The Biden administration closed on a more than $6.5 billion loan to electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian. The move comes after some questioned whether the deal announced on Tuesday, Jan. 14, could get done before the Trump administration takes over.
The closure on Thursday, Jan. 16, comes just days before President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to scale back on climate-related spending, is inaugurated on Monday, Jan. 20.
The White House says the loan will help fund an EV plant in Georgia that focuses on vehicles made for the “mass market” as opposed to Rivian’s luxury line of vehicles.
One of Trump’s picks to head the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Vivek Ramaswamy, who will work alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk, criticized the move.
Ramaswamy posted on X, “This smells more like a political shot across the bow of @elonmusk & @Tesla.”
Biden is forking over $6.6B to EV-maker Rivian to build a Georgia plant they’ve already halted. One “justification” is the 7,500 jobs it creates, but that implies a cost of $880k/job which is insane. This smells more like a political shot across the bow at @elonmusk & @Tesla. https://t.co/YYLW3fk1jX
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 26, 2024
The Biden administration said the Rivian plant will create around 7,500 jobs through 2030, and eventually the facility will produce 400,000 vehicles per year.
Under the conditions of the loan, at least a quarter of the employees at the Georgia plant must be from the local community.
The U.S. Department of Energy said government financing will be a major boost to electric vehicles in the United States, and help President Joe Biden with his goal of having zero-emission vehicles make up half of U.S. auto sales by 2030.
The loan program for Rivian was created in 2007, and under the Biden administration, the program has announced deals totaling more than $33 billion, including a more than $9 billion loan for large-scale EV battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky for Ford vehicles.
Rivian has worked to secure the loan since 2022, and in March of 2024, the company said it was pausing construction on the Georgia plant.
However, that’s now changed, as the once-struggling manufacturer has been given a lifeline through the government loan and an investment from German automaker Volkswagen of $5 billion in June of 2024.
