNRV versus the complete exclusion of it. So the way to think about it is LCNRV is really accelerating the recognition of losses as we take in raw materials and have our firm commitments, which we're then grossing up to say, what is the cost for us to turn these materials into that end-state vehicle themselves?

謝謝，亞當。因此，首先解開關於 LCNRV 本身的問題，重要的是要了解有不同的組件。所以你計算的方式，完全排除它，不一定是我指導你看的方式。相反，您可能想要查看的部分實際上是在關注變化——LCNRV 的增加而不是完全排除它。因此，思考它的方式是 LCNRV 確實在加速確認損失，因為我們接受原材料並做出堅定的承諾，然後我們總算說，我們將這些材料變成這樣的成本是多少？最終狀態車輛本身？

And so as it pertains to the quarter, we get both the benefit of a reduction of bill of materials and conversion costs associated with sort of the baselining of inventory levels if inventory were held constant within those 2 quarters. And so that's why we look to that increase as you look at that calculation in particular.

因此，就本季度而言，如果庫存在這兩個季度內保持不變，我們將受益於減少物料清單和與庫存水平基線相關的轉換成本。這就是為什麼我們會在您特別查看該計算時關注這種增長。

And so if you're looking based off of your own metrics, they're -- right, it's more of an 11% increase in that cost of goods sold on a comparable basis versus a 47% increase in deliveries in aggregate. So we've made meaningful progress to sort of close the loop on that front, but I wanted to just direct you to some of those nuances.

因此，如果您根據自己的指標進行查看，它們是——對，在可比基礎上銷售的商品成本增加了 11%，而交付總量增加了 47%。因此，我們在關閉這方面的循環方面取得了有意義的進展，但我只想指導您了解其中的一些細微差別。

Okay. I appreciate that. And just as a follow-up on reservations, can you tell us where -- give us an update on where you're getting your customers from, what they currently drive? And then the same thing for your deliveries, just to kind of get a sense, how many are coming from Tesla or truck or SUV owners? Any other color there would be great.

好的。我很感激。作為預訂的後續行動，您能否告訴我們在哪裡——告訴我們您從哪裡獲得客戶的最新信息，他們目前的駕駛方式是什麼？然後你的交付也是一樣的，只是為了了解一下，有多少來自特斯拉、卡車或 SUV 車主？任何其他顏色都會很棒。

Sure, Adam. One of the things we targeted in developing the products and thinking about R1T and R1S, these are really flagship products that introduce the brand, really open the brand umbrella for us to, over time, add additional products. And because of that, we wanted them to be pulling -- the target state, I should say, was to be pulling customers from a broad spectrum of vehicle formats and form factors as well as brands. And sitting here today, we now have the actuals to look at how we did relative to target state. And we're really pleased that we do have a really diverse set of customers. So certainly, customers are coming out of -- some customers are coming out of Teslas. But really, there's no single brand that represents a significant percentage of our overall demand.

當然，亞當。我們在開發產品和考慮 R1T 和 R1S 時的目標之一，這些是真正引入品牌的旗艦產品，真正為我們打開品牌保護傘，隨著時間的推移，添加更多產品。正因為如此，我們希望他們能夠拉動——我應該說，目標狀態是從廣泛的車輛格式和外形尺寸以及品牌中拉動客戶。今天坐在這裡，我們現在有實際情況來看看我們相對於目標狀態的表現。我們真的很高興我們確實擁有非常多樣化的客戶群。所以當然，客戶是從特斯拉出來的——一些客戶是從特斯拉出來的。但實際上，沒有一個品牌能代表我們整體需求的很大一部分。

But I would want to add a couple of really important metrics, the first of which is the vast majority of our customers, close to 90%, do not currently own an EV, meaning most of our customers are new EV customers, which is really important from a mission point of view because it means the brand, the products we've created, it's helping -- we're helping to create new EV customers. We're driving that transition. And the second is the number of customers that are buying an R1T that haven't owned a pickup before. That's -- well over a majority of the customers haven't owned a pickup before, and they're being introduced to it through a very different type of pickup, of course, something that's very lifestyle-focused.

但我想添加幾個非常重要的指標，第一個是我們的絕大多數客戶，接近 90%，目前沒有電動汽車，這意味著我們的大多數客戶都是新的電動汽車客戶，這真的是從使命的角度來看很重要，因為它意味著品牌，我們創造的產品，它正在幫助——我們正在幫助創造新的電動汽車客戶。我們正在推動這種轉變。第二個是購買 R1T 之前沒有皮卡的客戶數量。那是 - 遠遠超過大多數客戶以前沒有擁有過皮卡，並且他們通過一種非常不同類型的皮卡被介紹給它，當然，這是非常注重生活方式的東西。

And in a similar sense, the R1S is, in many cases, folks are moving into it as a 3-row SUV. It's something they've aspired to but haven't been able to make that jump before, in many cases because of desires around efficiency and what we can deliver in a full-size 3-row SUV with something that's great on-road and off-road. It's really pulling in a broad spectrum of customers.

在類似的意義上，R1S 在很多情況下，人們正在將它作為一款 3 排 SUV。這是他們一直渴望的東西，但以前未能實現這一目標，在許多情況下，因為對效率的渴望以及我們可以在全尺寸 3 排 SUV 中提供的東西，無論是在路上還是在越野時都很棒-路。它確實吸引了廣泛的客戶。

Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Spak with RBC.

我們的下一個問題來自於 RBC 的 Joseph Spak。

Claire, I want to go back to Adam's question because I was sort of pulling on a similar thread here, and I'm trying to sort of update real time for what you just said. So if I just look at auto COGS divided by deliveries in the second quarter, no adjustments, and then I do the same thing in the third quarter but adjust for the increase in the inventory adjustment, as you just suggested, it still seems like that COGS per unit, while still obviously above what you're selling the vehicle for, did improve like over 30%. So can you just help us understand, like is that not right? Like is there something with the accounting that does not allow you to do that calculation?

