Transcript

Can Rivian avoid the EV speed bumps? with founder and CEO RJ Scaringe

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1:44 Empowering businesses. To make progress. We're at this like inflection point where the cars of the historical past and the cars of the future in terms of architecture I'd put ourselves, I'd put Tussle in that category. They coexist.

2:00 but the platforms are totally different. So where they end up. in let's say five to ten years is very very different places. That's RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of EV Automaker Rivian. It's been a strange period for electric vehicles with consumer demand ebbing and Elon Musk of Tesla deep in the new Trump administration.

2:34 I wanted to talk to RJ about how he's adapting Rivian's business in the face of all 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 new opportunities. RJ and I discussed 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 technology 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 Safien.

3:18 And this is rapid response. I'm Bob Safian, and I'm here with RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Electric Vehicle Manufacturer Rivian. RJ, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be on.

3:41 So I have to start with the elephant in the room who Is Elon Musk. Tesla. Biggest player in electric vehicles. Musk.

3:49 On the cover of Time as Trump's ally. Do you have a relationship with Elon? Are you Excited about what he's doing in DC? Dismayed? Confused? Yeah, well, uh, you know, at the end of the day, what Elon and and Tesla have done has been incredible for electric vehicles and

4:06 Yeah, I think there's a lot of noise, but it's important to remember that as a business leader, he's of course gonna continue to be driving towards things that help electrification in the long term and I think there may be lots of different perspectives on what are important things to do in the short term. But I think Net net I think it's it's good to have uh an important

4:26 leader and innovator in the electric vehicle space that has a You have very close access access to the administration. Obviously Rivian and Tesla are Competitors. Like It i is him being focused on this government stuff is that sort of still now like, oh, maybe he's distracted a little bit from Tesla's business? Or is it like

4:46 Tesla gets extra attention, you know, maybe special treatment, like Do you worry about either end of those things? Yeah, there's so many things that we could get distracted by or pay attention to in terms of External factors, things that are outside our control. We're focused on

5:02 Developing amazing products. Uh making sure that those amazing products. you know, come together in in a really cohesive and thoughtful way. And right now we're we're hyper focused on the launch of our next product, which which we call R two, which is a much lower priced vehicle for us and really will represent Yeah, a step change in volume and therefore a step change in revenue for us as a business. But

5:24 You know the There there's definitely a lot of noise in the system these days. And I I think at the end of the day, it's it's most important just to uh stay really focused on the things that we can control. It's hard'cause there's all these external factors like the

5:39 Uh tariffs, which everyone's talking about what it's gonna do for automakers or how difficult it it might be. Although You guys I guess are a little less exposed than than some of the some of the other auto makers. Like when when th those kind of executive orders come out against Mexico and Canada where like What do you think? Are you prepared for it? You know, leading up to the election and then uh following the election, we've we've done tabletop exercises where we look at

6:06 What would we do under these different scenarios and Planned out different tariff scenarios, different trade relationships and trade scenarios. But as you pointed out, w today we have uh all of our products being produced in a single plant in in Illinois. We're building a second plant in Georgia. So our footprint is in terms of vehicle assembly very US centric. And then even our supply chains are also very US centric. So we're

6:30 We're more uh protected, if you will. than some of the other very large manufacturers that You know, in in a large part because of NAFTA, because of the trade relationships that have existed between the United United States and Mexico, Canada, for decades. Had built

6:44 you know, significant industrial footprint in those countries. And it's It's gonna be extremely challenging for them if the tariff environment is is As aggressive as That's been discussed. it it feels like the EV market goes through these sort of waves, you know, of enthusiasm and then dips, you know, in in consumer excitement and government support.

7:05 It it feels like Mm. We're in a little bit of a Down moment when you see Yeah, GM and Ford.

7:12 pulling back on their electrical vehicles. How much do you think about You know, what others are doing is like a signal for yourself to kind of well, if they're gonna pull back, I gotta pull back. Or is this like This is the moment. This is a great opportunity to bake up some ground. Yeah. The element of noise that's probably least

7:29 Talk about Is the extreme Almost hyper focused on the short term, I'd say across a lot of industries, but in particular Transport, electrification, and What happens over the next month?

7:41 Three months, six months, twelve months. doesn't change the end state outcome in our view. We're uh we're extremely convicted that eventually everything will be electric. And negating factor for that ultimately is the creation of lots of interesting products to draw customers in. And if there's a very narrow set of products

8:00 It is gonna you know 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 fifty thousand dollars.

