Rivian CEO: EV Maker Will Make Smaller, Cheaper EVs Next
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Rivian's CEO RJ Scaringe hinted at the future expansion of the EV lineup into R2 and R3 vehicles.
He suggested that future Rivians will be smaller and cheaper, but he claims they'll stay true to what he called Rivian's "adventure" essence.
The new info came from an interview on the WVFRM YouTube podcast hosted by Marques Brownlee.
Seeing any Rivian out in the wild is still a rare thing in most communities, but despite not yet achieving mass proliferation of its R1T and R1S EVs, the company is already looking ahead to future products. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe recently sat down with YouTube personality Marques Brownlee on his WVFRM podcast to talk about Rivian's current lineup and potential future products.
The conversation started with Brownlee asking Scaringe for some background on the EV startup. Scaringe revealed that when Rivian was first created (13 years ago), it was largely focused on creating a sports car. Sound familiar to any Tesla fans?
Setting a Course for Adventure
Eventually, of course, the company switched its perspective and began targeting a different kind of sporting EV buyer with the R1T pickup and R1S SUV. According to Scaringe, the core idea was to build a brand that enables and inspires adventure.
"We identified the flagship products to do that, with R1S and R1T intended to be truly a flagship," said Scaringe. "Following those, we have a smaller set of products creatively we call R2, R3, but they move in different form factors and obviously different sizes."
If the R1S and R1T are the flagship models for the brand, it follows that any vehicles in the R2 lineup can be expected to be priced lower. Scaringe confirmed that, explaining how different development of a vehicle with a target price is than development of flagship models. "For the R2 product lineup, we have less dollars to spend, and so things that we didn't have to debate as much on a flagship product we really are debating heavily," Scaringe said.
Scaringe noted that the company is deep in debate about which aspects of the R2 are vital and core to the identity of the brand, and which aspects are more frivolous. How capable does it have to be off-road while maintaining on-road driving dynamics? What about Easter-egg items like the Bluetooth speaker and the flashlight in the door? They're the sort of questions that century old manufacturers have nailed down, while younger companies like Rivian are still finding a brand identity. "The goal with these is to continue to take the essence of what we've done here, but in different packages and smaller form factors," Scaringe said.
Smaller-Picture Items
Scaringe also focused in on some nearer-term information that Rivian watchers want to hear about: for instance, software and the lack of Apple CarPlay support in the R1S and R1T. On this topic, Scaringer compared in-house control of the software to fine cuisine:
"A lot of the things we do, whether it's music or mapping, we have to make sure we integrate with the best-in-class platforms, but controlling the systems just allows us to be the arbiter... or the head chef of the experience you get." Sounds as though Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support won't be coming to the Rivian lineup any time soon.
But Scaringe did reveal two new options on the way: one being a small storage container in place of the Bluetooth speaker that lives beneath the front seats. It will use the same latch as the speaker to keep it from the danger of becoming a projectile in a moving vehicle. He also said an updated version of the camp kitchen is in development for the gear tunnel. The discontinued version of the camp kitchen took up practically the entire gear tunnel, but Scaringe promises the updated version will be a more reasonable size.
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