克萊爾，我想回到亞當的問題，因為我在這裡有點類似的話題，我正在嘗試實時更新你剛才所說的內容。所以如果我只看第二季度的汽車銷貨成本除以交付量，沒有調整，然後我在第三季度做同樣的事情，但調整庫存調整的增加，就像你剛才建議的那樣，看起來仍然是這樣每單位的銷貨成本雖然仍然明顯高於您出售車輛的價格，但確實提高了 30% 以上。所以你能不能幫我們理解一下，這樣不對嗎？就像會計中的某些東西不允許您進行該計算？

No. That's absolutely right. As I had mentioned, right, as you factor the sort of apples-to-apples comparison of the way that you're looking at it, Joe, you would see a 33%-plus improvement on a quarter sequential basis.

不，這完全正確。正如我所提到的，對，當你考慮到你看待它的方式的那種蘋果對蘋果的比較時，喬，你會看到一個季度連續增長 33% 以上。

Okay. Maybe I misheard that. I thought I heard 11%. Okay. So -- and is that...

好的。也許我聽錯了。我以為我聽到了 11%。好的。所以——那是……

The cost dollars is 11% growth of dollars, but that is off of, right, the fact that we're also increasing 47% on a deliveries basis. So you're really netting the 2 of those.

成本美元是美元增長 11%，但這與我們在交付基礎上也增加了 47% 的事實有關。所以你真的把其中的兩個淨了。

Okay. And so that's sort of the leverage you're seeing in the plant? Or is there anything with mix between R1s and the vans in the quarter that impacted that?

好的。這就是你在工廠看到的影響力？或者本季度 R1 和貨車之間的混合有什麼影響嗎？

The biggest driver that we've seen on a quarter sequential basis is just some of the cost efficiency that we're driving within the plant, us also moving beyond some of the start-up-related costs as well. That's a key enabler for us as we've seen and continue to moderate down that cost of goods sold per vehicle.

我們在季度連續基礎上看到的最大驅動因素只是我們在工廠內推動的一些成本效率，我們也超越了一些與啟動相關的成本。正如我們已經看到並繼續降低每輛車的銷售成本，這對我們來說是一個關鍵的推動力。

The other thing, just to jump in here, Joe, that we have is we've launched multiple vehicles in parallel. So the start-up costs that Claire referred to, we were seeing all of those stacked up on top of each other, 4 different vehicles launching and ramping largely at the same time.

另一件事，只是跳到這裡，喬，我們擁有的是我們已經並行發射了多輛車。因此，克萊爾提到的啟動成本，我們看到所有這些都疊加在一起，4 種不同的車輛基本上同時發射和加速。

Okay. And RJ, I guess just a second question, a couple of quarters ago, you talked about the revised plans, some changes to CapEx timing, et cetera. I'm just wondering, in light of IRA, and kind of appreciate you're still probably evaluating that, but like does that cause you to reevaluate the plans again and maybe accelerating or reaccelerating some of that in-house cell development? Because I think that was one of the things that maybe had a sort of slight push up. But the return profile on that investment seems to be greatly accelerated versus what you were thinking at the time. And then obviously also, that directly impacts the financials of the rest of your business. So just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

好的。 RJ，我想只是第二個問題，幾個季度前，你談到了修改後的計劃，對資本支出時間安排的一些變化等等。我只是想知道，鑑於 IRA，您可能仍在評估這一點，但是這是否會導致您再次重新評估計劃並可能加速或重新加速一些內部細胞開發？因為我認為那是可能有某種輕微推動的事情之一。但是，與您當時的想法相比，該投資的回報率似乎大大加快了。顯然，這也直接影響到您其他業務的財務狀況。所以只是想了解一下你的想法。

Yes. I mean, there's -- as you know, there are still some moving pieces with the IRA, but we think this is a really powerful step and an important step by the U.S. government to really both create strong tailwinds not only for electrification but also for the build-out of a domestic supply base around battery cells. And so this is -- we couldn't be more excited about this. And it's certainly driving shifts in how we think about the overall battery supply chain.

是的。我的意思是，正如你所知，愛爾蘭共和軍仍有一些動人的部分，但我們認為這是美國政府邁出的非常有力的一步，也是重要的一步，它不僅為電氣化而且為電氣化創造了強大的順風圍繞電池建立國內供應基地。所以這是 - 我們對此感到非常興奮。它肯定會推動我們對整個電池供應鏈的看法發生轉變。

And it's not just the cells. It's also the core materials that go into the cells, lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate. Some of the key precursor materials are areas we're spending a lot of time focusing on. And not only making sure we have security of supply as we think out through the end of the decade, but making sure that, that supply qualifies for all the benefits associated with the IRA bill.

不僅僅是細胞。它也是進入電池的核心材料，氫氧化鋰，碳酸鋰。一些關鍵的前體材料是我們花費大量時間關注的領域。不僅要確保我們在本世紀末考慮到的供應安全，還要確保供應符合與 IRA 法案相關的所有好處。

Now at the cell level, particularly important for us as we think about R2 platform vehicles, this is something that has long been the plan to have domestically produced cells that would go into the vehicle. This just puts greater emphasis and importance on achieving that and achieving that as quickly as possible.

現在在電池級別，當我們考慮 R2 平台車輛時，這對我們來說尤其重要，這是長期以來一直計劃讓國產電池進入車輛的計劃。這只是更加強調和重視實現這一目標並儘快實現這一目標。

Our next question comes from the line of Rod Lache with Wolfe Research.

我們的下一個問題來自 Wolfe Research 的 Rod Lache。

You mentioned again that you have the funding through late 2025 with cash on hand, excluding this JV plant. And just wanted to confirm what that means. So by late 2025, you will have ramped up Normal and presumably funded most of Georgia assembly. I just wanted to make sure that, that's correct. And you didn't mention anything about -- anything new at least about vertical integration into batteries or cathode active material. Is that part of your funding plan just to the extent that it's important, particularly for the R2?

