Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board, Rivian Automotive
"Willie Nelson IS A Fan" | Rivian Automotive's CEO RJ Scaringe REVEALS New Model: The Rivian R2 SUV
RJ Scaringe, American engineer, businessman, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian and Mind Robotics, joins Chris Evans at the top of the tower to discuss his company's rise to prominence since it was incorporated in 2009.
He also talks about Rivian's new model: The R2, and explains what motivates him to deliver cost-effective electric vehicles and why he thinks it is a success...PLUS he reveals what is his favourite cars of all time are - and you may be surprised!!
#electric #electricvehicle #car #cars #unitedstates #rivian #motoring
📷 Virgin Ra...
About Robert Scaringe
RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Rivian, has been promoting the company’s upcoming R2 electric SUV, which he described as a lower-priced vehicle starting at $45,000 that “captures and embodies what is Rivian.” At the 2026 Aspen Ideas Festival, he highlighted features such as a rear drop glass and said he hopes the R2 will “inspire more choices from other manufacturers” to help electrification reach 100% of new vehicle sales. Scaringe also discussed a $1.25 billion deal with Uber to deploy R2-based robo-taxis starting in 2028 in Miami and San Francisco, and a $5.8 billion software licensing agreement with Volkswagen Group. He stated that he began a robotics company called Mind Robotics last year, focused on human-like manufacturing robots, which has raised over $1 billion and plans to deploy its first robots at Rivian in early 2027. On earnings calls in 2025 and 2026, Scaringe noted that Rivian was increasing production capacity for its Georgia plant to 300,000 units annually, and described the company’s autonomy platform as a key focus. He also remarked that he believes “the biggest shift to transportation… is the shift to vehicles being able to drive themselves.”
Transcript (104 segments)
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Chris Evans0:00
We have a very special guest on the show now. I've been wanting to talk to this guy for ages. I've been a big fan of what he does for four years now. Our next guest is CEO, chairman, and founder of the most exciting car company and robotics company I think in the world. He's going to tell us about smashing the competition with the amazing Rivian. It's the man with the Clark Kent fringe. It's RJ Scaringe.
Nice to see you.
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Robert Scaringe0:30
Great to be here.
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Chris Evans0:31
What do you think about the proposed social media campaign?
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Robert Scaringe0:33
I think it's fabulous.
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Chris Evans0:34
Do you honestly?
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Robert Scaringe0:35
Yeah, I mean, the voice was perfect.
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Chris Evans0:39
Values are off the scale, aren't they?
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Robert Scaringe0:40
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
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Chris Evans0:41
And I heard Willie Nelson is a fan. Is that right or not? Or have I just...
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Robert Scaringe0:44
He is, yeah.
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Chris Evans0:45
How did that happen?
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Robert Scaringe0:47
Why not?
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Chris Evans0:48
Yeah, no, why not? How did you know about that?
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Robert Scaringe0:50
I don't know how we know about that. It's actually interesting. We end up meeting all these people that you don't expect or you wouldn't know that they're Rivian fans. And so they'll come up and they're maybe famous and they say, 'I love my Rivian.' I'm like, 'Oh, cool.' And I'm so excited to hear that. You know, you just don't expect it. So we have all these folks that you don't realize they're in the Rivians and you find out through a friend or somehow.
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Chris Evans1:14
Yeah, I mean, you say Rivian fans and you're right because people in the UK won't know about this because most people won't have heard of the name Rivian, let alone seen the car. But it's the number one selling SUV of its size in California and has been for a few years. And the R2 just came out last week, a smaller, more affordable version of the original car. And honestly, it's mad how much people love their Rivians. There's this community, isn't there? Tell us about the whole ethos behind it.
