The storm developed quickly over west central Illinois on April 17th, first as a single high-intensity system called a supercell, and then later that evening transforming into a long squall line of thunderstorms. Tucked inside a wall of wind were several smaller, quick-forming tornadoes, one of which landed directly on Rivian’s electric vehicle factory on the outskirts of the college town of Normal. The ferocious storm knocked down one of the walls and tore through the plant’s roof like a can opener peeling back the lid.  

Bobby Dean Parker, vice president of manufacturing at Rivian, was at home in Normal when he got the call from someone at the factory. Parker, an affable Southerner, had already experienced his fair share of powerful Midwestern thunderstorms despite only being on the job for six months. But he quickly realized that this one was different. “Hey, it’s not good,” the person on the phone told him. “Oh shit,” Parker thought, before dashing out into the still-stormy night. 

Thousands of miles away at an event in Southern California, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe’s phone suddenly lit up with a flurry of texts. At first, information was scarce. Was anyone hurt? How bad was it? Scaringe was reluctant to send anyone inside to assess the damage without knowing the structural integrity of the building. Then someone sent him a video. 

Even in the dark, you can immediately see a giant hole in the factory’s roof. The power is out, so floodlights illuminate the wreckage. Water can be heard rushing in the background; the tornado triggered the plant’s sprinkler system, causing the pits under the assembly line to flood. The concrete floor is also slick with water. The damage appears quite extensive. 

Scaringe was stunned; his factory suddenly had what seemed to be its own sunroof.  

For Rivian, the tornado couldn’t have hit at a worse time, or in a worse place. Not only did it strike right as the company was poised to roll out its all-important, more affordable R2 vehicle, the storm landed directly on the section of the factory where production for the midsize SUV was set to begin in a matter of days. 

Since bursting on the scene eight years ago with a pair of exciting, luxury-priced EVs, Rivian has cultivated an impassioned fan base and earned a lot of goodwill in the industry. And while the company appears to have done many things right in its short history, all of its hopes for the future are currently pinned to the R2 model. These next few months are especially crucial. Rivian needs to ramp up production for the R2, hit all of its targets, and get the vehicle to customers in what is arguably the harshest climate for electric vehicles since the first battery-powered models arrived nearly two decades ago. 

Unlike many of the forces currently bearing down on Rivian, threatening its very existence, all the tornado did was blow a hole in its factory. The roof can be repaired, the debris swept away, the pits pumped out. But as for the myriad of existential challenges currently facing Rivian, the fix won’t be so easy. 

The first attempts at modern, commercial electric vehicles in the US date back to the ’90s. These were largely compliance cars, built by major automakers to satisfy California’s strict emissions regulations but not intended for wide release. The compliance cars were followed by a string of uninspiring mass-market models like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, a pair of egg-shaped economy sedans that projected an electrified future that was inoffensive and characterless — a car for people who don’t want to think about cars.

But Tesla took an entirely different approach with its Roadster, followed by the Model S and Model X, which would become the first legitimate and commercially appealing EVs. The S was a luxury sedan, and though it had to convince buyers that the quiet hum of an electric engine was more powerful than the roar of an internal combustion engine, Tesla had smartly targeted a consumer that actually wanted a car that looked like a computer — and would spend a lot of money on it.

Things really got rolling after Tesla released the Model 3 in 2017, and then the Model Y in 2019. Four years later, the Model Y would become the best-selling car in the world, a title it reportedly retained for the next two consecutive years. 

EVs were originally thought of as a niche product, something for virtue-signaling bevested Silicon Valley types high on their own supply about “changing the world,” but hardly as a solution for the perils associated with climate change. It wasn’t until Elon Musk started framing Tesla’s mission around accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy that EVs came to be viewed as a critical piece of the puzzle. But Tesla’s success was never a foregone conclusion. After all, no new American car company had ever emerged to challenge Detroit’s Big Three (Ford, GM, and Chrysler/Stellantis) in achieving sustained, profitable volume production in nearly a century. 

Musk’s unprecedented success kicked off a global race for electrification. Legacy automakers were pushed to pivot their long-term strategies, restructure their production lines, and build ground-up EV platforms to survive. In China, companies like BYD, Nio, Xpeng, and Li Auto quickly adopted Tesla’s EV- and software-first business models. And a new class of EV startups emerged, aiming to copy Musk’s luxury-to-mass-market rollout strategy. 