您再次提到，您擁有到 2025 年底的資金，手頭有現金，不包括這家合資工廠。只是想確認這意味著什麼。因此，到 2025 年底，您將增加正常規模，並可能為喬治亞州的大部分議會提供資金。我只是想確保那是正確的。而且你沒有提到任何新的東西——至少是關於垂直整合到電池或陰極活性材料中的任何新東西。您的資金計劃的那一部分是否只是重要的程度，特別是對於 R2？

Thanks, Rod. As we've talked about in the past, we remain confident in our cash on hand through 2025. And as we've also spoken about, we will opportunistically evaluate, right, opportunities for us to invest in high-growth, high-return options for Rivian on a go-forward basis. And as you heard from RJ's last comments there around a lot of the work that our team is doing across the board as it pertains to securing cell raw materials and the R&D and build-out and capabilities that we have in-house here, those are all things that we're currently evaluating and working on as an organization as well.

謝謝，羅德。正如我們過去所說，到 2025 年，我們對手頭的現金仍然充滿信心。而且正如我們也談到的，我們將機會主義地評估我們投資於高增長、高回報的機會Rivian 在前進的基礎上的選擇。正如您從 RJ 的最後評論中聽到的那樣，我們的團隊正在全面開展許多工作，這些工作涉及保護電池原材料以及我們在內部擁有的研發和擴建和能力，這些是我們目前作為一個組織正在評估和處理的所有事情。

And the embedded guidance that we do have does certainly consider some meaningful investments in that cell road map as we sit here today and look out at the building blocks for that future state opportunity. What the guidance doesn't include today is really much more of the large-scale manufacturing build-out of our cells, which would follow, obviously, the development and build-out of our R2 platform as we've spoken about in the past. So those are our core items that I just wanted to call out as you think about the building blocks and road map to that cash on hand through 2025.

我們確實擁有的嵌入式指導確實考慮了對該單元路線圖的一些有意義的投資，因為我們今天坐在這裡並著眼於未來國家機會的基石。今天的指南不包括更多的是我們電池的大規模製造建設，顯然，正如我們過去所說，這將遵循我們 R2 平台的開發和建設.因此，當您考慮到 2025 年手頭現金的構建塊和路線圖時，我只想指出這些是我們的核心項目。

Okay. All right. That's helpful. Is it possible that, that can change prior to the ramp of the R2? Or is that something that just it takes a longer time to kind of get that pulled together?

好的。好的。這很有幫助。有沒有可能，這可以在 R2 的斜坡之前改變？還是只是需要更長的時間才能將其整合在一起？

Rod, as Claire said, a lot of what's already built into our plan is the development and pilot -- the funding for all the development pilot activities associated with our domestic cells as well as building out some of the raw material cathode active material supply chain. But above and beyond that, as we think about what the future lines look like, part of that planning exercise is to create opportunities for us to take a decision with enough time in advance to have impact in that 2026 and beyond time frame.

羅德，正如克萊爾所說，我們計劃中已經包含的很多內容是開發和試點——為與我們國內電池相關的所有開發試點活動提供資金，以及建立一些原材料正極活性材料供應鏈.但除此之外，當我們考慮未來路線的樣子時，規劃工作的一部分是為我們創造機會，讓我們提前有足夠的時間做出決定，以便在 2026 年及以後的時間框架內產生影響。

So those are decisions we'll take. And we look at them through the lens of recognizing the need to raise capital for things that we believe have very strong return profiles. Building domestic battery cells is one of those certainly. I'd also say that this is something that we view as a must-have over time. So it's just a question of how quickly those activities ramp up in terms of production capacity.

所以這些是我們將做出的決定。我們通過認識到需要為我們認為具有非常強勁回報的事物籌集資金的視角來看待它們。製造國產電池肯定是其中之一。我還要說，隨著時間的推移，我們認為這是必須具備的。因此，這只是一個問題，即這些活動在生產能力方面的增長速度有多快。

And just lastly, you're going to be producing over 10,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter. And I presume that, that benefits, to some extent but not fully, from the second shift, and you're still constrained by supply chain. Can you just give us any color you might have on what the -- where you are in the S-curve now, what the trajectory might look like from here just because there are -- obviously, there are people who are reporting some push-out for the R1S vehicles. So wondering if that has any implications for what the ramp looks like.

最後，您將在第四季度生產超過 10,000 輛汽車。而且我認為，從第二次轉變中，這在一定程度上但不完全受益，而且你仍然受到供應鏈的限制。你能不能給我們任何你可能有的顏色 - 你現在在 S 曲線中的哪個位置，從這裡看軌跡可能是什麼樣子只是因為 - 顯然，有些人報告了一些推動 -用於 R1S 車輛。所以想知道這是否對坡道的外觀有任何影響。

Yes. The second shift is now up and running. We're building vehicles on it. Those vehicles are in delivered to customers, which is exciting. In ramping a second shift, of course, it's additional team. It's additional -- it's a lot of additional hours every week of time building vehicles, but it does have a ramp curve associated with it. And now while the ramp curve is much faster than what we went through on the first shift, as we brought the line up and brought the plant up, it's not as if it starts immediately at 100% output.

是的。第二個班次現已啟動並運行。我們正在上面建造車輛。這些車輛已交付給客戶，這令人興奮。當然，在增加第二個班次時，需要額外的團隊。它是額外的——每週需要花費大量額外的時間來建造車輛，但它確實有一條與之相關的斜坡曲線。現在，雖然斜坡曲線比我們在第一個班次中經歷的要快得多，但當我們把生產線拉起來並把工廠拉起來時，它並不是立即以 100% 的產量開始的。

So we're going through that ramp now. It is going well. As you called out in your question, we're very much cognizant of the limitations of the supply chain, and that was -- as you recall, we talked about this in the last call, that was actually what drove the timing of the second shift coming online. It was -- we want to ensure, before we brought on a large group of additional team members, make sure that we would have the parts to build the vehicles.