8:13 There's very few. Products that I would say are highly compelling. Tesla is is one of those, model three and model Y are both outstanding products, outstanding E's. And it's this lack of competition has led to Them having such significant market share. And

8:30 I think in order for us to see electrification penetration you really continue to grow. we're gonna need to see different products. And that's not to say products that are the same as a Tesla. In fact the opposite. Products that are very different, products that cover different Market positions. uh form factors

8:48 And the brand position we establish with the R one products is is very different than Tesla. Of course, the price points of let's say a Model S and a Model X are very similar. They couldn't be more different in terms of how the products manifest the market's so thirsty or so hungry for different choices. But there needs to be a lot of other manufacturers doing the same. And so to your question on the the pullback that we're witnessing from some of the other manufacturers. I think it's really unfortunate. You know, that really short term focus for investors on on the quarterly results versus like building a long term sustainable business, I think is gonna cause

9:19 Some companies to make decisions that optimize too much around the short term and sub optimise Pretty significantly, I would say. Around the long term. It's ironic, right? That sort of your competitors in some ways, you want them to be in the business to grow. The whole pie.

9:37 Whereas for a lot of You know. businesses they're happy to be able to have their competitors pull back. That's not good for you. Yeah, I you know it's it's funny I my My oldest son asked me about this'cause he said

9:50 Why are there so gasoline cars? Why are why isn't everything electric? And I said, Well there's A lot of people want different Types of vehicles. So if you wanted a minivan today. There's no electric minivan you could even buy, or if you wanted a a convertible, there's no electric convertible you can buy. And he said, Well why doesn't Rivian just build

10:05 Everything. And I said, That's a great idea. But we have to choose the things we're gonna build and and our brand position is such that we're not gonna be able to go off to every segment and every phone factor. So You know, an eight year old. Uh Had the intuition ask the question.

10:21 And I think the it's a pretty obvious gap we have, which is there's not enough choice. We need more choice. And um you know if the other manufacturers Are not there, of course. In the short term basis, you'd say it's it's comp from a competitive point of view, it is an advantage to Rivan.

10:36 But I I started Rivian because I want to help the world advance to this future state. So I think what's best for my kids and my kids, kids, kids is uh for there to be lots of choice, for there to be many highly successful companies in the EV space. Um and we talk about E Vs as a As the singular difference between

10:54 Cars. It really encapsulates a lot of things. I I'm sort of implicitly assuming that these are software defined vehicles, they have modern network architectures. Uh they have features that can be updated. regularly through over the year updates and Yeah, electrification.

11:10 By coincidence brought those changes along with it. So you see that in our vehicles, you of course see that in Tesla vehicles. I think That's going to become an increasingly large gap where the vehicles that have much older

11:23 technology in terms of software and electronics are gonna start to feel Really old. relative to vehicles that have been architected. around a completely software defined experience and compute platforms within the vehicle. I I I live in New York City.

11:37 I've gotten pressure from my kids ol older than yours, but they're like we should have an electric car, but in the city, like charging stations aren't easy to find. I don't have a house with a driveway. You know, 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, right? Good call out and

11:59 This gets back to the core question of like what's the path to see you know, us approach a hundred percent new vehicle sales being electric, it's it's enough product choice. It's the infrastructure to support charging. It's solving these harder infrastructure issues which you know. But for folks that live in a in a highly urban environment.

12:17 These are real challenges. You know, you can't press a button and it happens overnight. It's it's taking time. Yeah. And there there's only so much of that that's that is under your control at at an organization like Rivian. I mean, is that like when you look at Musk being closer to Trump, you think maybe he'll help him, you know, move some of those things along more? It doesn't necessarily feel that way right now. I have to imagine that. Uh Yeah.

12:42 in those discussions, there's gonna be a point of view that's gonna It's gonna help guide more towards creating at least the option. Uh for customers of electrification. Yeah. So the first mainstream E Vs and hybrid cars were small.

12:55 And light. When you debuted, it was with like an SUV and a truck. Bigger seems to be the trend. Is there a reason you you went in that direction? When I first started the company, this was middle of two thousand nine, the initial product plan was we're gonna launch a sports car, use the sports car to build the brand. then take the brand and launch a whole series of other uh products that would be more mass market. And we worked on that for a little while.

13:21 And while we're doing that, I I realized that the strategy we were deploying was actually very similar to what Tesla had successfully Already done. it wasn't by intention, it was more by accident. It's just a very logical way to start a a car business is to say start with something that's really exciting and so therefore a sports car and then scale from that. And of course I'm a uh a and uh really uh pretty heavy car enthusiast. So starting with the sports cars sort of spoke to my inner child.