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Robert Scaringe1:52
Well, I mean, first, when you set out to build something from scratch and build a brand, you sort of do it hoping you end up with customers that love what you do. And so I remember, you know, 2015, 2016, we were planning the product, going through the design iterations, and we had all these presentations around how we're going to create a lot of enthusiasm around what we're building. And the hope was to build a brand that both enabled, but more importantly, inspired people to go do the kinds of things you want to remember for years to come. So, do the kinds of things you want to take photographs of. And so to see that come to life where people are using the car to go off and explore, to go skiing, to go to the beach, take their kids on trips they hadn't gone on before, it's warming. It brings so much joy to us. And now to see that extend into a more affordable vehicle with R2, it's really built around an authentic desire to help people explore the world.
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Chris Evans2:48
Unfortunately for you, very fortunately for you, and by the way, you've definitely put the hours in, so I know it's not been a light lift. It's been a very heavy lift. It still is every single day. RJ's been cited as saying that he's made between 20 and 30 million decisions to get to where his company is thus far.
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Robert Scaringe3:04
And you're not exaggerating there, are you? That's an absolute fact. Yeah.
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Chris Evans3:07
But somebody came up with this design that was a classic the second it rolled off the production line. Other cars, I couldn't mention some company names, but they date very quickly. Your car reminds me of the Land Rover or a Jaguar E-Type or something like that. It's got this face, these eyes. If you've never seen a Rivian, check out the Rivian now. And I'm a fan, you know I'm a fan. I've seen all the launches and I rented one from Turo, which is Airbnb for cars, isn't it? So I met this guy in a car park, it was really dodgy. I had to give him some money. He said, 'Take my car over there.' And I took it and it was literally love at first touch. It was ridiculous. And it continues to be ridiculous. So obviously there's Tesla, and you're very welcoming and you say there's room for everyone in the EV world because you've got to have choices. Last week Kia brought out their EV6 the same week you brought out your R2, which looks spookily like an R2. And you say this happens to you all the time. If I'd been working for 20 years on the car like you have and Kia bring out this the next day, you'd be annoyed. But you're like, 'No, it's all right. Bring it on.' Tell me about that.
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Robert Scaringe4:41
Well, I think if the objective is to get more people into EVs, the most important thing we can do is to create choice. In the internal combustion world there's so many different choices. I grew up a car enthusiast and grew up loving the variety and the different ideas around approaching what a vehicle is, and the conversations around that, and the communities that emerge around that. And so we need to create that around EVs. Rivian is trying very hard to create a very clear, very intentional approach to how we go about designing a car, to the brand that surrounds the vehicle, to all the ecosystem around that, so its service and sales infrastructure. And so to the extent that we inspire others, I love that. To the extent that others create alternatives that are very different, I love that. But ultimately we need more choice.
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Chris Evans5:34
Yeah, okay. So you say you're cool with it, basically you're authentically cool with it.
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Robert Scaringe5:38
Yeah, and I think part of what makes our brand so appealing, since we launched, you referenced this, but the numbers tell the same story. Consumer Reports does an annual brand survey, and they look at the brand satisfaction and likelihood to repurchase. And in our first year with our first car, we were at the top of that scale, above every other brand sold in the country. And we've been that way since then. We're like 13 or 14 points above the next closest for likelihood to repurchase. And so what we found is we were authentic in our values, authentic in how we approach design trade-offs and decisions. We've been extremely considered in how we approach every different design decision, whether it's aesthetics or aesthetics as it meets function. And that's just resonated really well. And I think we need more companies that are taking these principled views towards developing a product that they're passionate about.
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Chris Evans6:32
Yeah. And when you drive a Rivian, you can feel like it was built by a team of people that love what they're doing.
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Robert Scaringe6:38
Yeah, there's love, there's passion. It's the most important ingredient, love and passion, isn't it?
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Chris Evans6:41
And people listening to you for the first time will say, 'Watching a supremely confident guy, world at his feet.' No, you wake up every morning and you're shitting yourself every morning because your share price is up and down like a fiddler's elbow, isn't it? This takes so much money. How many billions of dollars have you had to raise?
