Can Rivian avoid the EV speed bumps?

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

RJ SCARINGE: We’re at this inflection point where the cars of the historical past and the cars of the future, in terms of architecture — I put ourselves, I put Tesla in that category — they coexist, but the platforms are totally different. So where they end up in, let’s say, five to ten years is in very, very different places.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of EV automaker Rivian. It’s been a strange period for electric vehicles, with consumer demand ebbing, Ford and GM pulling back on their investments, and Elon Musk of Tesla deep in the new Trump administration. I wanted to talk to RJ about how he’s adapting Rivian’s business in the face of these shifts. Rivian made a mark in the luxury SUV space. Now, as the company moves from its initial platform, called R1, to lower-cost R2 vehicles, it faces a raft of new challenges and opportunities.

RJ and I discuss Rivian’s recent $5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen, the company’s ongoing risk assessment for self-driving features, and how Rivian’s AI-enabled “technological plumbing” can accelerate the brand beyond incumbent manufacturers. You don’t have to be a car enthusiast to glean insights from RJ about preparing for the future, so let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

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SAFIAN: I’m Bob Safian, and I’m here with RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian. RJ, thanks for joining us.

SCARINGE: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be on.

Copy LinkIs Elon Musk’s close ties with Trump a good thing for EVs?

SAFIAN: So I have to start with the elephant in the room: Elon Musk, Tesla — the biggest player in electric vehicles, Musk on the cover of Time — is Trump’s ally. Do you have a relationship with Elon? Are you excited about what he’s doing in D.C.? Dismayed? Confused?

SCARINGE: Well, at the end of the day, what Elon and Tesla have done has been incredible for electric vehicles. I think there’s a lot of noise, but it’s important to remember that, as a business leader, he’s of course going to continue to drive toward things that help electrification in the long term. There are lots of different perspectives on what are important things to do in the short term, but net, net, I think it’s good to have an important leader and innovator in the electric vehicle space that has close access to the administration.

SAFIAN: Obviously, Rivian and Tesla are competitors. Is him being focused on this government stuff allowing for, like, maybe he’s distracted a little bit from Tesla’s business, or does Tesla get extra attention, maybe special treatment? Do you worry about either end of those things?

SCARINGE: There are many things we could get distracted by or pay attention to in terms of external factors, things that are outside our control. We’re focused on developing amazing products, making sure those amazing products come together in a cohesive and thoughtful way. Right now, we’re hyper-focused on the launch of our next product, which we call R2 — a much lower-priced vehicle for us. It will represent a step change in volume and, therefore, a step change in revenue for us as a business. But, there is definitely a lot of noise in the system these days.

And at the end of the day, it’s most important to stay really focused on the things we can control.

SAFIAN: It’s hard because there are all these external factors like the tariffs everyone’s talking about — what it’s going to do for automakers or how difficult it might be. Although, you guys, I guess, are a little less exposed than some of the other automakers. When those kinds of executive orders come out against Mexico and Canada, what do you think? Are you prepared for it?

SAFIAN: Leading up to the election and then following the election, we’ve done tabletop exercises where we look at what we will do under these different scenarios and plan out different tariff scenarios, different trade relationships, and trade scenarios.

But, as you pointed out, today we have all of our products being produced in a single plant in Illinois. We’re building a second plant in Georgia. So our footprint, in terms of vehicle assembly, is very U.S.-centric. Our supply chains are also very U.S.-centric. So we’re more protected than some of the large manufacturers, largely because of NAFTA and the trade relationships that have existed between the United States, Mexico, and Canada for decades.

It’s going to be extremely challenging for them if the tariff environment is as aggressive as it’s been discussed.

Copy LinkThe importance of product choice and infrastructure in EV adoption

SAFIAN: It feels like the EV market goes through waves of enthusiasm and then dips in consumer excitement and government support. It feels like we’re in a down moment when you see GM and Ford pulling back on their electric vehicles. How much do you think about what others are doing as a signal for yourself to pull back or see it as a great opportunity to make up some ground?

