We left St. Louis and drove to the Rivian factory on Rivian Motorway in Normal, Illinois. We took Jade back to where she was made, Bill was very excited! When we walked in they had a board welcoming us “Hi, Bill & Victoria, Welcome to Normal” we felt so special! Ben, showed us around the factory which was sooooo INTERESTING and COOL, with AMAZING TECHNOLOGY! Who can say they’ve been inside a car factory and seen behind the scenes? We saw the Amazon delivery truck, R1T trucks and R1S suv’s being made. It really was mind boggling, we really enjoyed looking around the factory, but no photos or videos allowed inside. Number of Rivian’s seen in the wild, out on the road now totals 20. I can’t count how many we saw at the factory!! We left there and drove into Indiana and saw lots of corn, windmills and water towers then drove into Ohio. We stopped overnight just outside of Dayton, OH.
Bill here. It was pretty cool to see inside the factory in person. I’ve watched the videos when I was waiting for my truck to be built but it’s incredible how big the place is in person. The choreography that the robots do to not hit each other when moving parts around is hypnotic. Even my guide JR showed up to say hi and meet me in person. For those not in the know everyone who starts the purchasing process with Rivian gets assigned a guide who is there to help at any step. Answering questions and letting you know the next step. We are off to see my long time friend Russ Today and will hopefully get some good biking in Tomorrow since I haven’t ridden at all this week and I’m getting a little nutty sitting inside a car for this long (sorry Jade, nothing personal).
Stats for the nerds
St. Louis, MO to Dayton, OH
498.9 mi
9 hr 14 min
2.17 mi/kWh
Total Energy 230.7 kWh
Total for the trip so far:
6,378.9 mi
121 hr 20 min
2.11 mi/kWh
Total Energy 2,999.5 kWh