13:46 But As we reflect on, I realized the strategy just wasn't right. We shelved everything we'd originally started on. We arrived at this this idea that And the brand and the company we create. should represent a lot more than just the vehicle. And we want it to represent

14:02 The idea of Enabling But importantly. Also inspiring. um customers to do the kinds of things they want to remember for decades. And so really building a a

14:14 a brand and a company. around this idea of enabling Uh, life's memory. Does you translate to like what are the product requirements to do that? It's vehicles that can carry your kids, your pets, your gear, your friends, your stuff that led us to A a sibling.

14:30 Set of products, a truck and an S U V. It had us going up against the least efficient vehicles on the road. So large SUVs, large trucks are among the the the most carbon intensive vehicles in terms of emissions. And then of course There's gonna be follow up products in

14:45 creatively named, uh the first of which is R two, the the next after that is sibling to R two is R three. We've done some uh a lot of the conceptual work of what an R four would look like and what an R five would look like. And I couldn't be more excited about the product portfolio. That's gonna be built out.

15:03 Yeah, over the next five to six years. To create lots of really interesting choices for customers across different price points, but also um with different form factors and different use cases. The subtext of what RJ is saying here is that Rivian's R2 model will put the company head to head against Tesla products. That's gonna be an interesting battle to see play out. So 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. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show.

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16:46 Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Before the break, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe talked about Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration and the gaps EV marketplace. Now, RJ talks about driverless technology, environmental messaging, Rivian's$5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen, and more. Let's dive back in. I

17:27 Talk. Recently to Peter McGuinness, who runs Impossible Foods, and he argued that sort of environmental messaging has to take a back seat. to other kinds of experience. Do you think that holds true for Eevee's also, for Rivian? I I completely do. And in fact

17:45 Our whole product strategy. has been built around that, which is We don't believe that simply saying the vehicle's electric or has lower carbon emissions is a reason enough to drive significant demand and and certainly to drive to make changes to their buying behavior from let's say a combustion powered vehicle into an EV.

18:04 But if the vehicle is so incredible, if it like so in the case of our our Pick up it. accelerates zero to sixty in two and a half seconds it does the quarter mile in ten point five seconds. It's faster than a Portion out of GT three. It's It can drive incredible off road. It can tow eleven thousand pounds.

18:22 And you can fit five people in it. It's like Holy cow, that is a cool thing. And The fact that it's electric is is secondary to the performance, the attributes, the features. All of it together as a as a cohesive package. So here in California

18:37 The R one S is actually the best selling premium SUV in the state of California. Not premium electric SUV. Just premium SUV. So it outsells anything over seventy thousand dollars in the SUV category. And it's not a political statement. It's Customers that are

18:52 You vote Republican, vote Democrat are both excited about the features and the attributes of of what we're putting together. What I'm so enthused about with R two is it Dramatically lowers the entry. for for folks to experience our products and

19:06 Our average price of an R one is over ninety thousand dollars. On on R two. It's It starts at about forty five. So and of course our three brings that down further, our four brings it even further down. So these are things we're really excited about. You talk about the brand and you talk about the product. When you think about What makes Rivian distinctive and will make it distinctive in the long run? Like is it one of those more than the other?

19:31 One of the things we say is A brand is not a feature. So a brand is not a zero to sixty time. Uh a brand is not storage cubic. Volume. Those are

19:42 features or attributes that Yeah, think of almost like like instruments in a in a large musical orchestra that have lots of instruments playing, but all of them together Ultimately make up. what the product feels like and therefore how the brand manifests.

19:56 And Brand like music. like culture is in many ways it's hard to describe the single ingredient That makes something powerful or something desirable or something exciting.

20:10 And There's a bit of magic to it. And so for us We really spent a lot of time thinking about across every single touch point of the business. So our retail spaces, our service locations

20:23 The products themselves. down to like what's the floor map material, all these little decisions. need to all level up into this broader idea and for us the broader idea. is creating a highly inviting Product experience.

20:37 That invites people to go have the fullest version of of their life. And so The kinds of emails I get from customers I love the most are not Uh I I get all kinds. I get like hey the car's really fun to drive. That's I enjoy those. I also get lots of emails like hey, I wish this was different or hey this was wrong. But of the good emails.

20:54 The ones that are the most exciting is Yes. S some version of I don't know how it's happened, but Rivian has inspired me to start skiing again and I haven't skied in ten years. I don't I had one the other day.

