Rivian Founder and CEO RJ ScaringeTalks EV Expansion, Charging Infrastructure
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. RJ Scaringe is with us. He's, of course, head of the $16 billion market cap automaker. We're talking about Rivian. We talk about this company all the time with us at Bloomberg Tech Summit here in San Francisco. And we have Ed Ludlow, a member of our team. Co-host of Bloomberg Technology. Who knows this company so well? Hey, Ed.

One thing I want to start with, RJ, is there's a lot going on today. The bromance in the White House between Elon and Donald Trump. It seems like it's over and it's not going well. So I'm just curious, have you been able to kind of win market share or anything as a result of kind of Elon's position at Doge? And I'm just curious how it might play out here.

Yeah, I mean, I think... The anti-Tesla mode. Yeah, I think in general, the thing that's been surprising is just how politicized a lot of things have become. So electric vehicles become politicized, specific brands within the electric vehicle space are politicized. And so what we've tried to do as a brand, really focused on, is to focus on what we stand for, the products, the attributes, and...

And there's the famous Michael Jordan quote, which is, "We have Republicans..." He said, "Republicans and Democrats both buy Nikes." It's the same thing with Rivian. So I'll go to Rivian events. I was just in New York yesterday. And it's such a beautiful mix of backgrounds, perspectives, cultures that are drawn to what we're building as a brand. And we're about to launch what we call an R2, which is a lower-priced vehicle. It starts at $45,000.

And that product will even broaden the aperture even more. I think what Carol's asking is if there's net positive effect for you from this environment on sales and pre-orders. Oh, that's what she was asking. I think you're benefiting from this environment. The anti-Tesla movement, have you benefited from it? No.

I think there are a lot of customers who are looking for a brand they want to connect with. So we're seeing that for sure. Sort of on that, thinking about the politics of this, rare earths. I mean, you and the team have been really clear that you've been working to educate the Trump administration when it comes to the complexities around processing rare earths here in the U.S. We did hear from the president earlier today after a call with President Xi Jinping. He said there should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of rare earths products. Are you still concerned about accessibility to rare earths?

Well, first I'd say I appreciate that the administration recognizes this is an issue. That's important. And I think that we've done a lot of work and spent a lot of time with the administration on this topic. I think this is perhaps one of the biggest topics surrounding the trade tensions with China. It's well documented that a vast majority of the world's processing for these rare earth metals happens in China.

So this is something that we're going to continue to be very focused on, continue to have concerns about until we start to see it really move. What's your backup plan? We have many backup plans. If you can't get access to these rare earths for some reason over an extended period of time, which are essential in making EVs and batteries, what do you do? So what we've spent time on over the last several months is to build alternative supply chains, but they're not...

They're not elegant because they're not set up for scale and a lot of people beyond us are also trying to build these alternative supply chains.

So I think the hope is that in the short to medium term, we see this open back up. And I think in the long term, we're probably going to see both investment into building rare earth capacity outside of China and then innovation to remove rare earths from products. So if you take... In an electric vehicle, the reason this is so important is the motors use permanent magnets and the permanent magnets have rare earth metals, things like dysprosium, all those things on the periodic table that you forget they're on there. Yeah, yeah.

But those rear fattles are needing the magnets, but you can create electromagnet to power the rotor.

You know, the rotor is the spinning part of the motor, but then you've got to get power to the rotor so that you can do it with a brush, you can do it with induction. So it's a more complex motor product, but it does remove the complexity of global trade around rare earths. But is that a little bit time away? Yeah, it's not going to, you can't flip your design overnight, but I would say I think a lot of the auto industry is going to start finding innovative ways that are perhaps maybe a little more expensive.

That reduced the reliance on the original. People wonder how nimble you are though. Like do you remember when we first met seven years ago, with respect, your suppliers really wouldn't engage with you because of scale. So if you have had to pivot a little bit because of policy, particularly for planning for R2, have you been able to A, get your suppliers to listen to you and B, affect to change? What's changed?

I mean, yeah, we've talked about this a lot. I mean, our relationship with suppliers and leverage we have with those suppliers is so much stronger today with R2 and what's to come than what we had, you know, in 2019 or 2020, even 2018. But I'd say the thing that's really helpful for us in R2 is it's not as if this is a surprise. We saw

you know if you going into summer of last year we saw some of these tensions already rising between the united states and china and that was as we were planning for and sourcing r2 so we contemplated and in many ways anticipated a lot of these situations we're now dealing with in terms of tariffs in terms of trade restrictions happening so in the medium to long term it's we're pretty well covered in the short to medium term

you know, things get shut off, that's really challenging. And so that's where I think the rare earth challenge is that if this happens, where it's off, it just creates a lot of pressure on a very thin non-China supply chain. I still think there's a lot of interest in Rivian. What I hear is there's also a lot of interest in Orso, your micro mobility spin-off.

Would you consider kind of de-risking yourselves a little bit by allowing outside investors to write you a check into that venture and get you some capital or de-risk your own balance sheet in that respect? Yeah, so we spun this micro-mobility

portion of Rivian out and we actually raised outside capitals. We brought $105 million in at the start of the year. Which is from Eclipse. Which is from Eclipse, exactly. And so it's now independently financed from Rivian. And it's a really exciting set of products. We're going to show those products in the fall. But would the venture look at even further outside capital to get going a little bit? We could, yeah. We could, but we're really happy with where it is. It's a

It's exciting to build a new business with the strength of all the riveting technologies and starting points. I saved 30 seconds at the end to wrap up our show. With everything that's going on from the administration kind of pushback, it feels like, against alternative energy and EVs, do you think it's a real setback or things will keep moving? And forgive me, it's just about 30 seconds. 30 seconds. All right. Go. Look, I think...

I think there's a lot of noise in the short term, but the end state is still really clear. The world's going to electrify. We're going to move towards sustainable, carbon neutral transportation. And the countries and the businesses that focus on the future state are the ones that are going to be participants in the long term.

And so, you know, we talk about this often with administration, which is the importance of U.S. companies having technical leadership, production capacity around these areas and make sure we're there. You did it. Thank you so much. Great way for us to wrap up this hour. Thank you, of course, and of course, our ad-lib. Are you still quoting 30-year-old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.

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