所以我們現在正在經歷那個坡道。進展順利。正如你在問題中所說的那樣，我們非常清楚供應鏈的局限性，那是 - 正如你所記得的，我們在上次電話會議中談到了這一點，這實際上是推動第二次電話會議時間的原因班次上線。這是 - 我們希望確保，在我們帶來一大群額外的團隊成員之前，確保我們將擁有製造車輛的零件。

So as we stand here today, that is ramping. It's going well. The first shift continues to make improvements. As Claire referenced before, we're very much focused not just on the ramp but also on operational efficiencies and cost efficiencies, many of which come implicitly just through achieving higher output of the plant and leveraging more of our fixed costs more efficiently across more volume. But we're very much focused on fully ramping the second shift and going into 2023 strong.

因此，當我們今天站在這裡時，這正在加速。進行得順利。第一班繼續改進。正如克萊爾之前提到的，我們不僅非常關注坡道，而且還關注運營效率和成本效率，其中許多都是通過實現更高的工廠產量和更有效地利用更多的固定成本來實現更多的產量。 .但我們非常專注於全面推進第二輪班次並進入 2023 年。

Our next question comes from the line of Charles Coldicott with Redburn.

我們的下一個問題來自 Charles Coldicott 和 Redburn 的觀點。

My first one, on the R2 and the delay to 2026 from 2025 previously, can you talk a bit about what's changed there and maybe also how this changes, if at all, your investment plans for the period up to 2025?

我的第一個，關於 R2 和之前從 2025 年推遲到 2026 年，你能談談那裡發生了什麼變化，也許還有這種變化，如果有的話，你在 2025 年之前的投資計劃？

Sure, Charles. This doesn't represent a material change in the product by any means. This is really reflective of making sure that the production site is prepared. We have the appropriate amount of time to go through the ramp-up phase, leveraging a lot of lessons learned as we've gone through the ramp of the R1T, the R1S, the EDV 700 and the EDV 500 over the last 12 months. So those ramps have informed our thinking on making sure that we have as close to a flawless ramp as possible with R2.

當然，查爾斯。無論如何，這並不代表產品發生重大變化。這確實反映了確保生產現場已準備就緒。在過去 12 個月裡，我們經歷了 R1T、R1S、EDV 700 和 EDV 500 的爬坡階段，我們有足夠的時間來完成加速階段，並吸取了很多經驗教訓。因此，這些坡道啟發了我們的想法，即確保我們使用 R2 盡可能接近完美的坡道。

Now in terms of investment dollars, we're -- one of the things Claire and I spend a lot of time with our -- with the teams on is working very hard to push off payments on some of the CapEx as much as we can. But ultimately, some of these things require us to spend over the course of next year and, of course, into 2024 as well.

現在就投資金額而言，我們是——克萊爾和我花很多時間與我們在一起的事情之一——團隊正在努力工作，盡可能多地推遲支付一些資本支出.但最終，其中一些東西需要我們在明年的整個過程中花費，當然還有到 2024 年。

Got it. And then on production, so I think to meet your 25,000 target, you need to average about 850 units a week in the final quarter. Can I ask if you've exceeded that rate in any of the weeks so far in Q4 and that a missing component may have impacted production so far? And then maybe along the lines of a prior question, thinking into next year, should we think that quarter-on-quarter growth is kind of linear through next year? Or will there be some seasonality to that?

知道了。然後是生產，所以我認為要達到你的 25,000 個目標，你需要在最後一個季度平均每週生產大約 850 個單位。請問您是否在第四季度到目前為止的任何一周內都超過了這個速度，並且到目前為止缺少的組件可能已經影響了生產？然後也許按照之前的問題，考慮到明年，我們是否應該認為明年的季度環比增長是線性的？還是會有一些季節性？

The overall -- the way to think about the growth as we look at this both week-over-week, quarter-over-quarter is it's a symphony of not just what we're doing in our plant but also of our supply chain, as you referenced. And looking into 2023, we do see healthy growth quarter-over-quarter. We do have some planned downtime at the end of the year as we make some line improvements and capacity increases across the plant. This is the end of 2023. We've talked about this before.

總體而言，當我們逐週、逐季地看待這一增長時，思考增長的方式不僅是我們在工廠中所做的事情，而且是我們供應鏈的交響曲，正如你所引用的。展望 2023 年，我們確實看到了健康的環比增長。我們確實在年底計劃了一些停機時間，因為我們在整個工廠進行了一些生產線改進和產能增加。這是 2023 年底。我們之前已經討論過這個問題。

And then in the first quarter of this coming year, and Claire and I both referenced this earlier, we are integrating our Enduro drive unit and our LFP pack into the EDV platform. And so that's new battery pack, new drive unit, and of course, with that, a host of related changes. So that introduction of a new propulsion platform, which provides considerable cost improvement, which we're really excited about, that will take some time. And we've built into the plan for next year really the appropriate time to go through the quality loops and training to make sure that it's a real -- it's a seamless launch.

然後在來年的第一季度，克萊爾和我之前都提到了這一點，我們正在將我們的 Enduro 驅動單元和我們的 LFP 包集成到 EDV 平台中。這就是新的電池組、新的驅動單元，當然還有一系列相關的變化。因此，引入一個新的推進平台，它提供了可觀的成本改進，我們真的很興奮，這將需要一些時間。我們已經在明年的計劃中確定了適當的時間來進行質量循環和培訓，以確保它是真實的——它是一個無縫的發布。

Our next question comes from the line of George Gianarikas with Canaccord.

我們的下一個問題來自與 Canaccord 的 George Gianarikas。

Just quickly, you recently had a recall, and I'm curious if you could share your thoughts on how your service department performed and how you see those facilities and personnel ramping over the next 12 months.

很快，您最近進行了召回，我很好奇您是否可以分享您對服務部門的表現以及您如何看待這些設施和人員在未來 12 個月內增加的看法。

Thanks, George. Just as a point of background, we had a recall for a torqued fastener in one of our suspension components. And it called for an inspection and tightening, which the operation takes a couple of minutes on a vehicle. And this was a really remarkable opportunity for us to demonstrate the benefit and the value of a direct service network. So we, today, have completed that operation on 83% of our fleet with about 10 -- line of sight to another 10% that's currently scheduled.