One of those companies was Rivian. Founded as Mainstream Motors in 2009, the company would go on to great acclaim for its adventure-themed R1T and R1S electric truck and SUV, respectively. If Tesla had produced the first appealing EV sedan and crossover, Rivian had done the same for the pickup and full-size SUV. An early $700 million investment from Amazon alongside an impressive order for 100,000 electric delivery vans helped solidify the company’s reputation as one of the more serious players. Unlike most of the other EV startups to emerge at the time, Rivian seemed to have a bright future. While most companies, Tesla included, focused on sedans and hatchbacks, Rivian targeted the booming truck and SUV market. Branding itself as the “Patagonia of pickups,” Rivian sought to appeal directly to affluent, outdoorsy types. 

But in the years since Rivian first emerged, the mood around EVs has soured dramatically. Charging woes, range anxiety, and sky-high luxury prices kept most people at arm’s length from the EV market. Long before Donald Trump was elected the second time on a promise to eliminate the fictitious “EV mandate,” clouds were looming on the horizon. 

It’s undoubtedly a weird moment. On one side, Rivian is unveiling the new R2 to massive anticipation, Tesla is still pumping out Model Ys at scale, and EV adoption numbers are continuing to grow globally — thanks in part to a tidal wave of affordable Chinese exports. On the other side, you’ve got an avalanche of cancellations, pauses, and write-downs that makes the whole thing feel like it’s falling apart.

Tesla’s Model Y continues to be a certified global phenomenon. Despite Musk’s sky-high unpopularity and the company’s various missteps, Tesla has outperformed better-capitalized competitors like Volkswagen and Toyota to sell over 1 million Model Ys in 2025 alone, proving that there is a real appetite for well-designed, spacious, zero-tailpipe-emission vehicles. 

While Tesla soaked up the spotlight, Rivian was struggling to maintain its foothold, losing billions of dollars every year while trying to keep up production of its R1 vehicles. Then, earlier this year, the company rolled up to SXSW with its first pre-production R2s, a genuinely attainable family car that starts at under $50,000, built by a company that a lot of people seem to genuinely love and that has figured out how to make desirable EVs at scale, even if it’s still figuring out how to do so sustainably. The buzz around Rivian began to swell. Fans were convinced this would be the company’s Model Y moment as they flocked to get one for themselves. Rivian quickly racked up an estimated 200,000 reservations for the R2 — falling short of Tesla’s 450,000 reservations for the Model 3, but still an indication of widespread excitement. 

The R2 will arrive at a particularly brutal moment for EVs. Over a dozen automakers are walking away from their EV plans. Ford canceled the F-150 Lightning. Honda killed its Zero series of electric vehicles, as well as its Afeela collaboration with Sony. Mercedes reined in its EV output. VW idled the ID.4 and ID.Buzz. Nissan axed the Ariya. Many of those aforementioned EV-only startups, like Fisker, Canoo, Lordstown, Proterra, Arrival, and Sono Motors, ended up stillborn. It would seem that the road to the EV future is lined with sinkholes. 

Not even Musk and his indelible brand have been immune. Tesla’s annual sales have dropped two years in a row — but Rivian’s decline was even steeper. In 2025, the company only sold 42,247 vehicles, an 18 percent decrease compared to 2024. It’s never earned an annual profit, and continues to lose upwards of $8,000 in gross profit for every vehicle it builds and delivers, according to its earnings reports. 

Globally, the auto industry has booked over $70 billion in write-downs related to their EV investments in the past year. The reasons are a mix of things converging at the worst time. President Donald Trump, a longtime friend and beneficiary of the fossil fuel industry, eliminated the $7,500 federal EV tax credit just as EV demand in the US was really taking off. Tariffs made the import of foreign EVs, especially affordable Chinese models, nearly impossible. Regulatory credits, which were a lifeline for pure EV companies like Tesla and Rivian, netting them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each quarter, are also kaput. We’re in an era of extreme price sensitivity for consumers, and many electric models are still just too expensive. And a lot of automakers built EVs that were rushed, not very good, or gas models retrofitted to run as electric. 