SCARINGE: The element of noise that’s probably least talked about is the extreme, almost hyper-focus on the short term. I’d say that’s across a lot of industries, but in particular, transportation electrification. What happens over the next month, three months, six months, or 12 months doesn’t change the end state outcome in our view. We’re extremely convicted that eventually, everything will be electric, and the gating factor for that is the creation of lots of interesting products to draw customers in.

If there’s a narrow set of products, it’s going to significantly delay how fast we as a society, and certainly we as a country, make this transition. If I’m thinking about buying an electric car, and I’m willing to spend, let’s say $50,000, there are very few products that are highly compelling. Tesla is one of those. The Model 3 and the Model Y are both outstanding products, outstanding EVs. This lack of competition has led to them having significant market share. I think to see electrification penetration continue to grow, we’re going to need different products — not products that are the same as Tesla but those that cover different market positions and form factors.

The brand position we established with the R1 products is very different from Tesla. Of course, the price points of, let’s say, a Model S and a Model X are very similar, but they couldn’t be more different in terms of how the products manifest. The market’s so thirsty, so hungry for different choices, but there needs to be a lot of other manufacturers doing the same. Your question about the pullback we’re witnessing from some manufacturers is unfortunate. That short-term focus on quarterly results, as opposed to building a long-term sustainable business, will cause some companies to make decisions that optimize for the short term and sub-optimize significantly for the long term.

SAFIAN: It’s ironic that your competitors, in some ways, you want them to be in the business to grow the whole pie. For a lot of businesses, they’d be happy for their competitors to pull back, but that’s not good for you.

SCARINGE: It’s funny. My oldest son asked me about this because he said, “Why are there still gasoline cars? Why isn’t everything electric?” I said, “Well, there’s a lot of people who want different types of vehicles. If you wanted a minivan today, there’s no electric minivan you could buy. Or if you wanted a convertible, there’s no electric convertible you can buy.” And he said, “Why doesn’t Rivian just build everything?” I said, “That’s a great idea, but we have to choose the things we’re going to build.”

Our brand position is such that we’re not going to be able to go after every segment and every form factor. So, an eight-year-old had the intuition to ask the question, and I think it’s a pretty obvious gap we have, which is there’s not enough choice. We need more choice, and if other manufacturers are not there, of course, on a short-term basis, it’s an advantage to Rivian. But, I started Rivian because I want to help the world advance to a future state.

What’s best for my kids and my kids’ kids is for there to be lots of choice and many highly successful companies in the EV space. And we talk about EVs as the singular difference, but it encapsulates a lot of things. Assuming these are software-defined vehicles, they have modern network architectures, they have features that can be updated regularly through over-the-air updates. Electrification brought those changes along with it.

You see it in our vehicles, you see it in Tesla vehicles. The gap will be increasingly large where vehicles with older technology start to feel really old relative to those with a completely software-defined experience and compute platforms within the vehicle.

SAFIAN: I live in New York City, and I’ve gotten pressure from my kids, older than yours, but they’re like, “We should have an electric car.” But in the city, charging stations…

SCARINGE: Yeah.

SAFIAN: I don’t have a house with a driveway, and a lot of our car trips are long. It’s like, it’s sort of like EVs aren’t really for me yet, even if I want it.

SCARINGE: Good call out. This gets back to the core question of the path to seeing approaching 100 percent new vehicle sales being electric. It’s product choice, infrastructure to support charging, and solving infrastructure issues for those in highly urban environments. These are real challenges.

It’s not something you can press a button and have happen overnight. It takes time.

SAFIAN: There’s only so much of that under your control at Rivian. Is that why, when you look at Musk being closer to Trump, you think maybe he’ll help move some of those things along more? It doesn’t necessarily feel that way right now.

SCARINGE: I have to imagine that in those discussions, there’s a point of view to help guide more toward creating at least the option for customers of electrification.

Copy LinkFrom sports cars to SUVs: Rivian’s evolving strategy

SAFIAN: The first mainstream EVs and hybrid cars were small and light, and when you debuted with an SUV and a truck, that seemed to be the trend. Was there a reason you went in that direction?

