Inside Rivian’s Future with CEO RJ Scaringe | R2 Updates, Fleet Strategy & ACT Expo

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:07]Hi everyone. Uh we're here at the ACT Expo in 2026. Uh I'm joined by R.J.

[00:00:12]Scring, CEO of Rivian. And uh we're really excited to talk today. you know, and there's I stopped by the Rivian booth over the past couple of days and uh there's a lot going on and you know, in terms of Irons in the Fire with Rivian, there's there's so many things going on, but you know, the the picture that, you know, I'm looking at when I see what Rivian is doing is a lot of synergies that can really lend themselves well to to the fleet side of it, you know. So given that we're at ACT and you know that's that's what a lot of these folks are are looking to understand you know how would you say that that Rivian is really positioning itself in the fleet space you know there's the EDV and now R2 and there's software there's all these things going on what what would you what would your take be on how Rivian's positioning itself >> well the you know there's so many different types of fleets uh you talked about R2 and EDV there um both of them would be part of um you know large fleet business for us of course the van ready.

[00:01:06]In the case of the van, uh this was developed really uh deeply thinking around about the last mile process. And so looking at the entirety of what it takes to deliver packages and working in partnership with Amazon to define what that vehicle became and ultimately you I'm really excited to see, you know, there's now well in excess of 30,000 of these on the road. uh as as we've talked about in our our uh you know most recent earnings call that's going to be ramping pretty significantly over the coming year and maintaining a much higher output in terms of volume and it's just a reflection of Amazon very clearly seeing a significant TCO advantage a significant cost advantage to running not just an electric vehicle but also a connected vehicle vehicle that has built-in uh prognostics uh predictive capabilities in terms of looking at service intervals uh and then the ability to integrate very deeply into their software architecture. And so it's it's really a we used to always say softwaredefined vehicles. We're increasingly thinking about these vehicles as being AI defined where you can leverage better decisioning through the collection of all this information across the vehicle. And so that's in the in the delivery space. Um you know recently we also signed a large deal with Uber where we're building a robo taxi uh on our R2 platform. And that's a very different type of fleet business, but nonetheless still very much a a fleet business. And in this case, we're moving people. And a huge element of that is the technology is self-driving.

[00:02:32]And we see that playing out across everything. Movement of goods, movement of people. Um, you know, related to that, we have a a microobility company that we created. Uh, the name of the company is also and also just announced a deal with Door Dash. In that case, it's a fleet also is building a fleet of small delivery bots uh that will be delivering you know mostly food for Door Dash. So it's again just the the entire model of how we think about fleets running fleets managing them it's shifting very heavily towards not only autonomy but electrification connectivity uh and a lot of the insights that could come out of an AI defined platform. How do how do you you know I mean you covered so many topics in that that brief summary like how is how is Rivian keeping all these things organized and capitalizing on the fact that you know we're doing commercial vehicles there's there's AI integrations now there's vertical integration with all of that and you know it's it's one thing to to be doing all of those but it's another thing to like have a feedback loop in instituted in the company where all those learnings are then passed back around. How do you how do you do that?

[00:03:40]Well, I it a big focus the business is prioritization. So what do we do in what order? And we think of it as there are big uh like horizontal technology platforms that can be deployed across very different vehicle platforms or vehicle types. And so autonomy is a a really big example of that where we're spending an enormous amount of money developing our autonomous platform. Uh another is our connected vehicle platform. Another is uh the diagnostics and prognostics platform. And so as different as let's say our commercial van looks from an R2, a lot of those horizontal platforms are very much the same, those big technology builds. And then we have to decide which vehicle instances we create around them. And so of course in the consumer side, R2 is really important for us because it's our first high volume mass market vehicle.

