RJ Scaringe has led Rivian from a three-person operation in a garage to a publicly traded EV maker employing around 16,000 people, with production in the United States and vehicles on roads across North America while planning European expansion with the R2 SUV.
When the American comedian Daniel Tosh introduced Scaringe on his format ‘The Tosh Show’, he did so by joking that Rivian‘s chief was “certainly the more likable of the two” people who built an EV company from the ground up.
The 42 year old entrepreneur revealed that Rivian‘s initial strategy was to follow Tesla’s idea of beginning with a fully electric sports car before increasing the addressable market with cheaper models.
Additionally, Rivian‘s founder revealed has previously owned two Teslas. However, the strategy was abruptly changed when the first prototype was ready.
Born in 1983 in Rockledge, Florida, Scaringe was raised along the Indian River, a waterway that later gave Rivian its name.
From a young age he was fascinated by cars, restoring classics as a teenager while also developing an interest in technology.
“I’ve always loved working on cars, building cars, but I also really like tech… I understand how the car is built and I’m deep on all the technology in the vehicle,” he said.
While attending Melbourne Central Catholic High School, Scaringe worked as an apprentice machinist to “learn how to make things out of metal” and in a restaurant, earning enough to buy a house at 17, with his father as co-signer.
“When I turned 18, I took it over myself,” he stated.
He went on to study mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating first in his class, and was accepted to both Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate study.
Initially enrolled at Stanford, he switched within a day to MIT, citing its dedicated automotive programme.
“I knew I wanted to start what eventually became Rivian. My reason for wanting to get a PhD was wonderfully naive but intentional — I thought, I’ll need a lot of money, and if I’m going to get other people to invest, having a PhD from MIT makes that more likely.”
He earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering in 2009.
That same year, at the age of 26, Scaringe founded Rivian in Florida.
The company’s first project was an electric sports car, but he abandoned it soon after building the prototype.
“Almost as soon as we completed that first prototype, it was crystal clear to me that the product was wrong… We wanted to do something really unique and authentic, totally on its own.”
The decision upset both team members and investors, but it led to a strategic pivot toward electric trucks and SUVs designed for “active and adventurous lifestyles.”
Raising the capital to execute this vision was a steep challenge.
“It’s like $14 billion, maybe, before we had our first dollar,” Scaringe said whe asked how much money people invested in Rivian “In the beginning, everyone says no… you don’t have tech yet, you don’t have manufacturing, and the team is basically you and one other guy.”
He recalled pitching in settings as unconventional as yacht clubs to secure the first $100,000 or $500,000 in seed funding. Major investments from Amazon and Ford later enabled the purchase of Mitsubishi’s former plant in Normal, Illinois, in 2017.
By 2018, Rivian had unveiled its flagship R1T pickup and R1S SUV, distinguished by their oval headlights — a design choice Scaringe described as “something that if you saw it once, you could sketch it on a piece of paper.”
Deliveries of the R1T began in 2021, making it the first all-electric pickup in the US market. That year, Rivian’s initial public offering raised nearly $12 billion, briefly valuing the company at over $100 billion.
Today, Rivian’s Normal plant operates on the scale of a small city.
“We have maybe 6,000 people on-site. We’re serving 20,000 meals a day,” Scaringe said. Across the company, headcount has grown to roughly 16,000. Running such a large operation, he noted, requires continuous adaptation.
“How do you run Rivian when it’s got a hundred people? It’s different than when it has a thousand, which is way different than when it’s got 16,000.”
The business has also weathered missteps. In 2022, Rivian announced price increases for pre-ordered vehicles, prompting backlash. “No one loved that,” Scaringe acknowledged; the company reversed the increase for existing orders.
He remains focused on preparing the lower-cost R2 model for launch in 2026, saying it will “massively expand the business.”
In conversation with Tosh, Scaringe discussed technological limits as well as market priorities.
When asked how close battery ranges were to reaching 500 or 600 miles, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to see a non-linear step like that… We think the sweet spot’s like 300 to 400 miles.”
He added that as technology improves, manufacturers will also reduce battery size to lower costs rather than simply chasing maximum range.
On safety, he described Rivian’s products as “the safest car you can drive right now,” noting that crash outcomes depend heavily on the other vehicle involved.
Asked whether he had ever owned a Tesla, Scaringe said he had — twice. On the growing competition in the EV market, he indicated that Rivian welcomes new entrants.
Despite the pressures of running a public company, Scaringe rejects the idea of stepping away. “It’s not in my nature to do that,” he said.
“I could quit and go live on a beach, but that’s not me,” he added.
Rivian has appointed two new Quality-focused Vice Presidents.
The EV maker promoted the long-time Rivian engineer Brian Gase to VP of Engineering Quality and has hired car industry veteran Omar Rivera as VP of Corporate Quality.
