San Francisco, Jul 28 (IANS): With an aim to ramp up future versions of its electric vehicles, electric car maker Rivian has confirmed that it is laying off around 6 per cent of its 14,000 employees, or around 800 people.

In an email, spokesperson Amy Mast said that the company made the decision in part to speed up development on future versions of its electric trucks and SUVs, reports The Verge.

"Today, we announced the difficult decision to reduce the size of the Rivian team by approximately 6 per cent," Mast was quoted as saying.

"This decision will help align our workforce to our key business priorities, including ramping up the consumer and commercial vehicle programs, accelerating the development of R2 and other future models, deploying our go-to-market programs and optimizing spend across the business," she added.

This follows a report from earlier in the month that suggested the company's leadership was looking to remove jobs that were added as it scaled up and that aren't involved in manufacturing.

Rivian has been making changes recently in an attempt to cut costs, according to an email CEO RJ Scaringe sent to employees after reports started circulating that it was considering layoffs.

This news comes at a crucial time for Rivian. The company just started to ramp up production of its pickups, SUVs, and delivery vans for Amazon.

In its most recent earnings report, the company said it had produced around 2,553 vehicles, delivered 1,227, and was still planning on having made 25,000 by the end of the year.