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EXCLUSIVE: ‘Rivian wanted what Georgia had’: How the Peach State became Rivian’s $5B match
In the Northern portion of Georgia, about 45 miles East of Atlanta, a 2,000-acre slice of land is covered in beautiful trees, hosting stunning landscapes of the rural sections of the Peach State. For several years, Georgia Economic Development Department Commissioner Pat Wilson has pitched this massive piece of beautiful real estate to various automakers, with nobody willing to bring another massive vehicle manufacturing facility to the heart of the Southeastern United States. That was until Rivian came to town.
“It was the perfect company for the perfect site.”
“We considered making it an OEM site,” Wilson, who has been the Commissioner of the State of Georgia’s Economic Development Department since November 2016, told Teslarati in an exclusive interview. He showed the property to Volvo and Toyota/Mazda, among others, over the past few years, but could not come to terms with them on the land. These large-scale, mass-market automakers were unwilling to join Kia, which has a massive $1.8 billion, 2.2 million square foot factory just miles away from the Georgia-Alabama border, to bring a sizeable manufacturing plant to Georgia. It just was not the right fit.
The right fit would eventually come along. While sifting through requests from various companies who were interested in the site and ultimately coming up with no buyers, Wilson knew the right company would eventually show up to build on the land. It would not end up being a car company with a long-standing history of successful automotive manufacturing. Instead, a company known as Rivian Automotive, which just rolled its first production units off of an assembly line in Normal, Illinois, and completed its first deliveries earlier this year, was requesting information. It would end up being the peach Georgia needed to secure its single most significant investment in state history — $5 billion, to be exact. “It was the perfect company for the perfect site,” Wilson said. “Rivian wanted what Georgia had.”
Rivian will build its next EV manufacturing plant in Georgia
CEO RJ Scaringe eventually drove around the 2,000-acre site in a Rivian R1T, plotting ideas and envisioning his young and scrappy company’s second U.S.-located automotive assembly plant. It is a beautiful landscape, and it needed to be preserved. “RJ was genuinely concerned about keeping the area environmentally stable. ” Wilson said. “You only have to look at their website and read a little bit of it to see that this is a company that cares about the world and sustainability. It was important to him to keep the area in its beautiful state.”
“RJ was genuinely concerned about keeping the area environmentally stable…It was important to him to keep the area in its beautiful state.”
Rivian wanted a property with a beautiful landscape, and Wilson said the company wanted to preserve its beauty and integrate its future automotive facility into the topography, which will hit its expected employment of 7,500 people in 2028. It also did not intrude on locals or nearby residents, who gave their blessing for the Economic Development Department to offer the area to large industries. “We don’t propose sites unless we are invited to do so,” Wilson clarified. Citizens welcomed projects with open arms, which solved half of the issue. The next was selling Rivian on the idea.
Selling Scaringe: Lofty Expectations
Rivian undoubtedly had its reservations, and its elevated expectations and accelerated timeline scared off plenty of other regions that were in the running for “Project Terra.” Like other high-tech electric vehicle startups, Rivian had lofty goals to begin production shortly after construction starts. Other states and areas might not have been as willing or able as Georgia to commit to the quick turnaround Rivian and Scaringe had described. Construction will begin in Georgia in Summer 2022, with production lines ramping up in 2024. Rivian hopes to have one of its non-negotiable terms met by launching production around two years after construction crews break ground. Evidently, Speed to Market was a real need for Rivian, and it needed the right State and the right team to make it happen.
CEO & Founder of Rivian, RJ Scaringe (Photo: Rivian)
Speed and efficiency of the construction process was not the only advantage Rivian saw with the site, however. The 2,000-acre land plot that the company locked up and subsequently announced during the company’s first quarterly earnings call as a publicly-traded entity last week also has a great location that could alleviate potential supply chain concerns. Sitting in the Interstate 20 corridor, the plant will have easy access to the Port of Savannah and the State’s 5,000 miles of railway to deliver manufacturing materials quickly. This solved logistical concerns relatively quickly.
There were other concerns too, however. Georgia has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States, which sounds like a good thing. Department of Labor statistics listed Georgia’s unemployment rate at just 2.8% for November 2021, the fourth-lowest rate federally, following Nebraska (1.8%), Utah (2.1%), and Oklahoma (2.5%). Interestingly and nearly counterintuitively, a low unemployment rate could actually bring some large-scale companies with sizeable employment needs problems down the road, and Rivian knew that Georgia had a reputation for keeping its people employed. Governor Brian Kemp kept the State’s workforce relatively operational through the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. “He created structure for the State,” which ultimately kept Georgia’s people at work, eliminating widespread unemployment and furloughs, Wilson said.
