Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has revealed plans for a next-generation charging cabinet — which he says will trigger a “big inflection point” on the company’s proprietary DC fast-charging network across the United States.
The Rivian Adventure Network recently crossed 1,000 stalls across nearly 150 sites.
Speaking in an interview with The Drivecast on Wednesday, Scaringe said the upgrade on the power cabinet would mark a step change in deployment speed.
“Where we will start to see a big inflection point where we build out a lot faster is when we launch what we call our power cabinet 2.0,” he said. “That’s when we update all the power electronics that go into the cabinet that sits behind the charging dispensers.”
The disclosure marks the first public mention of the Power Cabinet 2.0 designation.
Scaringe described the upgraded hardware as being “optimized for cost and for ease of installation,” two factors that have historically constrained the pace at which automakers and charging operators deploy DC fast-charging sites.
He outlined a two-phase strategy: continued steady growth over the next two years, followed by a sharp acceleration once the new cabinet is ready.
Current Growth Remains ‘Linear’
Scaringe acknowledged the network is still small relative to Tesla‘s Supercharger footprint.
“Today, there’s two networks that have extremely high uptime — Tesla, which is a great network, and ours,” Scaringe said. “Tesla‘s a much larger network. Our network’s maybe 4% or 5% the size of Tesla‘s.”
Questioned about whether resources had been diverted away from charging to support the R2 launch and the company’s autonomy push, Scaringe said the rate of new site openings has not changed.
“We’re continuing to build it out. It’s a pretty linear buildout as it is today,” he said, adding that “the rate at which we’re adding new RAN locations” is holding steady.
Data tracked by RivianRoamer supports that characterization.
Since early 2023, Rivian has opened roughly 10 locations per quarter and added between 60 and 80 chargers in most periods.
Notable exceptions are the first quarters of 2025 and 2026, when only about 30 chargers were inaugurated — a pattern suggesting seasonal or resource-related constraints at the start of each year.
Scaringe put the current station count at approximately 150 during the interview. “We’ve got on the order of, I guess I should know the exact number, it’s like 150 RAN locations,” he said. “But that’ll continue growing.”
As of Thursday — according to RivianRoamer — Rivian operated 149 sites with 1,017 charging stalls across the US.
RAN Characteristics
The company’s network offers both CCS and NACS connectors as it transitions to the latter standard.
Unlike the R1 models, its R2 SUV — which began external customer deliveries this week — features a native NACS port, while earlier R1 models use CCS with a free NACS adapter.
Rivian reported 98% average uptime across its chargers in 2025, a figure that places the network alongside Tesla as one of only two in the US with reliability above that threshold.
The company has been steadily opening its Adventure Network to non-Rivian vehicles.
As of late 2025, over 90% of RAN stations were accessible to all EV brands, and the company said in its fourth-quarter shareholder letter that non-Rivian vehicles accounted for more than 40% of charging sessions in December 2025.
Beyond its own stations, Rivian owners have access to approximately 227,000 chargers across North America, including about 50,000 DC fast chargers compatible with its vehicles.
That total includes over 21,500 Tesla Superchargers, alongside stations from Electrify America and IONNA.
Rivian also signed a deal in April with Los Angeles real estate developer Caruso to deploy more than 150 public DC fast chargers at upscale retail and mixed-use properties, adding an urban dimension to a network primarily focused on highway corridors and adventure destinations.
The EV maker’s stated long-term target is to grow the Adventure Network to more than 3,500 fast chargers across over 600 sites in the US and Canada.
Reaching that figure from approximately 1,000 stalls at roughly 150 locations would require more than tripling the network — an outcome Scaringe indicated depends on the cost and deployment advantages the Power Cabinet 2.0 is designed to deliver.
What Power Cabinet 2.0 Means
The power cabinet is the large unit positioned behind the visible charging dispensers at each RAN station. Its hardware converts grid AC power to high-voltage DC for delivery to vehicle batteries.
