RJ Scaringe
Founder & CEO, Rivian. On 5 shows, 7 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@RJScaringe ↗LinkedIn ↗rivian.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
He founded the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian in 2009 after earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT. Under his leadership, Rivian brought consumer adventure EVs to market and deployed commercial electric delivery vans with Amazon.
5shows
7appearances
125statements
34resolved
21supported
6contradicted
62%fully supported
16said about them ↓ Everything RJ Scaringe said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Scaringe: Rivian has sufficient capital to reach positive free cash flow
“That's not only enough capital to launch R two and normal, but it's enough capital to launch our second R two plant in Georgia and take us through positive free cashflow.”
Scaringe: Automakers failing at neural net autonomy will shrink to zero
“It's the companies that do this well will exist. The companies that don't do this well, like, I feel really strong on this. They will not exist. They will shrink to nothing. They'll asymptotically approach, you know, zero.”
Scaringe: Apple CarPlay creates a jarring experience lacking vehicle-level controls
“We just felt and continue to feel very strongly around creating a consistent, fully integrated digital experience where you're not jumping between apps, let's say from like a CarPlay app back to the vehicle app, and it's quite jarring when you don't have, let'…”
Scaringe: Tesla Cybertruck cannot pass European pedestrian protection safety standards
“Like, for example, a Cybertruck would not, could not work in Europe.”
Scaringe: Rivian targets supervised autonomy in 2026, unsupervised in 2027
“Later this year, we'll have a full supervised point to point, which is, which would be very similar to like Tesla's FSD. And that'll roll out to all of our gen two vehicles. And of course R two. Then next year we allow it to go unsupervised. So you can take yo…”
Scaringe: Rivian to deploy 50,000 R2 robotaxis on Uber starting in 2028
“We'll be deploying 50,000 robo-taxi versions of R-II. We start that in twenty-twenty-eight with, like, paid, you know, regular rides, but leading into that, we'll have vehicles on the platform with safety drivers, with people in the front seat”
Scaringe: Fewer than five non-Chinese companies can solve neural net autonomy
“I think there's more than one, less than five companies outside of China that have The necessary ingredients to do this, the capital, the GPUs, the car park with, you know, enough vehicles generating enough data. I say more than one less than five. It's probab…”
Scaringe: Rule-based autonomy has a zero percent chance of competing
“A lot of the solutions that are more one dot O based and are sort of stuck in that framework, I think have a, like a truly a zero percent chance of progressing to be competitive with a neural net based approach.”
Scaringe: By 2030, car buyers will expect vehicles to drive themselves
“I mean, I think by 2030, it'll be It's inconceivable to buy a car and not expect it to drive itself.”
Scaringe: Upcoming Rivian R2 will include lidar alongside radar and cameras
“Our approach to this is we have a higher level of capability on our perception stacks. We have better cameras. We have radar. And of course, with R two, we'll have a lidar as well.”
Scaringe: US EV adoption is throttled by a lack of vehicle choices
“So I think my view is the EV adoption in the United States is a reflection of the lack of choice. There's one set of really great choices with Model F and Model Y. I think there needs to be many more.”
Scaringe: Rivian is the best-selling SUV overall in California and Washington
“Interestingly, in California and the state of Washington, we have the best-selling SUV, electric or not electric, in California and the state of Washington.”
Scaringe: Vertical integration becomes a huge structural cost advantage at scale
“When you're producing less than 50,000 units a year, the engineering fixed cost and the operational fixed cost to run that is very high, so it's a structural cost challenge. But you reach an inflection. Well, just to run an engineering team to engineer all tha…”
Scaringe: Hands-Free and Eyes-Off Driving Will Be Expected Within Five Years
“Or in this, the next five years, we're going to see autonomy features where the idea of like hands-free or hands-free eyes off go from being something that a very small percentage of customers are looking for or using to something that's essentially expected.”
Scaringe: Every automaker except Rivian and Tesla relies on 50-150 computers
“And so, with the exception of two companies, Rivian and Tesla, every car on the road has, depending on the amount of content, anywhere from 50 to maybe a 150 little computers that run the car.”
Scaringe: Automakers without software-defined architectures will lose market share
“That must come, and if it doesn't, sort of like if manufacturers don't make that change, they're just going to lose market share, and the ones that do have that technology are going to gain a lot of market share in the next 10 years.”
Scaringe: Rivian steady-state vehicle sales will achieve 20% to 25% gross margin
“Vehicle sales, let's say that comfortably sitting it when we get to the right steady state, the 20 to 25% gross margin.”
Scaringe: Chinese EV Cost Advantage Stems from Government-Subsidized Capital
“What's driven the cost down is that you have the compounding benefits of much lower cost of capital across not just this, the manufacturer, the vehicle manufacturer, but across their whole supply chain. So tier one, tier two, tier three, everyone's cost of cap…”
Scaringe: Auto Production Will Shift to China Without Trade Friction
“If There's zero trade friction between, let's say, a country and China. More production in the fullness of time will shift to China because of those advantages. The lower cost of labor, the lower cost of capital.”
Scaringe: Legacy EV launches fail due to uncompelling products, not customer hesitation
“There's been a number of EV launches from Existing manufacturers that haven't gone that well, and I think we get the causality backwards. We say, oh, it's because customers aren't ready to buy EVs. And I say, well, no, it's because the EV is not that compellin…”
Scaringe: Musk's relationship with Trump is helpful for vehicle electrification
“Tesla and Elon, ah, having a relationship with President Trump is actually helpful to electrification. It's certainly going to provide the perspective of, ah, the importance of EVs.”
Scaringe: Only Rivian and Tesla have massively consolidated vehicle computer architectures
“I think there's really two companies in the world that have this level of vertical integration and an architecture that's used. Hardware consolidation to massively simplify the topology of computers, which is us and Tesla, of course.”
Scaringe: The US power grid cannot simultaneously sustain EV, AI, and crypto
“Is our grid in good enough shape to sustain all these at once?
RJ Scaringe: Absolutely not.
No, no.
It's I mean, that's the thing that makes this such a unique moment in time.”
The other half of the tape: RJ Scaringe's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 15 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 7Alex Kantrowitz 2Stanley Tang 1John Collison 1Garrett Langley 1
Statements about RJ Scaringe, by other people (1)
Tang: DoorDash partnered with Rivian spin-out Also for autonomous vehicles
“We actually partnered up with this company called also, which is this micro mobility company that spun out of Rivian.
[2316] Stanley Tang: So,
[2317] Stanley Tang: RJ is actually the board of founder and chairman of the company. So if, you know, like, why do…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 10
Big Technology 2
Cheeky Pint 2
No Priors 1
2026 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 9 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens RJ's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHEEKY PINTLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Rivian | 1 | 39 | 64% 9/14 | full record on Cheeky Pint → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Rivian | 3 | 39 | 78% 7/9 | full record on How I Built This → |
| BIG TECHNOLOGYLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Rivian | 1 | 20 | 33% 2/6 | full record on Big Technology → |
| NO PRIORSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Rivian | 1 | 14 | 33% 1/3 | full record on No Priors → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founder & CEO, Rivian | 1 | 13 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Masters of Scale → |