The car industry has reached a “fork in the road” between short-term profits and the heavy investments needed to survive, according to Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, who warned that automakers focused on fossil-fuel engines risk being “woefully behind” on technology by the end of the decade.
In an interview this month in London, Scaringe said many manufacturers have chosen profits, ramping up production of petrol or hybrid pickup trucks and SUVs in the US and Europe. He said those decisions might look good financially in the near term but would come back to haunt them.
“That looks really good financially for 2026, 2027, maybe even 2028,” Scaringe said. “But as you get to the end of the 2020s and into the 2030s, I think we’re going to find a lot of companies are unfortunately woefully behind in terms of their technology.”
The retreat from electric vehicles has been particularly stark in the US, where the Trump administration has gutted incentives to produce and buy EVs. Ford, General Motors, Honda, Stellantis and Volkswagen, all of which have large US operations, have collectively written off more than $70bn from their previous EV investments, according to Reuters.
Scaringe said the “more damaging and more dangerous aspect” of the turn against EVs was not the delayed battery transition but the failure to develop the software that increasingly controls every aspect of the vehicle. He said petrol cars rely on scattered computer chips — from the engine to the seats and wing mirrors — rather than a centralized architecture that can be easily updated and that reduces production costs by “thousands of dollars.”
Rivian, founded in 2009, delivered its first electric vehicle in 2021, the same year it went public with one of the largest IPOs in US history. The company lost $3.6bn in 2025 amid heavy investment in the R2 and in autonomous driving capabilities. Its market value has fallen from above $100bn at its IPO to about $21bn.
The R2 is “make or break” for Rivian, Scaringe said, as the company strives to turn an annual profit for the first time. The roughly $45,000 SUV began deliveries in the US this month, though some reservation holders have been put off by lease prices starting around $829 a month and the elimination of the federal $7,500 EV tax credit.
Electric cars made up 7.8% of all US car sales in 2025, according to the interview, and Scaringe said the R2 alone could eventually increase that share by three or four percentage points. He dismissed claims that buyers do not want EVs, saying Tesla’s dominance with the Model 3 and Model Y was a “sign of a market starved for great choices.”
Rivian’s heavy investment in digital technology has attracted major partners. Along with Amazon’s investment and a deal to supply up to 100,000 delivery vans, Rivian and Germany’s Volkswagen agreed a $5.8bn electric tech and software joint venture in 2024. Uber invested $1.25bn in a deal that could lead to the sale of 50,000 robotaxis.
Scaringe said Rivian could help increase EV adoption in the US despite the White House backlash. “The objective is to be a very large company” with annual sales in the millions, he said.
Chinese carmakers dominate the global EV industry but are locked out of the US by prohibitive tariffs. Scaringe said their technology is not superior to Rivian’s or Tesla’s, but they pose a threat to legacy automakers that do not adopt modern software-defined platforms.
Rivian plans to sell the R2 in the UK and mainland Europe, but Scaringe said that would not happen for at least a year.