21:06 I took my I bought a telescope and I went out to an open field. big dark field and looked at the stars. I've never done that before. I don't know why your brand inspired me to do this. And We love that.

21:18 Because It's the the magic of what we'd hope to inspire. Um somehow has come through. Uh with with these different customers.

21:29 I wanna ask you about AI because everyone Ask about AI. Every we're all focused on it. How it's gonna impact the car experience. W what are you doing at Rivian? Like how far are we from a driverless car world? Should we have a driverless car world? I think it's incredibly important. In fact, it becomes you could argue the most important part of the business, which is the ability for the vehicle to drive itself.

21:52 And and really the reason for that is Consumers start to get their time back. Even if you enjoy driving the vehicle, the ability to hop on the highway or to leave your house and have the vehicle take you to the office or take you to wherever you're going. and have the freedom and flexibility to be on your phone, to read a book, to do whatever you like is is a really nice feature. W this has been a big area of focus for us and when we launched our first products, we had a

22:15 A limited capability for what we call a highway assist feature, which is you could go hands on wheel, eyes on the road, but the vehicle drives itself. So in our case highway. But on our Gen two vehicle, which we started working on We designed an entire camera set. We have fifty five megapixels of cameras, so more more cameras

22:34 In terms of Um the number of megapixels in any other vehicle uh sold in the United States today. We have five radars, including a front imaging radar. And we control that entire stack and we can use

22:47 sort of recently emerging technologies to train the platform. So if you think of how self-driving was developed prior to let's say 2021. It was really heavily rules based. But now we're able to take from the cameras all the way through the controls. And use an end to end training where we can train using a lot of the much more modern techniques that we've seen emerge with large language models.

23:11 Using A lot of the techniques we've seen with transformers to Completely change how we're developing self driving and the speed at which it's going to develop is much higher. We announced, I guess the a little while ago, we're gonna have a hands free feature where you can the vehicle drive itself

23:26 uh in this case on highways, but with your hands off the wheel that's coming here very soon and You can imagine after that we're gonna expand it to other roads, and after that we're gonna go to Hands free, eyes. Uh. Features that are coming.

23:40 And I wanna make sure I really understand this. So the car essentially has the capability To be driven. Without you. Doing anything. But it you're not confident enough yet. It's not safe enough yet for you to actually turn it over to the

23:56 to the car in all situations. But as that gets better You'll be able to Update the software to allow it to do that. In a safe way, even without having to change the vehicle. When we release or enable our self driving features to work.

24:12 We're starting in domains for which The confidence is extremely high. It's a bit of the wild west because there's no legal body that arbitrates How

24:23 At what level we're able to expose these features. So it's your judgment about what you feel Confident in and What risk you're willing to take? As a brand, yeah. So we've so every brand takes this decision

24:37 Differently. And so we've taken the view of really erring on Hyper focus on safety. Um Making sure that as before we expand the operating windows to let's say neighborhood roads or school zones.

24:52 We wanna really be robust in the solution. We're talking now about Autonomy, which is one slice of AI in the vehicle. We're gonna see other elements of AI. I think it's a very important thing. Artificial intelligence will impact

25:05 Almost every single part of the business. As it pertains to the product. We're gonna start to see a very different relationship emerged between The users of the product.

25:16 And the vehicle itself. And Beyond self driving, but think something as simple as Navigating. Imagine if you don't even know where you want to go. You get in the car and say, I'm hungry. And the car says well

25:29 what do you feel like? And you say, I don't know. And it says, Well, yesterday you had an Italian. How about um what do you feel about burritos today? And you know, so just the ability to like be conversational and contextual And to 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 this route planning and the ability to be thoughtful around things like traffic. It's it's just gonna really change. And it'll change it'll be one of those kinds of changes, I think. Where it'll happen.

25:58 We won't even fully Realize it's happening and then we'll look back and be like, How did we used to Live. And when you think about these Applications uh

26:08 AI that are beyond self driving. How important is it for you for Rivian to be like at the forefront of those? versus following along or be like there are a lot of habits and things that Rivian is is a p a part of trying to or in the process of changing

26:28 You know, how much of it do you take on? Well Early on we realized that software was gonna be really important. And we had a really deep conviction around the necessity

26:40 Of controlling The software stack in the vehicle. A traditional car today will have seventy five to maybe a hundred plus little ECUs, little computers in the vehicle, all of which come from a A labyrinth of

26:53 Suppliers. And all those little computers have to talk and that is what's made over their updates so difficult for traditional vehicles. And what has made their software and a lot of their technology stacks feel So rigid relative or so

27:07 Wooden, if you will. Relative to what you see you know, consumer electronics and So what we did. We're gonna control the whole software stack and

27:17 We're not gonna use suppliers for all these computers. We're gonna make our own computers. We have all of our own computers. But it requires a really like a fundamental shift where you're not dependent on or relying on third party suppliers for software or for the computers. And

27:32 Yeah. architecture I've just described is what underpins We did a a five point eight billion dollar uh joint venture and licensing deal with Volkswagen Group. second largest car company in the world.

