AT&T is Rivian’s latest EV customer following Amazon deal

AT&T will pilot new Rivian-made fleet electric vehicles in 2024 in the first deal with a company other than Amazon.

Rivian finally has a second customer for its commercial electric vehicles. Today, AT&T announced it’s spinning up a pilot program to switch its commercial fleets to EVs, including Rivian’s commercial van and R1 platform trucks.

AT&T is Rivian’s first customer to purchase commercial EVs outside of the automaker’s long-exclusive deal with Amazon. In 2019, Amazon agreed to purchase 100,000 delivery vans from Rivian, but reportedly it was making orders with Rivian at a glacial pace, at a bare minimum of 10,000 units per year. It seemingly added fuel for Rivian to try and end its exclusivity agreement.

In an email to The Verge, Rivian spokesperson Harry Porter noted that the exclusivity terms with Amazon “were due to expire eventually,” but both had mutually agreed to speed up the timeline so Rivian could work with other companies’ fleets.

AT&T’s first Rivian EVs are expected to join the fleet in early 2024. However, there are no details on how many vehicles are in the initial pilot or whether there are more orders in the pipeline. AT&T has a company goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2035 and sees the electrification of its fleet as a contributor to that plan. Rivian is also agreeing to use AT&T as the exclusive in-car connectivity provider for all of its vehicles in the US and Canada.

Rivian had struggled to build its commercial vans for Amazon on time and had only started delivering the first batch of electric vans to Amazon last year. By November 2022, Amazon said it had “over a thousand” of them in the fleet. Amazon remains a major investor in Rivian, and despite the looks of friction between the companies, Porter tells us Rivian’s relationship with Amazon “is in great shape” and that both are targeting to get 100,000 electric delivery vans onto the road “by the end of the decade.”

Correction December 14th, 2023 7:17PM ET: A previous version of this article incorrectly conflated the breaking of Rivian’s exclusivity deal with Amazon and the new AT&T deal. We have added communication from Rivian with details regarding the Amazon deal. We regret the error.