謝謝，喬治。作為背景，我們召回了我們的一個懸掛部件中的一個扭矩緊固件。它要求進行檢查和擰緊，該操作在車輛上需要幾分鐘。這對我們來說是一個展示直接服務網絡的好處和價值的絕佳機會。因此，今天，我們已經完成了對我們 83% 的機隊的操作，其中大約 10 - 視線到目前計劃的另外 10%。

So the speed at which we were able to very rapidly address this across the entire fleet and to do it moments after the decision was made to do this voluntary recall, to have our service leadership immediately working on deploying this and within hours, provide -- performing these first inspections in operations, and then as you just heard me say, within weeks, to have now over 83% of the vehicles complete, is really something we're proud of. And our customers saw that as well.

因此，我們能夠非常迅速地在整個機隊中解決這個問題，並在做出自願召回決定後立即執行，讓我們的服務領導層立即著手部署，並在數小時內提供——在運營中執行這些第一次檢查，然後正如您剛才聽到我所說，在幾週內完成超過 83% 的車輛，這真的是我們引以為豪的事情。我們的客戶也看到了這一點。

The ease at which the process was for customers was great, where we could go to their homes, where we could go to their places of business. In some cases, they would come into service locations. But we tried to make it as seamless as possible. And ultimately, I think the transparency in which we handled the situation was appreciated by our customers.

這個過程對客戶來說非常容易，我們可以去他們的家，我們可以去他們的營業地點。在某些情況下，他們會進入服務地點。但我們試圖讓它盡可能無縫。最終，我認為我們處理這種情況的透明度得到了客戶的讚賞。

And just if I could ask one more. There have been some recent high-profile missteps in autonomy. And one of your competitors stated that it may not be critical for them to develop that technology in-house. So I'm just curious as -- whether your view has been updated on that and whether you think it's critical to have your autonomous offering developed in-house.

如果我可以再問一個。最近在自治方面出現了一些引人注目的失誤。您的一位競爭對手錶示，他們內部開發該技術可能並不重要。所以我很好奇——你的觀點是否已經更新，以及你是否認為讓你的自主產品在內部開發至關重要。

Yes. There's a -- within the autonomous space, there's a broad spectrum of ways to approach it. And I'd say to oversimplify, you have very hardware-heavy systems where a vehicle have $100,000-plus worth of sensor set and compute. And then you have more hardware-constrained systems that are designed to be deployed on vehicles that are purchased by customers where you have thousands of dollars of sensing and compute. And our approach is to focus on the latter, where we're developing an in-house autonomous platform that will grow in capability but using a more constrained set of sensors, in our case, a very camera-heavy and radar-heavy platform.

是的。有一個 - 在自治空間內，有多種方法可以接近它。我想說的是過於簡單化，你有非常重的硬件系統，其中一輛車有價值 100,000 美元以上的傳感器組和計算。然後，您將擁有更多受硬件限制的系統，這些系統旨在部署在客戶購買的車輛上，您擁有數千美元的傳感和計算能力。我們的方法是專注於後者，我們正在開發一個內部自主平台，該平台將在能力上有所增長，但使用一組更受限制的傳感器，在我們的例子中，一個非常重攝像頭和雷達的平台。

And so this is something that we do believe is really important as we talk about not just highway assist features but growing above and beyond what we see today in the Level 2 space. And this takes time, but it certainly benefits from having a very large deployed fleet with vehicles that are driving many millions of miles. As of today, our vehicles have driven over 92.5 million miles, which is great. But all of those miles contribute to great learning opportunities to build and grow this platform.

因此，我們確實認為這非常重要，因為我們不僅談論高速公路輔助功能，而且還超越了我們今天在 2 級空間中看到的內容。這需要時間，但它肯定受益於擁有一個非常龐大的部署車隊，其中的車輛行駛數百萬英里。截至今天，我們的車輛已經行駛了超過 9250 萬英里，這非常棒。但所有這些里程都為建立和發展這個平台提供了巨大的學習機會。

Our next question comes from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Deutsche Bank.

我們的下一個問題來自德意志銀行的 Emmanuel Rosner。

First, a quick question around how do we think about some of the -- both unit and company economics going forward. So I guess in the quarter, you've had quite a bit of an improvement in cash, R&D and SG&A type of spending. Do you view these as a new run rate that is sustainable or especially as volume increases? Or how should we think about it?

首先，關於我們如何看待未來的一些單位和公司經濟的快速問題。所以我想在本季度，你在現金、研發和 SG&A 類型的支出方面有了很大的改善。您是否將這些視為可持續的新運行率，或者尤其是隨著銷量的增加？或者我們應該如何思考？

And then at the unit level, obviously, nice to see the improvement in, I guess, the gross losses. What would be sort of like the run rate, production rate or cadence that you need to achieve to sort of essentially shrink these losses and bring that more into a positive territory as we look ahead?

然後在單位層面，顯然，很高興看到總虧損有所改善。在我們展望未來時，您需要達到什麼樣的運行速度、生產率或節奏才能從根本上減少這些損失並把它帶入一個積極的領域？

Thanks, Emmanuel. First off, as you noted, we're really encouraged with the progress that we've made to prudently manage our operating expenses across the board, and you're seeing that now through the performance in our Q3 OpEx itself. As it pertains to more so of the baseline, our expectation is from an R&D perspective, that those R&D expenses will increase in Q4 relative to the level of spend in Q3. And that's largely the result of a lot of the development work that is underway for the introduction of our LFP pack and Enduro drive unit in the commercial van program itself.

謝謝，伊曼紐爾。首先，正如您所指出的，我們在全面審慎管理運營費用方面取得的進展讓我們感到非常鼓舞，您現在通過我們第三季度運營支出本身的表現看到了這一點。由於它更多地涉及基線，我們的預期是從研發的角度來看，這些研發費用將在第四季度相對於第三季度的支出水平增加。這在很大程度上是為了在商用貨車計劃本身中引入我們的 LFP 包和 Enduro 驅動單元而進行的大量開發工作的結果。

So there's a lot of development builds that are happening in the backdrop that will contribute to that overall increase in R&D that we expect to see in Q4. But we do expect to continue to manage our OpEx spend in aggregate as we're driving a lot of capital efficiency, while at the same time, we're investing heavily in the customer experience. So on an ongoing basis, we're continuing to open up additional service centers and our charging network, things of that nature, which contributes to that overall SG&A balance for us, but also driving incredible efficiency across every dimension in our control as we're scaling the business on a go-forward basis as well.

