Our Story

Building a new kind of car company

By Rivian

July 5^th, 2018

We may not look like a car company, think like a car company or act like a car company — but that’s because we’ve never been interested in just making cars. We started Rivian because we wanted to make a difference.

Our founder, RJ Scaringe, loved two things as a kid — cars and nature. Cars because they went fast, nature because it indulged his innate curiosity about the world. When he wasn’t in his neighbor’s garage, helping the Porsche-restoration expert give some of the world’s most iconic automobiles new life, he was in his rowboat on the Indian River, exploring every inch of the wild estuary. Predictably, the more time he spent in nature, the more he wanted to protect it.

RJ followed his curiosities all the way to MIT. While studying engineering and lean manufacturing, he confronted his personal impact on the environment. Getting out of the city to hike and mountain bike was central to his well-being, but he was also aware that driving up to the trails was polluting the environment he very much wanted to protect and preserve. So, he found himself doing less exploring and adopted new habits like carrying around his own fork and spoon, drying his laundry by clotheslines strung around his apartment and biking to class, even in the dead of a New England winter. Still, he knew he could do more.

RJ recognized the power of the automotive industry to shape the way people live, work and play for the better. Shifts in technology and in the marketplace gave him the confidence that now was the time to rethink mobility as we know it, so after earning his PhD, he set out to help flip a hundred-year-old industry on its head.

Starting a car company from scratch was not the easy thing to do, but it felt like the right thing to do. RJ began by hand-picking a team of engineers and designers just crazy enough to believe they could help move the world in a new direction — and they got to work.

Today, Rivian — derived from "Indian River" — is made up of more than 700 adventurous individuals and counting. We’re beginning by electrifying trucks and SUVs, because they are often the most-polluting vehicles on the road — a problem for people like us, who want to stay active and require a ride that is capable of handling every kind of terrain skillfully, and hauling all kinds of gear (and loved ones) effortlessly.

We combined electrification with self-driving capabilities and intelligent features to inspire people to truly explore the world in new ways, and we’re just getting started.

Every day, each one of us gets the chance to choose adventure. To wake up with the sun for an early-morning surf, to go for a bike ride after work or take the family on an unexpected detour. We’ve made it our mission to make that choice an easy one. Every decision our designers and engineers make rests on whether or not it encourages your next adventure, big or small, because the world needs adventurers more than ever.

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RJ Scaringe on No Priors

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