27:44 Where we're now Providing Software and electronics. To enable what I just described that allows them to step you know, massively forward in terms of network architecture and software topology.

27:57 And that's of course what we are contected. So if you if you don't have that, it's really hard to imagine how you properly Can build AI in. So step one is you've got to get the plumbing right. You've got to get the network architecture right. You've got to get the c topology of computers right. You gotta get the right levels of compute. And I mean down into the basics of like What level of memory do you have?

28:18 What's your graphics capabilities? And these are things that are gonna 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

28:31 inflection point where the cars of the historical past in terms of architecture and the cars of the future in terms of architecture. I'd put ourselves, I'd put Tesla into that category, of course. They coexist. And the features are sort of similar, like they're mostly the same.

28:47 And it's easy to like Like confuse features for capability, but the platforms are totally different. And so the the the growth potential of those two platforms in terms of adopting to future technology. um is wildly different. So where they end up

29:03 in let's say five to ten years is very, very different places. And so I think we're gonna see a lot of ex existing incumbent manufacturers work very hard either through partnerships like what was done with us uh or through other means to to to move to these newer technology platforms. China has become a leading EV producer. I'm curious what the implications of that are for the car industry. How do you look at

29:30 What's gone on in in China and what it means for your business. Well, The world is electrifying and uh United States as a market is electrifying slower than other markets. Uh certainly Europe or China. But

29:46 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 is an economic superpower.

30:03 And in order for that to be true. We also need to continue to be great at the world's future technologies. China also benefited from A lot of Government support for EVs if America wants to stay at the forefront in this kind of technological development.

30:19 How important is Government support in keeping that. Happening. So China has a lot of different electric car companies. A lot of them are narrowly differentiated the local areas or local regions w for which those companies exist. have provided a lot of financing.

30:33 So as a result you have a lot of very intense price competition within China to capture market share in what is a huge market and what is a growing market, but nonetheless intense competition. A question remains. Around Whether those product can be sold in the United States and if so, uh what's the tariff

30:51 I think we can say in the short term there's gonna continue to be Not a lot of trade from the US shipping products to China or vice versa, China shipping products vehicles to the United States. But I think in the long term e everyone should be thinking about this to say Let's imagine a world where we can all compete.

31:07 No, freely. Meaning. We're competing head to head. And so The quality of the products, the quality of the technology. Uh the cost structure of the products. But what I'm describing is probably a ten year, maybe fifteen year horizon for that comp competitive environment to play out.

31:23 And so We spend 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 a as an opportunity for us to run faster.

31:33 That's the mindset we built into the business. What's at stake for Rivian right now? We're at an inflection point, so we've launched our flagship products. by virtue of their price being where it is, it there there's only so many customers of a of the R one T or the R one S and

31:49 Were coming right up on the launch of R two. And R two represents a a really significant step change in The nature of this business is it's It's a very, very high fixed cost business. And then in order to compete at the

32:04 highest level from a technology point of view. Yeah, this isn't something you could spend a hundred million dollars on a year in R and D and expect to compete with in terms of product feature set or quality with something like a Tesla that's spending You know, many, many times that. The way we're spending

32:20 Capital on both building out our go to market side of the business and the way we're spending capital. represents or corresponds to a much bigger company and that we really grow into that. As we launch R two. And how soon before I can get my hands on an R two? We've said uh

32:36 The first half of twenty twenty six. But we haven't said exactly when, but sometime in that range. Yeah. Well, RJ, this has been great. Thanks so much for doing it. Yeah. Well thanks for having me and uh really appreciate the questions and discussion.

32:52 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.

33:25 to handle bumps with agility. you wanna 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.

33:48 Rapid response is a wait what original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our producer is Alex Morris. Assistant producer is Masha Makutonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli. Theme music by Ryan Holiday. My head of podcast is Letal Malad.

34:07 For more, visit rapidresponsshow.com. This episode is part of a special series in partnership with Stripe. Empowering businesses. To make progress.