Rivian is also ramping up production of its in-house drive unit ahead of plan, McDonough said on Thursday at the Deutsche Bank auto conference. The company has been developing its own drive unit to lower costs and reduce dependency on suppliers.

Rivian shares were up 4% at $15.32 late Thursday afternoon.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; editing by Jonathan Oatis)