SCARINGE: When I first started the company in the middle of 2009, the initial product plan was to launch a sports car, use it to build the brand, and then launch a series of other products more mass-market. We worked on that for a while, and during that time, I realized the strategy we were deploying was actually similar to what Tesla had successfully done. It wasn’t intentional; it was logical to start a car business by launching something exciting, hence the sports car, and then scale from that. As a car enthusiast, sports cars spoke to my inner child.

As we reflected, I realized the strategy wasn’t right. We shelved everything we’d started on and arrived at this idea that the brand and company should represent more than just vehicles. We wanted to inspire and enable customers to do things they want to remember for decades, building a brand around enabling life’s memories. So, what are the product requirements to do that? Vehicles that can carry your kids, pets, gear, friends, and stuff. It led us to a sibling set of products, the truck, and an SUV.

It had us go against the least efficient vehicles on the road — large SUVs and trucks, which are among the most carbon-intensive vehicles regarding emissions. There will be following products, creatively named R2, R3, and we’ve done conceptual work on R4 and R5. I couldn’t be more excited about the product portfolio to be built out over the next five to six years, creating exciting choices for customers across different price points. Also, with different form factors and use cases.

SAFIAN: The subtext is that Rivian’s R2 model will put the company head-to-head against Tesla products. That’s going to be an interesting battle. How much of that battle will be about driverless features, and how much will be about environmental messaging? We’ll talk about that after the break. Stay with us.

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SAFIAN: Before the break, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe talked about Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration and gaps in the EV marketplace. Now, RJ discusses driverless technology, environmental messaging, Rivian’s $5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen, and more. Let’s dive back in.

Copy LinkRivian’s approach to branding and customer engagement

I talked recently to Peter McGinnis, who runs Impossible Foods, and he argued that environmental messaging has to take a back seat to other experiences. Do you think that holds true for EVs and also for Rivian?

SCARINGE: I completely do. In fact, our whole product strategy has been built around that. We don’t believe that simply saying the vehicle is electric or has lower carbon emissions is reason enough to drive significant demand or to drive customers to change their buying behavior from a combustion-powered to an EV.

The vehicle is so incredible. For example, our pickup accelerates zero to 60 in two and a half seconds and does the quarter mile in 10 seconds. It’s faster than a Porsche 911 GT3. It can drive incredibly off-road, tow 11,000 pounds, and fit five people. It’s like, holy cow, that’s a cool thing. The fact it’s electric is secondary to the performance, attributes, and features as a cohesive package. Here in California, the R1S is the best-selling premium SUV, not just premium electric SUV. It outsells anything over $70,000 in the SUV category. It’s not a political statement; customers who vote Republican or Democrat are both excited by the features and attributes of what we’re offering.

We’re excited about R2 because it dramatically lowers the entry for folks to experience our products. The average price of an R1 is over $90,000, while an R2 starts at about $45,000, and R3 will bring that down further, and R4 even more. These are things we’re really excited about.

SAFIAN: You talk about the brand and the product. When you think about what makes Rivian distinctive in the long run, is it one of those more than the other?

SCARINGE: One thing we say is a brand is not a feature. A brand is not a zero to 60 time or a storage cubic volume. Those are features or attributes like instruments in a musical orchestra that, together, make up what the product feels like and, therefore, how the brand manifests. Brand, like music and culture, is hard to describe as a single ingredient that makes something powerful, desirable, or exciting. There’s a bit of magic. So, we spend a lot of time thinking across every touchpoint of business — our retail spaces, service locations, products down to floor mat material, and all these little decisions.

They all level up into this broader idea for us, which is to create a highly inviting product experience that invites people to have the fullest version of their life. The emails I love most are not about the car being great to drive. I enjoy those, and I get feedback like wishing something was different or pointing out issues. But the best emails are when Rivian has inspired someone to start skiing again after 10 years or led someone to buy a telescope and look at the stars for the first time. We love that because it’s the magic of what we’d hoped to inspire coming through with our customers.