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Robert Scaringe7:12
A lot. So as a private company... when I started Rivian, I thought it would take a lot of money. I didn't have any money, but I thought this is going to take about a billion dollars.
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Chris Evans7:29
Quite punchy.
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Robert Scaringe7:30
Yeah. And everyone would be like, 'Oh, you won't spend that much money. How could it take a billion dollars?'
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Chris Evans7:35
How would you get that much money? Yeah.
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Robert Scaringe7:36
Well, it took a while, but we ultimately, as a private company, we raised about 12 billion before we went public. When we went public we raised quite a bit more. And I think one of the biggest challenges in building a business like this is we're not designing Rivian to be a small company. We're designing it to be a large company. And so we vertically integrated in so many areas. We own our electronics, we own our software, we own the motor design, gearbox design, power electronics. We built out our own direct-to-consumer sales and service channels. And all of that heavy investment is anticipating the arrival of this R2 product. This is a much higher volume product. But we had to go in knowing we're going to invest a ton of money and lose money for a period of time while we get ready to build scale.
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Chris Evans8:20
Yeah, yeah.
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Robert Scaringe8:20
And so we're now at the precipice of launching that R2. It launched last week. And the excitement is through the roof. The response to the vehicle's been incredible. It's been overwhelmingly positive and so much blood, sweat, and tears and passion went into making R2. So for the teams last week it was just great to see years of work correspond to just very positive feedback from all the folks that have been in the vehicle.
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Chris Evans8:46
And years of work still to come. Elon Musk said of Rivian, and you will know this, it's not uncomplimentary. He said, 'If they're not sleeping in the factory, it's not going to work.' Did you sleep in the factory?
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Robert Scaringe9:04
So when we first launched R1, this was in 2021. We started building the plant, started putting equipment in in February of 2020, which is like the worst time you could imagine to start, right at the start of COVID. And so we built up the plant, launched the first car in late 2021. I was living in California prior to that. I moved along with my family to Illinois where our plant is. And I was in the plant 24/7.
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Chris Evans9:33
You did sleep in the factory?
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Robert Scaringe9:35
Well, my house was five minutes away so I'd go home to sleep, but it was just complete focus. My desk was on the factory floor, so I would basically move where I was sitting around the plant to the biggest gap or challenge we had. But what's so interesting is comparing that experience five years ago with what we now have for the launch of R2. That's actually not a good thing. If the CEO has his desk on the floor and is fixing fixtures or designing tooling or getting equipment to work, that means the team is insufficiently sized or built to do the task or there's not enough experience. So R2, we have all these learnings and experience that allows us to have a much smoother ramp up and launch where it's actually allowed us to be much more planful around how we're ramping up. And so I'm really proud of the fact that we've grown a lot of the team.
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Chris Evans10:30
You should be proud. You've got a $22.6 billion company on your hands. Right, so Elon Musk was wrong. I'm joking. I'm joking. I actually don't care. I'm not looking for a soundbite, honestly. I think it's all the fun. Now, obviously Elon launched SpaceX last Friday. I'm sure you had an eye on that. Did he become the world's first ever trillionaire? Do you think that? Because that's the story, wasn't it? What did you think of that whole thing?
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Robert Scaringe11:21
I mean, I think when you have a company and he's started multiple companies that are worth multiple trillions of dollars, and so by virtue of him having a large ownership stake, it's just the mathematics. It just works out.
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Chris Evans11:35
What did you think of that because of the theater and the story? Because he's just such a great storyteller. Which you have to be, don't you? If you're going to be a successful leader today, CEO shouldn't be Chief Executive Officer, it should be Chief Executive Storyteller. And that's what you do really well.
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Robert Scaringe11:50
Well, if you're building something that's hard and building something that's going to take a lot of capital, you have to inspire people to provide capital. So investors, and you inspire people to work on a problem that hasn't been solved. You need to get supporting companies or suppliers to work with you. And so it does require convincing a lot of people to buy into this bigger vision. When I started Rivian, I had not done that before. That was a big part of my own growth, learning how to articulate what we were doing and simultaneously figure out what we were going to do as a company. But clearly he's been extremely successful at providing a future state vision of what he needs.