The stakes for Rivian are huge. Starting at around $45,000, the R2 is designed to catapult Rivian to the next level of automotive success. If it’s a hit, then Rivian would be well positioned to challenge Tesla’s status as the most important EV company in America. A successful R2 would beget the R3, and more importantly the R3X, a rally-inspired off-roader with the playful, nostalgic design of an ’80s hot hatch. The R3X has been getting nothing but praise since it was first revealed, helping the company earn an enormous amount of goodwill that it’s hoping to sustain long enough to make it to production. But will it ever come out? Everything depends on the success of the R2.  

“This is arguably their biggest make-or-break moment yet,” Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at AutoPacific, tells me. “This is where Rivian goes from offering a small lineup of very expensive, large EVs that can get up to the six-figure range, down to a truly mainstream-priced EV that starts in the $40,000 range — which is actually well under the median price of a new vehicle these days, which is about $50,000. So here we have Rivian’s really first big volume play happening here.”

If the R2 flops, the company’s struggles would deepen. Rivian is coasting on its buzz and fan love, even though a wealth of technical issues and hardware faults have labeled its R1S SUV as one of the least reliable vehicles on the market. Like every other car company, Rivian is attempting to navigate an increasingly tumultuous and unpredictable global supply chain. The company is burning nearly hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter as it stands up its R2 production line, while breaking ground on a new factory in Georgia. It’s pushed back its expectations for profitability to account for massive investments in AI and autonomous driving technology. And the R2 is about to enter an auto market beset by price anxiety and an outwardly hostile regulatory environment. 

Rivian’s staunch supporters can’t help but inject more hype in the moment. “I am really excited about the R2!” John Krafcik, the former CEO of Waymo who now sits on Rivian’s board of directors, tells me. “I think it can reset the entire auto industry the way the XJ Cherokee did in the ’80s.”

More than just this EV, the promise of American industry is that innovation breeds successful businesses. There is a basic logic: Make a good product and people will buy it. It’s an idea that is easy to grasp but hard to execute. Rivian has demonstrated its prowess as a low-volume, premium company. But the headwinds — policy shifts, regulatory overhang, tariffs, rising costs, competition from China — are proving to be strong, perhaps even more powerful than a tornado. 

Five days after the tornado hit, I’m standing on a catwalk surveying the wreckage of Rivian’s factory. The hole is still there, though now there’s a makeshift plywood fence surrounding the damaged area. The extent of the destruction is immense and staggering to see in person. A huge section of the roof has collapsed. Much of the outer wall is gone, giving me a full view of the road outside the factory, green grass, and beyond that, cornfields. A remaining piece of roof is dangling precariously dozens of feet in the air. Other pieces lie twisted in obscene shapes on the ground. 

A yellow excavator works slowly outside to clear the area. It’s very much still an active cleanup scene. Rivian plans to install an autonomous system in the excavator to help speed along the cleanup process, Tony Sanger, VP of production facilities, tells me.

The tornado tore a hole right above the logistics section, where trucks drop off equipment and various supplies — basically a loading dock. After photos of the damage surfaced on Reddit, commenters obtusely noted the absence of any completed vehicles, as if that somehow proved that Rivian was behind schedule on the R2.

But Scaringe insists that the company is still on schedule and has no plans to lower its guidance on the number of vehicles it expects to sell this year. Which is not to say that nothing important was damaged. They’ll still need to check on nearly 300 conveyor drives that were flooded by the sprinkler system to see if any need to be swapped out. 

Despite these setbacks, Scaringe feels like they dodged a bullet. He says he feels extremely lucky the tornado landed when and where it did, and not, say, on top of the actual R2 assembly line during work hours. While the damage is significant, it’s not insurmountable. Rivian will bounce back — is presently bouncing back, he argues. The factory lights came back on April 21st for the first time since the storm. The pits have been pumped out. The floor has been dried and swept. The R2 is ready. Full steam ahead.  

“We could have come in and been somber about it,” Scaringe says. “But everyone’s just like, ‘Okay, let’s go fix it.’”

