Rivian CEO Robert Joseph Scaringe, better known as RJ, is living his lifelong dream. Getting here though has required dedication to a vision that once seemed nearly impossible. Even now, as the company’s assembly lines have started churning out its electric vehicles, success still isn’t assured. Rivian’s off-road-capable trucks and SUVs have won awards and customers adore them.
That idea propelled the company for a couple of years, he said, before it was scrapped for something entirely different. There was no sudden shift, Scaringe said, just a gradual realization that the hybrid concept wasn’t radical enough. “One of the really incredible things about the early days of the company was the ability, because of the lack of capital, because of the lack of scale, to rapidly move around in terms of what the business strategy was or the product strategy was,” he said.
Cool trucks.