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Chris Evans12:25
Yeah, I think his superpower is his storytelling ability. He can make rockets, clearly, and he's made a few decent cars. But because of his immense wealth and because you do things so differently and offer an alternative in your vehicle to what Teslas do, I've never had a Tesla. I've driven Teslas. I think they're great cars. I know you think they're great cars as well. Why wouldn't he just come and buy your company? And I don't mean that disrespectfully or facetiously. Because it is, with respect, small change to him. Why wouldn't he just come and snap you up because you're clearly the future.
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Robert Scaringe13:01
I don't know.
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Chris Evans13:02
Would you sell if he did?
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Robert Scaringe13:04
I'd prefer not.
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Chris Evans13:05
Yeah! I love the fact you said that with a smile on your face. And you're holding the smile. It's really good, man. Well done. Could he make you an offer that you couldn't refuse, I suppose, from a board point of view?
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Robert Scaringe13:19
Well, I mean, you're a public company, so if an offer came in, we'd have to take it to the board. And ultimately I have responsibility to shareholders, but...
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Chris Evans13:29
But you don't want to do that.
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Robert Scaringe13:31
Well, I said it with a smile, but I'm of course incredibly bullish on Rivian and so I think we have a tremendous amount of upside from where we are today. And so I think it'd be a shame to have the company be sold right now.
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Chris Evans13:45
Yeah. Why not become the next Tesla?
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Robert Scaringe13:48
It just feels like if this is a metaphorical fruit tree, it's like we're picking the very first piece of fruit before it's even partially ripe. So the company's got so much growth in front of it.
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Chris Evans13:57
Yeah, no, I'm excited for you. I'm really excited for you. You've said lots of times that you've run out of money. People said, 'How many times have you run out of money?' You said, 'Almost ran out of money so many times.' Are you still there now with that?
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Robert Scaringe14:09
No. I mean, the problem is you have to solve shifts. In the very early days, I refinanced a house, my dad refinanced his house to fund the initial start of the company, which is pretty wonderful as a parent. I'm now a dad, but my dad was like, 'Yeah, you're starting a car company. I'll put 150, 200 thousand dollars in.' And that was a lot of money for us. And the likelihood of success was so low. It's like throwing a toothpick into the wind and landing it on a straw. Very unlikely to be successful. But at that point, every two weeks, every payroll was like, 'Are we going to make payroll?' Now we have different types of challenges, but they're not necessarily like that. It's not like we're going to miss payroll or run out of cash, but it's planning these large investments in infrastructure and technology, making sure we have the runway to support those big investments. For us now our core focus is ramping R2.
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Chris Evans15:09
And so you have 17,000, 18,000 employees?
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Robert Scaringe15:12
Yeah, about 17,000 employees.
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Chris Evans15:13
And you've just broken new ground for a new factory?
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Robert Scaringe15:15
In Georgia, yeah.
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Chris Evans15:16
Okay, and look at you smiling now. Not only do you design cars, you design factories because you have to design factories. It's mad, your job is mad. And as a 10-year-old you fell in love with cars. You say as a 10-year-old, what happened when you were nine and eight? Why did you wait till you were 10?
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Robert Scaringe15:34
What happened? Honestly, I was born just so into cars when I was little. But I didn't think I'd want to start a car company. I was reading a book about the formation of a bunch of different car companies. I'm a big Porsche enthusiast. And so I was reading about the origin stories of Porsche. And I thought it's pretty cool. This company's formed. I'm now inspired and I want to devour every piece of information I can get on the company or the cars. And I said, boy, we need more of these things. So I want to work on this someday. That was very simple logic. I want to make something that inspires kids the way that I was inspired.
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Chris Evans16:11
And you started with an EV sports car, didn't you?