Hours earlier, I was standing on the factory floor next to one of the first fully assembled R2s, presented in a sophisticated blue color that the company calls Catalina Cove. For such an important vehicle, the R2 is surprisingly unassuming. It’s smaller and lighter than Rivian’s flagship R1 vehicles, since it was designed to be significantly more efficient and cost-effective to manufacture. The R1T and R1S both start in the low-$80,000 range, but can be optioned up much higher. The R2 starts at $45,000, though that version won’t be available until late 2027. Still, it’s definitely a Rivian, right down to the friendly oval headlights and flashlight tucked in the door frame. 

A few years ago, a meme circulated featuring two dozen or so white SUVs, all facing the same way and looking practically indistinguishable from each other. The implication was that all modern cars look alike, and as a result, individuality and design in automobiles was dead. You can argue with the veracity of that claim, but one of the reasons Tesla made such a splash in the mid-2010s was that it went in a different direction, designing its cars for sleek, aerodynamic efficiency, especially at a time when vehicle profiles were aggressively boxy. Nothing else really looks like a Tesla. 

By contrast, Rivian borrowed heavily from other automakers, like Jeep and Land Rover, but with a rounder, softer edge. Overall the company’s design ethos is decidedly friendlier, with the aforementioned oval headlights and a plethora of Easter eggs. On the R2, right next to the windshield wiper fluid cap, there is a small molded engraving of a cross between a frog and a skunk — a “frunk,” also the nickname for the front trunk that is common in EVs. The company’s vehicles do a good job blending midcentury modern design aesthetics with the utilitarian needs of an off-roader and the clean minimalism most often associated with lifestyle brands. But there’s also a bit of Star Wars in there, even some WALL-E and solarpunk. It’s what endears Rivian to so many people. 

At 8:30 in the morning, the factory floor is teeming with Rivian workers, most of whom are wearing matching olive green T-shirts that read “Keep Normal Adventurous Forever.” OneRepublic’s “I Ain’t Worried” is blasting over the sound system. Employees are encouraged to take as many selfies with the R2 as they want. The mood is understandably festive. They just got hit by a tornado, but they ain’t worried ’bout it.   

Scaringe grabs the microphone and begins by thanking everyone for their hard work, especially in the aftermath of the storm. With his thick frames, neatly parted dark hair, and a tall, athletic build, Scaringe resembles Clark Kent — but Steve-O from Jackass is also a fair comparison. Today he’s traded his traditional military-style khaki shirt for a Rivian-branded dark blue button-down. Dark jeans and a pair of On Cloud waterproof hiking boots complete the look. 

“The resilience that we’ve demonstrated as an organization over the last couple of days is emblematic of the strength of the organization we’ve demonstrated in the development of this product,” he says to polite applause.

He’s not a magnetic public speaker and seems a little stiff at times. Still, he runs through his prepared remarks at a steady clip. There’s an air of “let’s make this quick.” There are cars to build.   

Javier Varela, Rivian’s COO, tries to amp the energy levels by repeatedly shouting “Big volumes” and “Go R2!” in his raspy Spanish accent. By contrast, Bobby Dean Parker, the VP of manufacturing, is all Southern charm. Parker, who cut his teeth at BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Tesla, gets arguably the biggest round of applause from the assembled employees. He was the one who stood shoulder to shoulder with them over the last few days during storm cleanup.  

“Today, I’m not letting the tornado steal the spotlight from our wonderful R2 and our wonderful team,” Parker says. “But what I will say is praise God that we’re not standing here today in a moment of silence.” He pivots to the R2, which he describes as both “thrill on the road” as well as “luxury on the road.” “So, whaddaya say? Let’s get it on the road.” 

Before that, the R2 needs to get off the assembly line. A row of three R2s await Scaringe, Varela, and Parker, one for each. They drive slowly off the line while high-fiving with the workers gathered along the sidelines. Varela honks his horn in celebration, while someone shouts, “Come on Bobby Dean, give it some!” Not that there’s any room for acceleration. Nor would it be safe to floor it while surrounded by hundreds of people. 

