R1 Gen 2 Carbon Footprint Reports

How we reduced our vehicles’ carbon footprint by 15%

By Rivian

September 19^th, 2024

Today, we published Carbon Footprints for our Gen 2 R1S and R1T, which assess and discuss the lifetime carbon footprints of the following vehicles:

In January of 2024, Rivian shared our Carbon Footprint Reports to take stock of where we’ve been and map out our journey ahead. One of our key goals is to launch a product with half the lifecycle carbon footprint as our 2022 R1 products by 2030. We believe in sharing this data so that our Rivian community can track our progress towards this goal and understand the sustainability benefits of purchasing a Rivian.

In our Gen 2 carbon footprint reports, we describe how we’re holding ourselves accountable and delivering a 15% vehicle carbon footprint reduction.

A carbon footprint is the analysis of potential greenhouse gas emissions, over the life cycle of a product. A carbon footprint is a type of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). It’s one of the many tools we use to inform our decarbonization strategies and progress towards our impact goals.

We used our understanding of the Launch Edition carbon footprints to identify critical areas of improvements. Below are some of areas that have contributed to the 15% carbon footprint reduction.

Materials and Supply Chain

Tracking and increasing the amount of recycled content in our vehicles is a core sustainability strategy at Rivian.
Efforts to reduce mass and increase recycled content led to a 20% lower carbon footprint from steel and aluminum in our R1 vehicles.

Onsite production and logistics

Our carbon footprint from onsite production and logistics during 2023 was 45% lower of that in 2022. This is due to:

Generation of nearly 2 million kWh of on-site renewable energy at our Normal, Illinois plant
Increased throughput of our production, which lowers energy overhead per vehicle
Improved efficiency in our logistics network.

Charging

During the use phase, the Gen 2 R1s use significantly less energy than their predecessors. Some key drivers of this are:

New and improved motors designed, engineered and manufactured fully in-house
Increases in HVAC energy efficiency (both for in cabin comfort and battery conditioning)
Lower energy loads from low-voltage electronics.