Georgia committed to Rivian’s needs and essentially removed its concerns regarding employment by securing plans for a Quick Start workforce training program facility at the future automotive plant. Quick Start is a State-sponsored program created in 1967 that provides customized workforce training for expanding industries. It runs through the Georgia Technical College System and gives workers free, hands-on, in-depth training that contributes to the state’s economy. Wilson said the program essentially lets taxpayer dollars be funded back into local communities through job training. It keeps people at work, it invests back into the citizens of the State, and most importantly, it prepares them for the job they are about to start. It is a highly successful and proven program that resulted in the first car ever built at the Kia Factory in West Point being fully operational. This is an event that does not happen often, as most vehicles that roll off of production lines as prototypes in a facility’s early days are usually a result of training and are not close to production quality.
Quick Start does more than give employees comprehensive, hands-on training. It also gives Georgians the opportunity to stay in their communities and develop them. Wilson was adamant that the Quick Start program has retained indescribable amounts of talent in Georgia, keeping the State’s workforce and some of its most brilliant minds local. “It gives people a chance to help their communities, but it keeps Georgia talent in Georgia. It benefits the taxpayers because we are investing back into our people,” Wilson added.
While Rivian’s project is the most recent to enter Georgia, Wilson certainly hopes it is not the last. “I hope more EV makers come to our State,” he said. “There will be more change in the automotive industry in the next ten years than there was in the last 100. These are jobs for the future, and we are looking for them because it is generational for the State. These plants will create jobs 60 years down the road.”
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A close-up image of a Cybercab engineering vehicle in Peabody, Massachusetts, reveals a compact triangular side repeater camera housing equipped with an integrated washer mechanism.
This seemingly small hardware addition could prove to be one of the most critical components for achieving reliable, unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) — not just for the dedicated Robotaxi but potentially for existing AI4-equipped vehicles as well.
The washer system’s importance cannot be overstated in Tesla’s vision-only autonomy approach. Cameras are the sole sensory input for the neural networks powering FSD, constantly interpreting the environment for safe navigation. In real-world conditions, however, lenses quickly accumulate rain, snow, mud, dust, or road spray.
Many of us Tesla owners, especially those who deal with any sort of winter weather at all, know the all-too-common alert that pops up when cameras are obstructed:
Even brief obstructions can drop perception confidence, trigger safety disengagements, or force the vehicle to pull over, although these are relatively rare. Instead, most of the time, the camera will need a wipe from the owner next time they stop the car.
But unlike human drivers who can manually clear their view, a Robotaxi operating 24/7 without a steering wheel or mirrors must maintain pristine vision autonomously. The Cybercab’s side repeater washer delivers targeted cleaning bursts precisely where needed for merging, lane changes, and blind-spot monitoring — functions that demand uninterrupted visibility from the external cameras:
And this is how the side camera and washer look like on a Cybercab. This is from an Engineering vehicle in Peabody MA. pic.twitter.com/Re8VknpmLM
— Tobias Goebel (Unsupervised) (@tpgoebel) June 17, 2026
This hardware directly tackles a known pain point in current FSD deployments. Owners frequently report camera-related alerts during inclement weather, which is understandable, but needs to be solved for a true autonomous experience.
For a production Robotaxi fleet aiming for high utilization and minimal downtime, robust washer systems represent a foundational reliability upgrade; essentially, they’re a must-have. Early sightings suggest the design may extend to rear cameras as well, creating a comprehensive cleaning architecture that keeps the entire vision suite operational in harsh environments.
Without it, even the most advanced neural nets struggle when their “eyes” are compromised.
What Does This Mean for AI4 Cars?
This Cybercab detail raises timely questions for AI4 cars already on the road. While Hardware 4 delivers superior compute and camera resolution compared to earlier versions, production models typically lack dedicated side and rear washers. Tesla has included them on Model Y robotaxis that it is using in the fleet:
Tesla Robotaxi has a highly-requested hardware feature not available on typical Model Ys
As Tesla refines unsupervised FSD for broader release, the gap in environmental resilience becomes evident. Software improvements can help mitigate issues, but they cannot fully replace physical cleaning in heavy rain or muddy conditions. Analysts and owners increasingly speculate that AI4 vehicles may eventually require similar washer retrofits — or a future AI4.5 variant — to match the Cybercab’s all-weather readiness and support the same level of autonomy.
As testing progresses, the Cybercab’s washer mechanism highlights Tesla’s pragmatic focus on real-world robustness. It may well become the hardware piece that determines how quickly and reliably FSD scales from prototypes to everyday vehicles.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just upped his Tesla stake further fueling SpaceX merger conversation
Elon Musk just collected a $116 billion Tesla payday and the timing is eye-opening
Elon Musk quietly collected one of the largest single-transaction paydays in corporate history on Monday. A Form 4 filed with the SEC on June 17, 2026 disclosed that Musk exercised 303,960,630 Tesla stock options from his 2018 compensation package, with the transaction dated June 16. No shares were sold on the open market.