One of those people is Hemanth Atthipatla, a tall, friendly quality manager in the operations and manufacturing division. He calls himself a “gatekeeper” in charge of policing the R2, making sure it meets all of its quality checks before it reaches customers. Atthipatla was also one of the first Rivian employees to buy his own R2, which is on display at the factory today. His wife loves it, he reports, as does his newborn child, though it’s unclear how a baby expresses approval about an automobile. 

“I think if we are able to maintain the good quality and ramp up, and provide the vehicles to the customer, I think it’s going to be a deal-breaker for Rivian,” Atthipatla says.

Brittany Clauss stands out from the crowd with her neon green hair and matching cheek studs. She’s been working at Rivian for four years, first on the R1 line and now over to R2. The main difference, she says, is that the R2 line is more compact, which allows for easier communication between the various stations and workers. She works at the end of the line, checking each vehicle for defects before it goes off to the next stage. 

She doesn’t own a Rivian herself, but says she can’t wait to see the R2 out on the road. “I’ll be able to point them out and be like, ‘That’s what I’ve been working on,’” she says. 

Nearly 900 miles east of Normal, the center of the Rivian universe is in the parking lot of Campmor, off Route 17 in Paramus, New Jersey. At least for a dozen or so hardcore fans who are gathered there on a brilliantly sunny Saturday in early April. 

Romy Vreeland is a nonprofit executive with graying blonde hair and a welcoming smile. She’s also the national secretary of the Rivian Clubs of America and host of today’s meet and greet in the Campmor lot. Rivian Club members go off-roading together, share tips about the best camping equipment, and generally bask in a shared appreciation of the Rivian brand. They like the brand, the cute-but-rugged aesthetic, and the fact that the company’s CEO isn’t a household name, let alone a lightning rod for criticism.  

“It’s like, it’s not necessary to know [his name],” she says of RJ Scaringe, a man she’s met only once and found to be lovely. “It’s not a liability.”

Today is one of their semi-regular meetups: a chance for Rivian owners to get together and talk about their favorite electric adventure vehicle, while hopefully converting a few newbies. Jeep owners have their rubber ducks. Tesla fans have their fixation on Elon Musk. Rivian owners… are still trying to come up with their own identity. They love the environment, but also are wealthy enough to afford a brand-new $80,000 electric vehicle. (It’s not dissimilar from early Tesla owners.) 

Vreeland is unloading boxes of seltzer and donuts for the meetup. She likes to joke that the Rivian community could at times resemble an enthusiastic social club but admits she frequently wonders how she’d become so immersed in it all. She does love the outdoors, camping, and cooking over an open fire. But she doesn’t consider herself a car person. After all, it isn’t always safe for women in these EV-themed forums online. Early on, she would hide behind anonymity when chatting with other Rivian fans on Reddit or Discord. 

But she made plenty of friends, like Rod Gillis, the beanie-wearing finance guy from Mahwah who also owns his own fitness business on the side. Or Steven Santora, who works in real estate, loves to watch EV content on YouTube, and has cash deposits down on three upcoming EVs, including the R2. These are New Jersey’s most unapologetically devoted Rivianiacs. 

“It’s a vehicle for someone who is old enough to afford it, but young enough to have fun with it,” Gillis says. “It’s a vehicle that can be a jack of all trades. You can go off-roading with it. You can take it to the track. You can have fun with it, but if we’re being candid, it’s not the least expensive option out there.”

The R2 could change all that. A $45,000 midsize SUV will naturally bring more people into the world of Rivian ownership. Not everyone will join the club or seek out camaraderie with other Rivian owners, and that’s okay, Vreeland says. Rivian owners used to wave when they would see other Rivians on the road. She’s not expecting that tradition will last in the company’s new era. “Normal car buyers,” she calls them. 

Whether those normal car buyers will actually consider the R2, much in the way they did the Tesla Model Y, will be closely watched by members of the Rivian Clubs of America — as well as investors, industry stakeholders, and everyone with a desire to see whether this country can still compete with China. The federal EV tax credit is gone, but the rise in fuel prices is leading some people to give EVs another look. 

Vreeland knows Rivian isn’t out of the woods yet. She reads the news, hears the stories about EV cancellations and financial headwinds, and hopes for the best. The message boards are split over various predictions for the future: Maybe some combination of R2 success plus investment from Volkswagen and now Uber will be enough to put the company on the path to a brighter future. She’s not convinced that autonomy and AI will be the saving grace — it just needs to be a great car. 

