Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said on Thursday that 2026 will be a “really critical year” for the company as it starts deliveries of the $45,000 SUV R2.
In an interview with Bloomberg Tech, the chief executive said that he’s “never been as excited about a product” and he “can’t wait to see even more Rivians on the road with the launch of R2.”
Scaringe stated that the “R2, R3 sibling combination is a set of much lower priced vehicles with R2 being a five passenger SUV and then R3 being more of a crossover.”
RJ Scaringe was questioned about the competition from the Ford F-150 Lightning, a model that was the best-selling electric pick-up last month in the U.S. outperforming its closest rivals in cumulative sales — Rivian’s R1T and Tesla’s Cybertruck.
The executive said that Rivian‘s adoption has been strong across the U.S. and that “the goal was that the brand and, of course, the product is connecting with non-EV buyers.”
“Most of our customers have never owned an EV before,” he stated, adding that Rivian is “pulling people in that come from a broad spectrum of backgrounds.”
Scaringe recognized that the price point is still blocking EV adoption. Rivian‘s flagship models, the R1S and R1T, have an average selling price of about $90,000.
“The average price of a new car in the United States is around $49,000. And so with R2 coming in, you know, starting at $45,000 and having a few different trims across that price range puts us in a great spot to see a giant step in volume,” he stated.
According to the executive, the U.S. faces “the extreme challenge” of “a lack of choice” in electric vehicles.
“If you were to look to buy an electric vehicle at a price of under $50,000 today, you really don’t have any choices,” he said.
The CEO acknowledged the “really compelling set of choices with the Tesla Model 3, Model Y,” which “manifest in the extreme market share. That’s just a reflection that there’s not very many other options.”
Scaringe mentioned that the “electrification adoption in the United States is really asymptote at around 8%, because there’s only so many customers that want that form factor, that look, that brand.”
Questioned about “bumper stickers” on Tesla vehicles, the Irvine-based company’s CEO joked that he “saw a sticker that says, ‘I identify as a Rivian,’ which is funny.”
U.S. Administration
RJ Scaringe is confident that the U.S. Administration is focusing on investing in U.S.-made tecnology and products.
“I think it’s easy to get caught into the day-to-day of which tariffs are moving, which way, and some of the language that’s used around electric vehicles,” he said. “But really, the administration wants to see investment in U.S. technology, investment in U.S. jobs.”
Rivian has “more than 15,000 employees in the United States” and builds its products, “including all the components that go into them,” in the country. “We have a plant in Illinois now. We’re building a very large production facility in Georgia, it’s a swing state.”
While recognizing that “there’s some changes around incentives for consumers that are not great in the short term,” the CEO thinks that “in the long term, you’re building a U.S. company, building U.S. technology, and that’s consistent.”
Scaringe highlighted the EV maker’s “world class” technology stack, which granted it a “$5.8 billion software licensing deal” with Volkswagen. It is, according to him, “the largest software licensing deal in the history of the automotive industry.”
“We can take our tech stack and help the second largest car company in the world create more compelling products across different brands, Porsche, Audi, of course, Volkswagen,” he said.
Regarding tariffs and its impact on suppliers, Scaringe said that Rivian understands “the intent of more content being produced in the U.S., but it’s not something we can flip immediately.”
“We have hundreds of suppliers, who in turn have thousands of suppliers,” exemplifying with a headlight’s supply chain:
“The headlight looks like it’s simple, we buy a headlight from a U.S. supplier, but it has five tiers of suppliers with about 70 companies that participate in making that headlight. Much of the content comes from all over the world.”
Profitability
As the company went public, Rivian “had the big challenge of a supply chain crisis,” with Scaringe admitting that “our ramp didn’t go as quickly as we’d hoped.”
“And there’s been a lot of focus on the much shorter term from investors around what’s our path to profitability, what’s our path to positive cash flow,” he said.
Rivian‘s CEO noted that “in the last two quarters, we’ve shown a lot of progress. In the first quarter, we had $206 million of gross profit, positive gross profit, which is great.”
It was the company’s second straight quarter of positive profit — a requirement for the VW deal to go through — although the result was mainly due to $157 million in revenue from automotive regulatory credit sales.
Scaringe thinks that “demonstrating that the business can be self-propelling, it can fund itself through the profits of the products has been really important.”
However, he highlighted Rivian‘s investment on technology, which the executive says “will really serve as a big unlock.”
The company has a “market share leading product with R1S,” at “about 35% market share in its category.” The model’s entry-level is priced from $75,900.
According to Scaringe, if Rivian takes its “brand success” and “translates that to a much bigger market with R2, continues to invest in our technology stack (…), the rest will take care of itself.”