因此，在此背景下正在進行許多開發建設，這將有助於我們預計在第四季度看到的研發總體增長。但我們確實希望繼續管理我們的總體運營支出支出，因為我們正在提高資本效率，同時我們也在大力投資於客戶體驗。因此，在持續的基礎上，我們將繼續開放更多的服務中心和我們的充電網絡，這有助於我們的整體 SG&A 平衡，同時也在我們控制的各個方面推動令人難以置信的效率，因為我們在前進的基礎上重新擴展業務。

And then to answer the second question you had on unit economics and what that looked like on a go-forward basis, I think one of the pieces that's most important to first understand is today, as you look at our cost of goods sold, the majority of that COGS per unit is really fixed costs within the business. And so the biggest lever we have is really focused on our ramp from a production perspective. So maybe one thing that I think would be helpful is really providing you guidance as it pertains to the core inputs and drivers as we take our gross margins from current state to the path to positive unit economics in 2024. And as we've talked about in the past, we expect to see a material step change in gross margin in that walk from current state to that 2024 time frame.

然後回答你關於單位經濟學的第二個問題，以及在前進的基礎上是什麼樣的，我認為首先要了解的最重要的部分之一是今天，當你查看我們的商品銷售成本時，每單位的大部分銷貨成本實際上是企業內的固定成本。因此，我們擁有的最大槓桿實際上是從生產角度關注我們的坡道。因此，也許我認為會有所幫助的一件事是真正為您提供指導，因為它與核心投入和驅動因素有關，因為我們將毛利率從當前狀態轉變為 2024 年實現積極單位經濟的道路。正如我們已經談到的過去，我們預計從當前狀態到 2024 年時間框架的毛利率會發生重大變化。

And the biggest lever, not surprisingly, is really that fixed cost leverage as well as our opportunity to move beyond some of the start-up-related costs that you heard RJ and myself talk a bit about that we've already seen from a progress perspective, Q3 versus Q2. That reflects about 2/3 of the margin walk. So just wanted to make sure that you had a sense for just the magnitude of how important ramp is from an overall unit economic perspective.

毫不奇怪，最大的槓桿實際上是固定成本槓桿，以及我們有機會超越您聽到 RJ 和我談到的一些與啟動相關的成本，我們已經從進展中看到透視，Q3 與 Q2。這反映了大約 2/3 的邊距行走。因此，只是想確保您從整體單位經濟角度了解斜坡的重要性。

The second key driver for us is associated with pricing. As we've talked about in the past, the post-March 1 configured preorders that we have in our order book reflect a $93,000 average ASP. And we've got a lot of really exciting next-generation technologies that will be coming into the fold as well that allows us to believe that, that ASP could even drive meaningfully higher on a go-forward basis as well. So that's the second core lever in that economic walk.

對我們來說，第二個關鍵驅動因素與定價有關。正如我們過去所說，我們在訂單簿中的 3 月 1 日後配置的預購訂單反映了 93,000 美元的平均 ASP。而且我們有很多非常令人興奮的下一代技術也將投入使用，這讓我們相信，ASP 甚至可以在前進的基礎上顯著提高。所以這是經濟行走中的第二個核心槓桿。

And then finally, last but certainly not least is really all of the core focus and work that we're doing right now around the reduction of our bill of materials. So importantly, the engineering and design changes and the road map we have in place to drive meaningful cost savings within that bill of materials over the next couple of years. And then finally, all of the work that our procurement teams are doing around commercial cost-down opportunities as we continue to scale the business and importantly, work hand-in-hand with our supply chain partners and as Rivian continues to grow out its own manufacturing capacity and drive better unit economics for the business.

最後，最後但並非最不重要的是我們現在圍繞減少材料清單所做的所有核心重點和工作。因此，重要的是，我們制定的工程和設計變更以及路線圖可以在未來幾年內推動在材料清單中實現有意義的成本節約。最後，隨著我們繼續擴大業務規模，重要的是，隨著 Rivian 繼續發展自己的業務，我們的採購團隊正在與我們的供應鏈合作夥伴攜手合作，圍繞商業成本降低機會所做的所有工作製造能力並為企業帶來更好的單位經濟效益。

That's incredibly detailed and helpful. Can I just ask a quick clarification on this? And then I have a question on free cash flow. But the fact that you're, I guess, basing these targets and walk on 2024, does that correspond or match with the specifics of that unit number where you think that these economics essentially work where the volume is at the right place? Or I guess what happens in between, I guess?

這是非常詳細和有用的。我可以快速澄清一下嗎？然後我有一個關於自由現金流的問題。但事實上，我猜你是基於這些目標並以 2024 年為基礎，這是否與你認為這些經濟學在數量正確的地方基本上有效的單位數量的具體情況相對應或匹配？或者我猜在這兩者之間會發生什麼，我猜？

We'll continue to see ongoing performance and improvement as we scale, especially given the magnitude of how important ramp is across the board. And so the important piece here is that in 2024, you see each of these key levers really in place as it pertains to our production ramp, as it pertains to Rivian moving to those post-March 1 preorder base, and importantly, as you think about the composition of a lot of the engineering design changes that we have from a road map perspective. That all come together to drive that meaningful step change in gross profit.

隨著我們的擴展，我們將繼續看到持續的性能和改進，特別是考慮到斜坡的重要性。所以這裡重要的一點是，在 2024 年，你會看到這些關鍵槓桿中的每一個都真正到位，因為它與我們的生產坡道有關，因為它與 Rivian 轉移到 3 月 1 日之後的預購基地有關，重要的是，正如你所想關於我們從路線圖的角度來看的許多工程設計變更的組成。所有這些共同推動了毛利潤的有意義的一步變化。

Okay. That's clear. And then on the free cash flow side, so with some of the efficiencies in CapEx this year but also some of it being, I think, timing into next year, how should we think about CapEx going forward? I think your previous view was maybe low $2 billion year in, year out. Should 2023 be ahead of this as a result of some of these movements?

