RJ Scaringe got his PhD from MIT studying internal combustion engines. Then he founded a company to make them obsolete. In 2009, fresh out of grad school, he launched what would become Rivian. The company spent nearly a decade in stealth mode before arriving at the 2018 LA Auto Show with two electric rides nobody had seen coming.
The road, however, hasn’t been easy. Rivian lost $3.6 billion in 2025, and has burned through nearly $25 billion in the past eight years. It has spent more money over the same period than almost every other pure EV maker. Rivian’s IPO was the largest worldwide in 2021, and one of the largest in US history, within days valuing the company at over $100 billion. Its stock has dropped from a high of $130 to around $16. Since the R1 went on sale in 2021, Rivian has sold 175,000 cars. In the same time, Tesla has sold 8 million.
But in 2024, Volkswagen Group committed up to $5.8 billion to co-develop software and electrical architecture technology with Rivian in a huge joint venture. This year, Uber announced it will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian to build and deploy up to 50,000 fully autonomous robotaxis.
Regardless, the company needs its new R2 SUV to work. Not just sell, but sell in large numbers.
I sat down with Scaringe for a candid, wide-ranging discussion on what happens if the R2 fails, why the R1 launched with dead-end tech, how to compete with China, the Cybertruck’s failure, and the virtue of buttons inside cars. But we started on easier ground: his thoughts on the most polarizing EV of 2026. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
RJ Scaringe, CEO of Rivian Automotive, apparently hoping to be better off-road than an R2.
Courtesy of Rivian
JEREMY WHITE: What do you think about Ferrari’s Luce?
RJ SCARINGE: The way Jony [Ive] and Marc [Newson] approach design is incredibly intentional, so there’s not a decision on that car that’s unintentional. Through that lens, you have to like look at it in a different light. It’s definitely different than what people were expecting.
Do you like the Luce, though?
Would I buy it? I don’t own a Ferrari. There are things about it I really like. Parts of the interior are just phenomenal, like how beautifully well executed the haptics, the switches, the buttons are. You can see Jony’s fingerprints all over it.