The numbers are straightforward but striking. Musk exercised the options at a split-adjusted strike price of $23.34, with Tesla closing at $404.66 that day, putting the spread at $381.32 per share and generating roughly $115.9 billion in paper gains in a single transaction. To cover the exercise cost, Tesla withheld 17,531,857 shares through a net share settlement, meaning Musk paid nothing out of pocket.
For perspective, in 2018, Elon Musk’s award was originally approved by Tesla shareholders on March 21, 2018, and structured entirely around performance milestones that many analysts at the time called unreachable. Every tranche eventually vested. The original grant covered 20,264,042 shares at $350.02, which after Tesla’s 5-for-1 split in 2020 and 3-for-1 split in 2022 adjusted to 303,960,630 shares at $23.34. A Delaware court rescinded the award in January 2024, ruling the board was conflicted. As Teslarati reported, Tesla shareholders voted to ratify the package anyway in June 2024 by a wide margin. The Delaware Supreme Court reversed the decision in December 2025, finding full cancellation too extreme, and Tesla’s board signed an Implementation Agreement on April 21, 2026 to formally deliver the shares.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
The timing and structure of the Form 4 filing carries more weight than a routine stock option exercise typically would. Musk exercised his 2018 Tesla award on June 16, a week into SpaceX completing its IPO and trading publicly, and giving SpaceX a public market valuation and share currency for the first time in the company’s history. A stock-for-stock merger between two companies requires the acquiring entity to have tradeable shares it can offer to the target’s shareholders, and SpaceX now has exactly that. At the same time, Musk just increased his direct Tesla voting power to approximately 20%, giving him greater influence over any shareholder vote that a merger would require. The restricted shares he received cannot be sold until 2033, which removes any near-term incentive to cash out and instead positions this stake as long-term structural collateral in a deal. Additionally, Musk’s two companies are already deeply intertwined through shared semiconductor fabrication at their joint TERAFAB facility in Austin, cross-company supply chain transactions, and Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI prior to the SpaceX-xAI merger.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has publicly placed the odds of a Tesla and SpaceX combination at 80% to 90% by early 2027. The Implementation Agreement that made Monday’s exercise possible was signed on April 21, 2026, roughly two months before the SpaceX IPO closed. That sequencing, building Musk’s Tesla ownership to its highest point ever immediately before SpaceX gains the public currency needed to acquire it, is either an extraordinary coincidence or a carefully staged foundation for the largest corporate merger in history.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is going to be getting a major parking upgrade. That’s according to CEO Elon Musk, who detailed a crafty new feature that will improve parking preferences, removing a layer of human input.
Musk said that upcoming releases of Full Self-Driving will “remember your parking preferences.” It will go to the location you prefer, based on where you’ve parked in the past, instead of taking the first spot available, which is where the suite is currently.
The CEO went on to explain that destination parking is “by far” the biggest reason for intervention during FSD operation. We’d have to believe this is true; many takeovers in my Model Y, which runs the latest version of FSD as it is in the Early Access Program, are due to parking because it chooses a spot I do not want to be in.
Many times, as soon as I enter a parking lot, I take over and park manually. I prefer to park away from the entrance of wherever I am, away from cars. Too many lessons learned over the years from people with free-swinging doors.
Upcoming releases of FSD will remember your parking preferences, so that the car goes to the right location at your home, office, school drop off, etc.
Destination parking is by far the biggest reason people now intervene with FSD. Critical safety interventions are extremely…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2026
We’d imagine these new updates will also solve things like parking orientation. Let’s say when you arrive at work, you always park in the third spot in the third row, and you prefer to back in. It seems as if Musk is implying that your car will now do this, learning from takeovers and aiming to eliminate the need to manually park whenever possible.
This is a major upgrade because parking is a major shortcoming of FSD currently. We’ve requested things like manual input of parking preferences, choosing to park far away, first available, or away from cars, for example.
This is a big reason Parking Preferences with Supervised FSD will be so valuable.
If possible, parking a little further away and being distant from people like this is worth it. https://t.co/1YqQLgnfTz pic.twitter.com/3Ac71KQiQ3
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 7, 2026
However, some have used the option of dropping a pin at the location you’d like to park at your destination. This has worked some of the time, but FSD will still choose to park in whatever it sees first.
Musk did not give a timetable for when the improvements would be released, but it is likely to come soon. Tesla has been releasing a new FSD version every few weeks, so we may not have to wait long to test it.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
Elon Musk just upped his Tesla stake further fueling SpaceX merger conversation
