At Rivian RIVN -5.48%▼ Automotive Inc.’s factory in Normal, Ill., life is anything but.

Car factories around the world routinely churn out models around the clock. About eight months after production on Rivian’s electric trucks started, executives recently marked a milestone in uninterrupted work days: The company’s plant ran at full speed for an entire 10-hour work shift for the first time.

Rivian, which investors see as the Tesla Inc. TSLA -9.22%▼ of trucks, has tens of thousands of customer preorders in the burgeoning market for electric vehicles. The startup is rolling out three new models in quick succession at its freshly overhauled factory—an undertaking that even seasoned auto executives say is fraught.

First the company must master the nuts and bolts of manufacturing, a task it has struggled with so far. A snarled global supply chain and surging commodity costs, including for key battery components such as nickel and lithium, add to the challenge.

In Rivian’s blockbuster initial public offering in November, the Irvine, Calif.-based company raised more money than any other U.S. listing since 2014, about $12 billion. At the time, it had delivered 156 vehicles in the first two months of factory production.
The stock made its debut at $78 a share and at one point surged to $179 a share. That placed the company among the world’s most valuable auto makers, with a $160 billion market cap.

Shares have been hammered in recent months after setbacks on the factory floor, in one of the auto industry’s toughest operating environments in memory. In March, executives halved this year’s production forecast to 25,000 vehicles, citing the global semiconductor shortage and other supply-chain troubles. Rivian angered customers with a hefty price hike the same month, which it quickly walked back on existing orders. Inexperience and the complexity of the multivehicle launch have also bogged down production, often idling employees for hours.

Rivian reported a $1.6 billion net loss in the first quarter on revenues of $95 million. The company said it expects supply-chain issues to ease later this year. Its market cap is now just over $27 billion, with shares around $30.

RJ Scaringe, the 39-year-old chief executive who founded Rivian in 2009, said that some of the problems the company has faced were inevitable, given the complexity of the task it is undertaking. “We’d be fooling ourselves if we said this was going to be easy,” he said. “We know this is hard.”

Rivian is the most prominent among a host of electric-vehicle upstarts that drew investor enthusiasm over the past two years in their plans to follow Tesla, the EV market leader.

Some made splashy debuts on Wall Street with lofty revenue projections and pledges to disrupt the car business, despite many never having built or sold a single automobile.

Recent months have been more sobering. Lucid Group Inc., which is focused on high-end electric vehicles, in February cut its 2022 vehicle-output forecast by as much as 40%, citing constraints on some parts and materials. Aspiring electric-truck manufacturer Lordstown Motors Corp. has delayed its first model and recently said it needs to raise more capital to survive. EV startup Canoo Inc. said in May that it has substantial doubt it can continue funding its operations.

Unlike many others, Rivian is sitting on a sizable pile of cash, at $17 billion at the end of March. At its current spending rate, that’s enough to fund expansion efforts through 2025, Mr. Scaringe said.

The company currently sells two all-electric models, the $67,500 R1T pickup truck and $72,500 R1S sport-utility vehicle. It also has a contract with Amazon.com Inc. for 100,000 electric delivery vans.

In some ways Rivian’s production task is more difficult than Tesla’s effort years ago to scale up factory output, which CEO Elon Musk called “production hell.”