Rivian‘s current-generation cabinet, based on the company’s 2021 design documents and real-world performance data, delivers 300 kW of peak and continuous output across a voltage range of 200–920 V DC.
Each cabinet houses up to six power electronic modules and typically supports two to three dispensers.
When a single vehicle charges alone, it can draw close to the full 300 kW.
If multiple vehicles share a cabinet, speeds drop accordingly: a common setup of three dispensers yields roughly 100 kW each when all are in use.
Scaringe did not reveal any technical specifications for the Power Cabinet 2.0, including output power, voltage range or the number of dispensers each unit will support.
The CEO described the upgrade only in strategic terms — a full overhaul of the power electronics optimized around two priorities: lower unit cost and faster, simpler installation.
Scaringe did emphasize, however, that reduced per-site capital expenditure and less on-site labor would directly address the economic constraints that have kept RAN expansion on a linear trajectory.
When interviewer Joel compared the hardware refresh to the R2’s role in Rivian‘s vehicle lineup, Scaringe agreed.
“That’s exactly right,” he said. “When you think about building out the network, we want to wait before we put a very large amount of investment.”
Timed to Georgia Factory Ramp
Scaringe tied the charging acceleration explicitly to production milestones at Rivian‘s second manufacturing facility in Georgia.
“It’s going to be, think of it as being timed around the launch of products coming out of our Georgia facility,” the CEO stated.
The company broke ground on its $5 billion plant in September 2025 and expects to begin saleable production in the fourth quarter of 2028.
The factory will support expanded R2 output alongside the future R3 and R3X models.
Scaringe set expectations for the RAN evolution in that interim.
“It’s not going to happen in the next few months,” he noted. “We’re going to continue growing over the next, call it two years, and then we’ll see a notable step in the rate at which we build this out.”
Rivian has guided capital expenditures of $1.95–$2.05 billion in 2026, covering the Normal plant retooling for R2, the start of structural construction at the Georgia factory, and the continued build-out of sales, service, and charging infrastructure.
Ambition to Rival Tesla’s Network
Scaringe framed the long-term goal in direct terms, stating that Rivian aims to “be one of the largest networks in the United States,” while acknowledging the gap with Tesla.
Tesla operates about 80,000 Supercharger stalls worldwide.
The company has been phasing out its V3 Supercharger cabinet in favor of the V4 generation.
Tesla‘s outgoing V3 cabinet delivers roughly 350 kW of input power and supports approximately four stalls, with a maximum per-stall peak of 250 kW.
Voltage support tops out at 500 V, and power sharing is noticeable when stations are busy.
Rivian‘s current cabinet outputs 300 kW across two to three dispensers, with a wider voltage range of 200–920 V DC and efficiency above 94%.
Power sharing is similarly noticeable — a solo vehicle can approach the full 300 kW, but three vehicles plugged into the same cabinet split the available power to roughly 100 kW each.
Tesla‘s V4 cabinet represents a generational leap.
Each unit delivers up to 1.2 MW — four times Rivian‘s current output — and supports up to eight stalls, with a peak per-stall speed of 500 kW.
Voltage support spans 180–1,000 V, covering both 400 V and 800 V vehicle architectures, and Tesla claims efficiency above 96%.
The higher total capacity also reduces the impact of power sharing, since the available headroom per vehicle remains substantially larger even at full occupancy.
Rivian‘s current hardware was designed with reliability as a priority, and the network’s 98% uptime in 2025 supports that focus.
Scaringe made a broader point about the state of EV charging in the United States.
“In the end state, it’s going to be important to have more than one great network in the US,” the Rivian founder said. “We would love to have others. We think we’d love to say there’s ubiquitously great charging where uptime is 99% plus, locations are easy to access.”
He added a note of frustration about the industry’s progress: “Unfortunately, it’s taken a little longer to get that built out than I think many of us thought, myself included.”