Copy LinkThe pivotal role of AI in Rivian’s vision for driverless technology

SAFIAN: I want to ask about AI because everyone’s focused on how it will impact car experiences. What are you doing at Rivian, and how far are we from a driverless world? Should we have one?

SCARINGE: I think it’s incredibly important. It arguably becomes the most important part of the business — the vehicle’s ability to drive itself. Consumers start getting their time back. Even if you enjoy driving, the ability to leave and have the car take you is a nice feature. This is a big focus for us. When we launched our first products, we had a limited highway assist feature that allowed hands-on wheel and eyes on the road, but the vehicle drives itself.

On our Gen 2 vehicle, we started working on designing an entire camera set, with 55 megapixels, more than any other vehicle sold in the U.S. We have five radars, including a front imaging radar. We control that entire stack and use emerging technologies to train the platform. Self-driving developed before 2021 was heavily rules-based. But now, we can use end-to-end training, using modern techniques akin to what’s used in large language models and transformers. It’s completely changing self-driving development and speeding it up.

We announced a hands-free feature, where the vehicle will drive itself on highways with hands off the wheel, coming very soon. After that, we’ll expand it to other roads, then to hands-free, eyes-off. There are exciting features coming.

SAFIAN: I want to make sure I really understand this. So the car can essentially be driven without you doing anything, but it’s not safe enough to turn it entirely over to the car in all situations. But as it improves, you’ll update the software to allow that safely, without changing the vehicle.

SCARINGE: When we release or enable our self-driving features, we start in domains with extremely high confidence.

It’s a bit of the Wild West because there’s no legal body arbitrating the level at which to expose these features.

SAFIAN: It’s your judgment about what you feel confident in and the risk you’re willing to take.

SCARINGE: Every brand makes this decision differently. We’ve really erred on hyper-focus on safety, making sure that before we expand the operating windows to, let’s say, neighborhood roads or school zones, we want to really be robust in the solution.

We’re talking about autonomy, which is one slice of AI in the vehicle. We’ll see other AI elements emerge.

I think AI will impact almost every single business part. As it pertains to the product, we’ll see a different relationship emerge between the product users and the vehicle itself, beyond self-driving.

But think something as simple as navigating. Imagine if you don’t know where you want to go. You get in the car, and say “I’m hungry.” And the car says, “Well, what do you feel like?” And you say, “I don’t know.” And it says, “Well, yesterday you had, Italian. How about, what do you feel about burritos today?” And, you know, so just the ability to like be conversational and contextual and to really start to become more of a partner in decisioning around where you go, how you get there, what’s the path.

You think about just route planning and the ability to be thoughtful around things like traffic, it’s just to really change and it’ll change. It’ll be one of those kinds of changes. I think where it’ll happen, we won’t even fully realize it’s happening. And then we’ll look back and be like, how did we used to live?

SAFIAN: When you think about AI applications beyond self-driving, how important is it for Rivian to be at the forefront versus following along? Rivian is part of habits and changes; how much do you take on?

SCARINGE: Early on, we realized software was going to be important. We had a deep conviction around controlling the software stack in the vehicle.

A traditional car today may have 75 to over 100 little ECUs, small computers in the vehicle from a labyrinth of suppliers. These computers talking is what has made over-the-air updates difficult for traditional vehicles, and their technology stacks can feel rigid.

But at Rivian, we’re controlling the whole software stack, not using suppliers for all these computers. We’re making our own, with all our own computers.

It requires fundamental shifts, not relying on third-party suppliers for software or computers. This architecture I’ve described underpins what we’ve achieved.

We did a $5.8 billion joint venture and licensing deal with Volkswagen Group, the second-largest car company in the world. We’re providing software and electronics to enable what I just described, allowing them to step massively forward in network architecture and software topology.