[00:04:31]the the R1 was very successful in the in the you know the flagship or premium space but the nature of that space is it's a much smaller segment whereas R2 is going like right into the meat of the largest segment you know mid-size SUVs um and in the case of the van we're now seeing that really start to ramp because of all the investments we've made into the technology the the capabilities of the vehicle it's manifesting as a as a better cost alternative to anything else out there >> indeed Yeah, I it's pretty incredible to see, you know, looking at the the R2 where it may inject in the marketplace.

[00:05:07]You know, some of the some of the deals and and things that, you know, commercially you're navigating right now, you know, are are largely made possible by having a vehicle that's at that price point. But, you know, as you know, and we've we've torn down, you know, the the R1T, you know, early iterations of it, and we we've done subsets.

[00:05:26]>> I'm excited for you guys to tear down the R2. It's it's a giant improvement.

[00:05:29]>> Yeah. took took the words out of my mouth and you know so we're we're super excited to get that. What what do you attribute the the ability to offer a vehicle at that price point too cuz you know I think people look at you know an industry they're like oh man it must be really really hard to to engineer this vehicle that's got it's super featurerich and it's this high price point. Well the high price point gives you a ceiling and sometimes allows you to get away with certain things. The low price point puts more constraints on it.

[00:05:56]>> Yeah it's definitely harder. You're right. Uh it's it's I completely resonate with that point. Um you know one of the things that's happened for us from a platform point of view from a technology platform point of view is when we move to a software defined architecture where you consolidate the compute platforms into a very small number of zonal computers or zonal ECUs is you take a tremendous amount of cost out you simplify the harness uh and you move to bringing all that software content in house. And so of course this is this is how Rivian built u you know built its architecture.

[00:06:30]R2 is going to take what we have in R1 and push that a little further. But that platform is going to keep developing and the exciting thing is how we've been able to turn that platform into something that's scalable into very different price points and therefore content levels uh and very different form factors and across different brands. And so we did a a large $5.8 billion software licensing deal with Volkswagen. uh this was about a year and a half ago now and the first product to come out of that is going to be the ID1.

[00:07:00]It's not a vehicle that's going to be sold in the United States, but it is remarkable in terms of what our technology is enabling for simplification of the electronic stack and the um you know the wiring harness.

[00:07:13]>> Yeah.

[00:07:14]>> And so that's you know this is public but this is a vehicle that has a price of around $20,000. It's an EV. It's it's remarkably nice.

[00:07:22]>> Yeah. Uh, and that's the car I I keep telling people I can't wait for folks to tear it apart because they're going to be like, "Where's all the computers?

[00:07:31]Where's like how' they simplify the harness so much?" So, it's >> we pushed that really far and we're going to start to see the benefits of some of the things we did there playing out across the rest of our portfolio.

[00:07:41]>> Yeah, it's it's a pretty powerful statement when, you know, some of these legacy OEMs, you know, are are, you know, like VW, they're giant corporation, right? one of the largest in the world and um they've built vehicles for well over 100 years and then taking something you know that Rivian's developed over the past 10 years sub 10 years and you know really uh putting their money where their mouth is and saying you know what hey zonal might not be our strongest domain let's go to the folks who are really good at that so I mean it's it's a testament to everything that >> the Rivian folks have done and um you know I know we've we've spent a little bit of time talking to the folks at also as well >> and uh the the thing that made a strong impression for me is everywhere we look whether it's the commercial the the passenger vehicle or the quadricycle and the and also everyone's like well yeah because we've got this synergistic thing and it's those horizontals that you were talking about and um >> yeah there's a lot of elements also that it was able to leverage >> you know some of our operating system and some of the core elements these you know big heavy lifts that we had to make in terms of technology you know and you know being able to deploy when we say software it's our software and all of our electronics we design the computers and ECUs in seeing those get deployed across Rivians from a van to a R1 to R2 to soon R3 then across a whole portfolio products from Volkswagen Group to then micromobility.

[00:09:00]It's it's super exciting.

[00:09:01]>> It's very exciting. Well, R.J. I know uh we've got a packed schedule, so thank you for taking the time. We're going to be tracking you closely and best of luck with everything on the show. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone.