Almost two months ago, Rivian‘s founder and CEO revealed that while the EV maker was working on the R2 and R3 SUVs, it was also already developing the R4 and R5 models.
In an interview on The Tosh Show with US comedian Daniel Tosh, Scaringe had admitted that “there may be like an R6,” but the four upcoming models were “as far out as out product plan goes today.”
In late August, the CEO was on InsideEV‘s podcast Plugged-In, where he further detailed that the upcoming models would be similar — a “sibling set, where you have two very different vehicles that share the same platform.”
At the same time, Scaringe unveiled that they would be “lower cost than even R2 and R3.”
However, he said in August that, as the company focuses on launching its $45,000 mid-size R2 SUV, there were “no engineering teams on those [R4 and R5] today,” as “they’re very much conceptual.”
“We want a very small number of people thoughtfully defining some of those big decisions, like what’s the personality of R4? What’s the size? What’s the type of vehicle? What does it look like? What is R5?,” the chief executive said.
In a new update, and speaking with Joanna Stern on The Verge‘s podcast Decoder, the CEO reaffirmed the idea of clearly defining what the vehicle is before its first details come out.
During development, even long before the vehicle is revealed to the public, the team follows the same approach, which Scaringe said was done on the R2 and Rivian is “doing the same on R3 and R4.”
They begin by asking, “What is the vehicle? What’s the feel of the vehicle want to be, or what’s the essence of it?”
And then they “interpret it through the lens of lots of different target customers.”
Scaringe noted that, “in the case of R1, it’s a really broad set of buyers,” as the company wanted a diverse demographic with its first models.
“One of them, which of course is a big demographic, is people who are using it to support their family with kids or with pets or with gear,” the CEO added.
Rivian has not yet revealed what type of vehicles the R4 or R5 will be.
Although the company currently focuses on SUVs and pickup trucks — including the R1 models and the upcoming smaller R2 and R3 SUVs — its first vehicle was originally planned as a sports car.
The R1 was initially prototyped as a mid-engine hybrid coupe for the US market, but Rivian abandoned those plans in favor of larger, more practical vehicles.