And, that’s of course what we architected. If you don’t have that, it’s hard to imagine integrating AI properly. Step one is getting the plumbing right. You’ve got to get the network architecture right. You’ve got to get the topology of computers right. You’ve got to get the right levels of compute. I mean, down into the basics of like, what level of memory do you have? What’s your graphics capabilities?

And these are things that are going to be really hard without making a big break from the traditional model for existing manufacturers. So I say all this because I think we’re at this like inflection point where the cars of the historical past in terms of architecture and the cars of the future in terms of architecture — I put ourselves, I put Tesla in that category, of course — they coexist. And the features are sort of similar, like they’re mostly the same. And it’s easy to like confuse features for capability, but the platforms are totally different. And so the growth potential of those two platforms in terms of adopting to future technology is wildly different. So where they end up in, let’s say five to 10 years is very, very different places. And so I think we’re gonna see a lot of existing incumbent manufacturers work very hard either through partnerships like what was done with us, or through other means to move to these newer technology platforms.

Copy LinkImplications of China’s EV production on the global market

SAFIAN:  China has become a leading EV producer. I’m curious about the implications for the car industry. How do you view China’s developments and their impact on your business?

SCARINGE: Well, the world is electrifying. The U.S. market is slower than Europe or China.

But probably the singular issue that I’d say there’s very clear alignment between both the Democratic side of the United States and the Republican side of the United States is that the United States needs to continue to lead in technology and to continue to really serve as an economic superpower. And in order for that to be true, we also need to continue to be great at the world’s future technologies.

SAFIAN: China benefited from government support for EVs. If America wants to stay at the forefront in this technological development, how important is government support?

SCARINGE: China has many electric car companies, a lot narrowly differentiated. Their regions provided much financing, leading to intense price competition to capture a growing market. However, there’s uncertainty about whether these products can be sold in the U.S. and the tariffs involved.

Probably, in the short term, there’s going to continue to be not a lot of trade from the U. S. shipping products to China — and vice versa China shipping products vehicles to the United States. But I think in the long term everyone should be thinking about this, to say, let’s imagine a world where we can all compete freely, meaning we’re competing head to head.

And so the quality of products, the quality of technology, the cost structure of the products, but 10 year, maybe 15 year horizon for that competitive environment to play out.

And so we every day thinking about how do we make our products better? How do we look at what others are doing and embrace the competition and see it as an opportunity for us to run faster? That’s the mindset we built into the business.

Copy LinkRivian’s inflection point

SAFIAN: What’s at stake for Rivian right now?

SCARINGE: We’re at an inflection point. So we’ve launched our flagship products by virtue of their price being where it is. There’s only so many customers of R1T or the R1S, and we’re coming right up on the launch of R2, and R2 represents a really significant step change.

And the nature of this business is it’s a very, very high fixed cost business. And then then in order to compete at the highest level from a technology point of view, this isn’t something you could spend 100 million on a year in R & D and expect to compete with in terms of product feature set or quality with someone like a Tesla that’s spending, you know, many, many times that.

And so the way we’re spending capital on both building out our go-to market side of business and the way we’re spending capital represents or corresponds a much bigger company and that we really grow into that as we launch R2.

SAFIAN: And how soon before I can get my hands on an R2. 

SCARINGE: We’ve said , uh, the first half of 2026, but we haven’t said exactly when, but sometime in that range.

SAFIAN: Well, RJ, this has been great. Thanks. Thanks so much for doing it.

SCARINGE: Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. And I really appreciate the questions and discussion.

SAFIAN: Listening to RJ, it’s difficult to ignore how much is out of his control right now — whether it’s Musk having the President’s ear, how the big automakers invest in EVs, or the volatile tariff environment. But he’s got such a clear vision for Rivian’s long-term business, and so much conviction about it, it allows him to keep building toward the future. I’m struck, too, by how much EVs are at the forefront of autonomous driving, because they have the most updated tech architecture. It’s a lesson for any business in today’s marketplace — to handle bumps with agility, you want to have the most flexible tools. The conditions around us may not all be in our control, but as the saying goes, what we can control is how we respond to things. I’m Bob Safian, thanks for listening.