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limited financial potential. As Scaringe put
it, “The product we were building was really
failing to answer the question of: Why do
we need to exist as a company?”
The answer came two years later, at the
end of 2011. With Tesla poised to release the
Model S, which would dominate the market
for high-end electric sedans, Scaringe told
his team it was time to pivot to trucks and
SUVs. They might be less exciting to build
than glossy roadsters, but they’d give the
company an existential purpose. At the time,
light-duty vehicles—the Environmental
Protection Agency’s catchall term for cars,
trucks, SUVs, and minivans—accounted
for more than 60 percent of the country’s
transportation emissions. Trucks were the
thirstiest gas drinkers of them all, with EPA
ratings that had hovered between 16 and 19
miles per gallon for the previous 30 years.
Yet along with SUVs, they were also among
the most popular vehicles on the road.
It has taken Scaringe more than a decade,
but at the end of this year, Rivian’s first
pickup truck, the R1T, will begin rolling
off the production line in Normal, Illinois.
A sister SUV, the R1S, will follow in early
- The wisdom of the company’s pivot
is now clear: In 2019, the best-selling vehi-
cles in the United States were the Ford F-150
(896,526 sold), the Dodge Ram (633,694),
and the Chevy Silverado (575,600); the next
four on the list were all SUVs. And according
to the International Energy Agency, SUVs
alone have done more to increase CO 2
emissions in the past decade than planes,
cargo ships, or heavy industry. The mar-
ket is there, in other words, but it hasn’t yet
proved willing to enter the 21st century.
The R1T and the R1S are pure battery
electrics. They’re targeted less toward con-
struction workers hauling tools than hikers
taking a Subaru into the Sierras on week-
ends. This is by intention. Scaringe, who
has read a psychographic profile or two,
estimates that only around 10 percent of
pickups sold in the US are used strictly for
work. Many now come loaded with luxury
flourishes and roomy cabins and chromium
baubles. Owners drive them not around the
ranch but to football games on weekends
and the office on weekday mornings. Riv-
ian designed the R1T for this 90 percent,
with a focus on what Scaringe calls “ride
quality” and “a demonstrably better driv-
ing experience.” The pickup walks a care-
ful line between Detroit traditionalism and
EV iconoclasm. Where Tesla’s forthcoming
Cybertruck looks like origami on wheels,
the R1T, slim and limber, looks more like an
F-150 on a gym-and-yoga regimen.
Rivian is seeking adventurous buyers—or
those aspiring to appear adventurous, any-
way—who can afford to shell out around
$60,000 for an entry-level model. That’s
about a third more than they’d pay for an
equivalent gas- or diesel-powered pickup,
although the higher sticker price is offset to
some degree by federal EV tax credits, state
rebate programs, and lower lifetime fuel
costs. What they’ll get for their money is a
truck that, depending on battery configu-
MOVE
_Fifty electric school buses are rolling into Virginia this year. The fleet could grow to 1,500 by 2025—a small but promising
step away from diesel, which powers the rest of the nation’s 480,000 school buses.
DURING THE SUMMER OF 2006, BACK WHEN
RJ Scaringe was working through a degree
in automotive engineering at MIT, he began
to wonder how difficult it might be to live
within strict environmental boundaries.
How much would you have to change—and
how fast, for how long—if you desired to
wipe away the carbon traces of your every-
day life? Scaringe decided to conduct an
experiment, using himself as the subject.
For months, he walked, biked, or used pub-
lic transportation wherever he went. He
took cold showers, washed his laundry by
hand, and traded his dryer for a clothesline.
When he ate out, he brought his own spoon,
to cut down on plastic waste.
“I was tracking the data really closely,”
Scaringe, a soft-spoken, genial sort with
Clark Kentish glasses and short dark hair,
told me recently. By summer’s end he had
reached two conclusions. The first was that
he still had a meaningful carbon footprint.
The second was that he was disheveled and
uncomfortable. “I said, holy smokes, no one
will sign up for this, and if this is our plan
to address climate change, we’re going to
lose,” he recalled. Asking billions of peo-
ple to don an unwashed hair shirt wouldn’t
work; the solution would have to be rapid
technological innovation.
Several years later, PhD in hand, Scar-
inge founded an automotive company
called Rivian, named for the Indian River
in Florida, near where he grew up. He’d
spent his teenage years rebuilding clas-
sic sports cars and now hoped to pro-
duce a modern one of his own, powered
by a hybrid system. “Almost from the very
beginning, I knew in my heart something
was wrong,” he said. The hybrid seemed
lacking in higher purpose, and it could have
Where Tesla’s
Cybertruck
looks like origami
on wheels,
Rivian’s electric
pickup, slim and
limber, looks
more like a Ford
F-150 on a gym-
and-yoga regimen.