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Robert Scaringe16:13
We started with a little sports car. I started the company in 2009. The initial thought was a sports car. We had a huge pivot. Pivot's an understatement. We shut that whole program down, reset. And when we reset, it wasn't clear what we were going to become. The goal was to become something that didn't exist. So we said, let's build something that the world needs. And so we went on a pretty twisty, circuitous path to arrive at what we now think of as Rivian. Now I know what a Rivian is. You have an idea what a Rivian is. The world can see it in its physical manifestation. But there was a time when I had no idea what a Rivian was. I had to figure that out. There's a lot of hunting and trial and error and iteration. You design something, throw it out, design another thing, throw it out. It took us a few years to iteratively arrive at the positioning and then the product strategy that you see today.
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Chris Evans17:04
Okay, I want to make sure I haven't missed anything. There's a couple of questions I want to finish on. I just love that I could talk to you forever. As everybody can tell.
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Robert Scaringe17:14
I love your enthusiasm.
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Chris Evans17:15
Oh mate, I'm so admiring of what you've done and the way you've done it, but mostly the car. Things are often not equal to the sum of their parts. And when you have a hit, it's more than the sum of its parts. That's what this is. God bless you and the team for making it. When this new factory comes online, how many people will you be employing then?
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Robert Scaringe17:40
I mean it's just going to keep growing. The new plant is going to employ around 7,500.
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Chris Evans17:45
Wow. And when does it open?
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Robert Scaringe17:47
2028.
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Chris Evans17:47
All right. Okay. Right, so the R2 is more affordable. It was talked about being $45,000, which is what, 37,000 pounds something like that. And it's coming at 58. I know it's going to go back down to 45, but were you gutted that you couldn't launch it at $45,000?
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Robert Scaringe18:04
No. One of the big learnings from R1 is we had too much complexity when we launched R1. And so with R2 we said let's create a launch configuration, recognizing it's going to be some subset of what we'll ultimately build. And we said let's make the most people the most happy and we knew that the early adopters for R2 are going to want full content. So launching with the premium version was what made the most sense.
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Chris Evans18:26
So that was always the plan.
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Robert Scaringe18:27
Yeah. And then essentially over the course of the next 12 months we go highest end version, the middle spec, and then the lowest spec, the $45,000 version. But the $45,000 version is awesome.
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Chris Evans18:38
And that's definitely going to happen. So it's going to be 45 grand for an R2.
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Robert Scaringe18:46
Yeah. Well, it's $44,990, I think.
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Chris Evans18:49
Okay, fair enough. We won't argue about that. When is that going to be available?
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Robert Scaringe18:57
Summer of '27.
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Chris Evans18:59
Summer of '27. That is done deal. 100% going to happen.
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Robert Scaringe19:02
100% going to happen.
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Chris Evans19:02
100%, I like that. Okay, and here comes the big question. I'm going to ring the bell for this one. Drum roll, please. Bigger, bigger, bigger. Thank you. When can we buy one in the UK?
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Robert Scaringe19:17
Oh, that was good. We haven't set the date yet. But you're so compelling. I'm going to call the team right after this. We're going to try to pull it forward.
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Chris Evans19:26
Seriously, what are the barriers between the UK and us getting one?
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Robert Scaringe19:32
Well, it's...
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Chris Evans19:33
Just one! Can you get one over here and I'll drive it around for you?
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Robert Scaringe19:37
The biggest question for us is just the cadence of growing in the United States given that the market's very large. The R1 is the best-selling premium electric car in the United States today. It's premium electric in the whole country. It's the best-selling electric or non-electric in California. If you buy a premium SUV in California, the most popular vehicle you can buy is a Rivian. There's a very large market for it in the United States. And so recognizing we can go build that while we accumulate more volume, get closer to profitability, and then launch in Europe.
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Chris Evans20:12
Okay. In Europe. Go on. Now, you were going to say something. Please do.
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Robert Scaringe20:17
Well, there's something you said before, which I think is an important point, which is the car feels more than the sum of its parts. And I so appreciate that comment because so much of our effort, and I talk about this all the time with our teams, is to take what is thousands of people working in parallel on a really complex product and make sure that we're all really aligned in how we approach decisions and the thoughtfulness with those decisions such that it feels like one person designed the car, which is impossible. If one person designed the car, it'd take tens of thousands of years. It's too many parts, too much complexity. But that is our goal. We try to take those 40, 50 million decisions to develop a car, and we try to align everybody internally so it feels so cohesive. And that's when you can do that really well, whether that's at Rivian or whether that's at other products, products that drive that cohesiveness feel like they're more than the sum of the parts.
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Chris Evans21:11
Okay. I did want to ask you, what's your favorite ever British sports car?
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Robert Scaringe21:18
Ooh.
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Chris Evans21:19
Ooh. Do you want to think about it? Play a song if you want.
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Robert Scaringe21:23
No, no. I mean, it depends on how you're looking at...
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Chris Evans21:29
Play the song. Let's play a song and we'll come back. Play something really cool. Okay, you have two. And we'll go for European sports car as well and favorite car of all time coming up. We're here with RJ Scaringe. RJ Scaringe is in charge of a company called Rivian. When did you found it? What was the first day of Rivian?
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Robert Scaringe21:45
Started the company in 2009.
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Chris Evans21:47
2009. And here we are 2026, June 16th, Tuesday. The 16th day of June, 6th day of the World Cup in North America. And the company's worth 22 billion dollars and seemingly only going one way. Stephen Kemble, I urged you to watch Charlie and Ewan's Long Way Up to see the pioneering beginnings of those trucks. I love Rivian. Seen it, done it, had a chat with the boys. Mark the car finished from my I now have the Rivian song stuck in my head. I want a Rivian. Oh boy, I want a Rivian. You got to get Willie Nelson to do the ad. Get Willie to do the ad, man. Darren, your friendly window tint to Chris, I'm a genuine fan of the Rivian. I love it. I've shared in the company. I can't wait till it comes to the UK. I'm saving now for my Rivian. Been a fan of Rivian since Long Way Up which plays into everything you're both saying and the way Rivian embraced that before they were really ready. It was awesome. It's great to meet you. Really good to meet you, RJ. I've been very fortunate to meet some of the people who work for you in the past and I hope to see them again in the future. All right, back to the elephant in the room.
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Robert Scaringe22:50
Oh, my favorite car is...
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Chris Evans22:51
Favorite British sports car.
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Robert Scaringe22:53
All right, so I'm going to give two. Jaguar XK for design, timelessness, just absolutely beautiful. And for a car that I'm going to drive every day, Lotus Elise.
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Chris Evans23:02
XK? Not the E-Type? Interesting. Lotus Elise, of course. Very good, very good classic. I love you for that in Norfolk. Favorite European sports car of all time?
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Robert Scaringe23:20
Uh, Porsche 911.
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Chris Evans23:22
You say you're a Porsche guy.
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Robert Scaringe23:29
Yeah, probably a 1973 RS. Or a 993 C2S.
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Chris Evans23:35
Okay. And the 911s, they've resisted going electric, haven't they? And that's really worked for them. They've bitten the bullet as far as the sedans are concerned and sports cars. All right. And favorite car, RJ Scaringe, CEO and founder of Rivian, chairman of the board. Favorite car of all time? If you could have one car.
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Robert Scaringe23:58
One car and it can't be a Rivian?
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Chris Evans24:04
No. You've got a Rivian.
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Robert Scaringe24:11
It probably... I'd go with a Porsche 356 Carrera.
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Chris Evans24:17
Oh my gosh. All right, you're sticking with Porsche. Yeah. Okay, you and Jerry Seinfeld. All right, great. RJ Scaringe, everyone! I kind of like the Rivian, guys. I think they're great. You make your own mind up.