好的。這很清楚。然後在自由現金流方面，鑑於今年資本支出的一些效率，但我認為其中一些是明年的時間，我們應該如何看待未來的資本支出？我認為您之前的觀點可能是年復一年低 20 億美元。由於其中一些運動，2023 年是否應該提前？

We still expect that CapEx should be in that low $2 billion area as well, even despite the fact that there will be some push of CapEx spend from 2022 to 2023.

儘管從 2022 年到 2023 年資本支出支出將會有所推動，我們仍然預計資本支出也應該在 20 億美元的低水平。

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

我們的下一個問題來自富國銀行的 Colin Langan。

IRA was pretty new after the -- when you last reported. Just trying to get your latest thoughts. You mentioned LFP, and that's sort of hitting early next year. There's a little uncertainty around how that might impact LFP insomuch as sort of from Chinese suppliers and the rules are pretty tough there. Do you still think LFP makes sense longer term? And also, on the commercial credit side, I mean, how does that work with some of your customers? Are they going to capture most of the credit benefit? Or are you able to kind of get some of that back to your margin?

在您上次報告之後，愛爾蘭共和軍相當新。只是想了解您的最新想法。你提到了 LFP，明年年初就會出現這種情況。關於這可能如何影響 LFP 存在一些不確定性，比如來自中國供應商，而且那裡的規則非常嚴格。你仍然認為 LFP 長期有意義嗎？而且，在商業信貸方面，我的意思是，這對你的一些客戶有什麼作用？他們會獲得大部分信貸收益嗎？還是您能夠將其中的一部分恢復到您的保證金中？

With regards to LFP, this is a cell, just to speak to it probably as a chemistry, it works really well in vehicles that require high cycle life, so vehicles that see lots of charge/discharge cycles relative to a high nickel cell. And so commercial applications are really a perfect application from a cycle life point of view. Further, the lower volumetric energy density associated with an LFP cell fits nicely into a vehicle that's physically large because you have the space to fit the pack to achieve enough energy storage but to do it in a slightly larger space. So we're quite bullish on LFP.

關於 LFP，這是一個電池，只是說它可能是一種化學物質，它在需要高循環壽命的車輛中工作得非常好，因此與高鎳電池相比，車輛可以看到很多充電/放電循環。因此，從循環壽命的角度來看，商業應用確實是一個完美的應用。此外，與 LFP 電池相關的較低體積能量密度非常適合體積較大的車輛，因為您有足夠的空間來安裝電池組以實現足夠的能量存儲，但可以在稍大的空間內進行。所以我們非常看好LFP。

And interestingly, with regards to IRA, there's not as stringent of requirements for commercial applications of source of cell. And so this is really important. So the $7,500 credit for low GVW commercial vehicles, low gross vehicle weight commercial vehicles, stands regardless of source of cell. And as we talked about in the last call, the size of those incentives grow as you move into higher gross vehicle weight classes.

有趣的是，關於IRA，對細胞源的商業應用沒有那麼嚴格的要求。所以這非常重要。因此，對於低 GVW 商用車、低車輛總重商用車的 7,500 美元信用額度，無論電池來源如何。正如我們在上次電話會議中談到的那樣，這些激勵措施的規模會隨著您進入更高的車輛總重量等級而增長。

Now the second thing I'd point out is we also do believe that the supply chain will evolve. The inherent benefits I referenced at a high level of an LFP chemistry for high cycle life applications are real. They're meaningful advantages. And so we see a lot of opportunity to make sure there's a domestic supply chain for both the production of LFP cells but also for the cathode active material as well as some of the other precursor materials.

現在我要指出的第二件事是，我們也確實相信供應鏈將會發展。我在高循環壽命應用的高水平 LFP 化學中提到的內在優勢是真實的。它們是有意義的優勢。因此，我們看到了很多機會來確保國內供應鏈既可以用於生產 LFP 電池，也可以用於陰極活性材料以及其他一些前體材料。

Above and beyond that, of course, by the nature of an LFP cell, you remove nickel and you remove cobalt. So from an IRA compliance point of view, it's actually an easier chemistry to achieve compliance on, notwithstanding the fact that there's not, as you already pointed out, LFP supply chains for building the cells in the U.S. today. But certainly, from a raw material supply point of view, it is an easier cell long term to maintain that compliance.

當然，除此之外，根據 LFP 電池的性質，您可以去除鎳並去除鈷。因此，從 IRA 合規性的角度來看，它實際上是一種更容易實現合規性的化學方法，儘管正如您已經指出的那樣，今天在美國沒有用於構建電池的 LFP 供應鏈。但可以肯定的是，從原材料供應的角度來看，長期保持這種合規性更容易。

And on the commercial credits, I mean, do you think your customers will get that benefit? Because I'm not sure some of them -- I feel like there might have been cost-plus arrangements for some of the vehicle.

關於商業信用，我的意思是，你認為你的客戶會得到這種好處嗎？因為我不確定其中一些——我覺得某些車輛可能有成本加成安排。

Yes. We believe the -- our customers, and specifically our large commercial customer that we're launching our commercial business with, will achieve some of those credits. There's also credits that are manufacturer-facing with IRA. So we're very cognizant of managing both sides of those credits, both the consumer or the customer-facing as well as the manufacturer-facing.

是的。我們相信——我們的客戶，特別是與我們開展商業業務的大型商業客戶，將獲得其中的一些信用。 IRA 也有面向製造商的信用額度。因此，我們非常清楚管理這些信用的雙方，包括面向消費者或面向客戶的以及面向製造商的。

Got it. And just last question. On the joint venture with Mercedes, how does the production split work? Is there a fixed amount? Because -- I mean, is there any concern because Mercedes obviously has an established footprint there? So is it just sort of you each have an allocation of production? Or if there's demand, you could take over most of the production? How does that sort of work in the agreement?

