ration, can go up to 400 miles on a single
charge and accelerate from 0 to 60 in as
little as three seconds flat. The R1T is rated
for towing 11,000 pounds, making it eas-
ily as muscular as a no-frills F-150 or Ram.
Some models can even, upon command,
execute a stand-in-place, 360-degree “tank
turn.” All Rivians will come equipped with
semiautonomous modes and an Alexa assis-
tant. And, like Scaringe himself, the uphol-
stery will be vegan.
The company still faces a climb of
extraordinary technical and economic dif-
ficulty. Relaxing one afternoon at Rivian’s
engineering and design center in Plym-
outh, Michigan, Scaringe, now 37, ticked
off a list of obstacles. There is, first of all,
the challenge of appealing to truck tra-
ditionalists. Some buyers, one auto ana-
lyst told me, might be unwilling to give up
the ineffable feeling of “truckness” they
get behind the wheel of, say, a Silverado.
And even green fanatics aren’t guaranteed
customers: So far, any electric vehicle that
doesn’t have the Tesla badge has found it
nearly impossible to gain a foothold in the
American market, with sales of non-Tesla
EVs actually declining last year across the
board. Meanwhile, a host of new compet-
itors—including Arrival, a startup backed
by Kia and Hyundai, and Bollinger, whose
vehicles resemble boxy, retro Jeeps—are
nipping at Rivian’s heels.
To Rivian’s good fortune—or, possi-
bly, its utter ruin—it has the support of a
wealthy, well-connected patron. Last year,
at a press conference in Washington, DC,
Jeff Bezos announced what he called the
Climate Pledge, committing Amazon to
weaning itself off fossil fuels by 2030. To
meet its goal without delaying world domi-
nation, the company will need an immense
new fleet of zero-emissions delivery vans.
Rivian has committed to designing and
building the first 10,000 for Amazon by
2022, with another 90,000 due by 2024.
There will be little room for failure, Scar-
inge says: “We cannot be late in delivering
those vehicles.”
“top-hats” the vehicles with different bodies
to create distinctive models. The skateboard
isn’t quite one-size-fits-all: The Amazon
van has by far the largest chassis, and the
R1S the smallest. But the basic engineering
is the same. As Michael Bell, who oversaw
software development for Rivian until Feb-
ruary, told me, “having a well-documented,
defined, abstracted platform allows you to
just move faster.” In theory, the company
can use its standard dough recipe to make
any size pizza, with any kind of toppings,
and do it exceedingly quickly.
The responsibility for integrating these
platforms and vehicle designs falls mainly
on Mark Vinnels, Rivian’s chief engineer.
Vinnels, who came to the company two
years ago from McLaren, the luxury Brit-
ish sports car builder, is usually in one of
two places—test-driving prototypes at the
Toyota Arizona Proving Grounds or tak-
ing meetings in his office in Plymouth. He
speaks with a thick English accent and at a
clip that approximates a McLaren roadster’s.
When I visited him in Plymouth, he said he
was going “1,000 miles an hour,” racing
to complete technical sign-off on the R1T.
There were crash tests to run, range num-
bers to confirm with the EPA, components
to check for quality and durability. But Vin-
nels didn’t seem especially concerned. “With
the skateboard, you can pretty much put a
seat and a steering wheel on this and drive
it away,” he said. He paused, then asked, “Do
you want to go see some hardware?”
We walked through a set of double doors
to Vinnels’ engineering shop, an enormous,
high-ceilinged room populated with Rivi-
ans in various states of undress. Some were
what the company calls mules—prototypes
hidden beneath the carapaces of old Ford
F-150s so that they could be driven around
in public without attracting attention. Vin-
nels led me past a dirt-encrusted R1T that
was raised on a lift for inspection; it had
just arrived home after a 105-day journey
from the tip of Argentina to Los Angeles.
When we reached the skateboard, Vinnels
crossed his arms and pointed out the com-↙
RIVIAN’S HEADQUARTERS ARE LOCATED ON
the outskirts of Plymouth, a small city
30 minutes west of Detroit, in a refur-
bished factory that once produced com-
passes, gunsights, and adding machines.
The offices—home to about 800 employ-
ees, with the rest of the firm’s 2,000 work-
ers situated in Illinois, on the West Coast,
and in Europe—are brightened by white-
washed walls and high clerestory win-
dows. Rivian has installed display tables
along the periphery, filled with hundreds
of items (carabiners, US National Park stick-
ers, chic rucksacks, mesh sneakers, titanium
camping mugs) that are meant to remind
employees of the sort of customer they’re
aiming to entice. In a central atrium, sun-
light pours down onto a silver-blue proto-
type R1T, a point of keen interest for visiting
parts suppliers. Arguably, though, it’s the
Amazon van, parked a few feet away, that
may drive the company into viability.
The van isn’t real. It’s made of clay and
wrapped in blue plastic. Rivian’s actual
Amazon prototypes remain mostly in
stealth mode while the companies sort out
design requirements and technical specs.
Once that process is complete, the larg-
est hurdle for Scaringe’s team will be mass
manufacturing—a challenge so difficult it
nearly broke Tesla during its scale-up of the
Model 3, leading Elon Musk to camp out at
his factory overnight. Rivian’s task may be
even harder than Tesla’s was: The company
must produce a truck, an SUV, and a huge
fleet of vans without ever having made a
single car. And that’s just in the next cou-
ple of years. While no timeline has been
announced, the firm also plans to make a
large SUV for Ford-Lincoln and a small SUV
under the Rivian brand.
The link between these projects—the feat
of engineering that makes them conceivably
doable—is Rivian’s so-called skateboard
chassis. The company takes a single com-
mon platform, adds various combinations of
battery packs, drivetrains, and motors, then_NASA’s all-electric X-57 Maxwell plane, powered by lithium-ion batteries and 14 propellers, will take its first flight later this
year, potentially marking the dawn of ultraquiet air travel.