知道了。最後一個問題。在與梅賽德斯的合資企業中，生產拆分如何運作？有固定金額嗎？因為——我的意思是，是否有任何擔憂，因為梅賽德斯顯然在那裡建立了足跡？那麼你們每個人都有生產分配嗎？或者如果有需求，你可以接管大部分生產？這種在協議中的作用如何？

At this point, we're still working through a lot of the specifics of our agreement. We've signed and announced an MOU around this joint venture, but there's still a lot of work to be done in terms of defining exactly how it will work.

在這一點上，我們仍在研究我們協議的許多細節。我們已經簽署並宣布了一份關於這家合資企業的諒解備忘錄，但在確定它的運作方式方面還有很多工作要做。

Our final question comes from the line of Ryan Brinkman with JPMorgan.

我們的最後一個問題來自摩根大通的 Ryan Brinkman。

Maybe just a couple around the planned increase in production here in 4Q. I think squeezing from your reiterated full year outlook, it implies about a 45% sequential growth on top of 3Q's, I think, 67% improvement. So firstly, you mentioned being short a specific component in 3Q. Are you able to share what that component is or if you've cycled past that shortage? And what has been your experience so far here in 4Q in the first 5 weeks of the quarter, et cetera, maybe with regards to the second shift, too?

可能只是計劃在第四季度增加產量。我認為，從您重申的全年展望來看，這意味著在第三季度的基礎上連續增長約 45%，我認為改善了 67%。所以首先，你提到在第三季度做空一個特定的組件。您是否能夠分享該組件是什麼，或者您是否已經克服了這種短缺？到目前為止，您在本季度前 5 週的第 4 季度有什麼經驗，等等，也許與第二班有關？

Ryan, we've talked about before just the improvement we're seeing broadly within the supply chain, in particular, relative to the first half of this year, which we've spent some time talking about just how challenging that was. So that improvement, we're absolutely seeing and continue to see. But with a vehicle that has hundreds of suppliers and thousands of components coming from those suppliers, it only takes one part from one supplier to stop the line. And as Claire referenced earlier, we had 5 days we lost already this quarter because of a single component supply shortage.

瑞安，我們之前已經談到了我們在供應鏈中廣泛看到的改進，特別是相對於今年上半年，我們花了一些時間談論這有多麼具有挑戰性。所以這種改進，我們絕對看到並繼續看到。但是對於擁有數百個供應商和來自這些供應商的數千個組件的車輛，只需一個供應商的一個零件就可以停止生產線。正如克萊爾之前提到的，由於單個組件供應短缺，本季度我們已經損失了 5 天。

Now that component and the supplier of that component is something we spent a lot of time working really closely with them to avoid having this happen again and have built robust contingencies to manage this risk going forward. And we do believe that there's going to continue to be challenges certainly with supply chain, but we do believe with this specific instance that we've settled it to allow us to continue to ramping without those types of interruptions.

現在該組件和該組件的供應商是我們花了很多時間與他們密切合作以避免再次發生這種情況並建立了強大的應急措施來管理這種風險的未來。而且我們確實相信供應鏈肯定會繼續面臨挑戰，但我們相信在這個特定的例子中，我們已經解決了它，讓我們能夠在沒有這些類型的中斷的情況下繼續增長。

Okay. Very helpful. And then just lastly, I think last quarter, you had talked about preserving free cash outlook by deferring some CapEx spending that was discretionary into next year. Now with the pushout of the R2 a bit, how are you thinking about that? Are you maybe looking to trim capital expenditures next year relative to what might have otherwise been the plan?

好的。非常有幫助。最後，我認為上個季度，您曾談到通過將一些可自由支配的資本支出推遲到明年來保持自由現金前景。現在隨著 R2 的推出，你是怎麼想的？相對於原本的計劃，您是否可能希望明年削減資本支出？

Ryan, as you heard, we both took down our guidance from a CapEx perspective this year. And so part of that is a shift into next year. And then next year does have some incremental benefit in that we're not spending at the same capacity towards the plant build-out in Georgia. But in aggregate, as I mentioned, we still expect to be in that low $2 billion area even with those movements.

瑞安，正如你所聽到的，我們今年都從資本支出的角度取消了我們的指導。因此，其中一部分是轉移到明年。然後明年確實有一些增量收益，因為我們不會以相同的產能在佐治亞州擴建工廠。但總的來說，正如我所提到的，即使有這些變動，我們仍然預計會處於 20 億美元的低水平。

I would now like to turn the call back over to RJ for closing remarks.

我現在想將電話轉回給 RJ 以結束髮言。

Thanks, everybody, for joining the call. It was great to have such a broad spectrum of questions here today. Just to reiterate some of the points Claire and I both made throughout the call, we're really looking forward to the continued ramp of our production line. The impact this has not only on the economics of our business but very importantly on ensuring we deliver to customers, excited customers that help us to bring them their vehicles, get them in their R1T, their R1S as soon as possible, that's a critical focus for us.

謝謝大家加入電話會議。今天在這裡有如此廣泛的問題真是太好了。只是為了重申克萊爾和我在整個電話會議中提出的一些觀點，我們真的很期待我們的生產線的持續增長。這不僅對我們業務的經濟性產生影響，而且非常重要的是確保我們向客戶交付，興奮的客戶幫助我們為他們帶來他們的車輛，讓他們盡快進入他們的 R1T，他們的 R1S，這是一個關鍵的焦點為我們。

And as we look out into 2023, the continued ramp and continued growth in deliveries is our core, core focus. And with that, of course, driving efficiency into and across the business, not just on our cost of goods sold but across our operating expenses as well as how we deploy capital from a CapEx point of view. So with that, thank you, everybody, for joining, and we look forward to our next earnings call.

展望 2023 年，交付量的持續增長和持續增長是我們的核心、核心焦點。當然，這樣一來，不僅可以提高我們的銷售成本，還可以提高我們的運營費用以及從資本支出的角度配置資本的方式，從而提高整個業務的效率。因此，感謝大家的加入，我們期待著下一次財報電話會議。

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

女士們，先生們，今天的電話會議到此結束。感謝您的參與。您現在可以斷開連接。