“You read these dire headlines, like the EV industry is dying, whatever, that can make you feel pessimistic,” Vreeland says. “But then when you get into the car and you understand it better and you understand, ‘Wow, this is an American company, like how did they do this?’”

When Rivian was created over a decade and a half ago, it looked almost nothing like it does today. In fact, it didn’t even intend to make electric vehicles. Scaringe founded Mainstream Motors in 2009, naming the company after his father’s engineering firm based in his hometown of Rockledge, Florida, a bedroom community for NASA workers. The elder Scaringe started his own company in his 30s. His son, fresh out of MIT with a PhD in mechanical engineering, founded his at 26. He was the sole employee. 

Mainstream Motors, which soon became Avera Motors, was unwittingly following the Tesla playbook by setting its sights on a fast, four-seat coupe with rear-wheel drive and extreme fuel efficiency. If they could find success with a fun-to-drive sports car, perhaps mainstream automotive success would follow. With money from friends and family, as well as $2 million seed investment from the Florida Energy and Climate Commission, Scaringe hired about 15 designers and engineers from a raft of other car companies, including Mitsubishi, Chrysler, and Mercedes-Benz, and set to work on their first prototype to show to potential investors, according to a 2010 interview with Scaringe in Hagerty. The company was so cash-strapped that the weekly snack budget was only $35, and employees frequently housed interns to save money, according to a 2021 article in Bloomberg.

In late 2010, the team unveiled their first prototype, a hatchback dubbed “the Blue Thing.” To save costs and provide a proof of concept for investors, the vehicle was essentially a rebodied Mini Cooper that used the Mini’s engine and drivetrain. A photo marking the occasion shows Scaringe and his team proudly posing behind the unfinished-looking Blue Thing with wrapping tape still covering the front bumper. 

“It was like anything else,” Scaringe said on a 2010 podcast about his company’s origins. “The only way to start was to start. Lots of U-turns, lots of twists, lots of turns, lots of gut punches. Overall, just brute force built it.”

Scaringe was able to secure critical early funding through a creative lease-back agreement with Space Florida, the state’s aerospace economic development agency. According to TechCrunch, Space Florida invested nearly $2 million, partially because it was interested in the vehicle for the Moon or Mars. The agency bought the Blue Thing for $500,000, and leased it back to Avera for just $100 a year. It later bought three additional prototypes for $1 million under a similar agreement. (The story doesn’t end well for Space Florida. The agency thought it had a 3 percent stake in the company that would become Rivian, which could have translated to a $3 billion windfall after the company’s 2021 IPO. But thanks to an unexplained recapitalization, it only netted about $7 million.)

Eventually, Avera changed its name after Hyundai threatened to sue, claiming the name was too similar to its Azera sedan. The new name, Rivian, was a play on the Indian River lagoon near Scaringe’s hometown. 

During this time, the product goals kept shifting between an affordable sports car, an expensive supercar, and a spartan race car to woo various investors. They even considered a dune buggy after a brush with insolvency necessitated bringing in investment from Saudi Arabia. It was there that Scaringe was challenged to design a rugged but efficient pickup for the desert, a mashup between an F-150 and a Toyota Prius, according to the Bloomberg article.  

The desert vehicle aspect fell by the wayside, but the truck part stuck. Scaringe knew that to succeed, it needed to be different from all the big, bloated pickups coming out of Detroit. According to Bloomberg, he made a unilateral decision during a board meeting: The truck would be electric. Tesla was about to release the Model 3 to much fanfare. Trucks were some of the best-selling vehicles in America, yet no one was thinking about how to make an electric one. The old compliance cars from the 1990s were fading from memory. Tesla, and electrification, seemed like the future. 

Rivian first revealed the R1T in 2018; the R1S SUV came out a day later. Deliveries were delayed several times, with customers having to wait until 2021 and 2022, respectively, to receive their vehicles. But eventually Rivian worked out the kinks; since production began in September 2021, the company has delivered over 175,000 vehicles — a respectable number for a brand-new startup. Tesla didn’t sell its 200,000th car until 2018, about 10 years after selling its first. 

But the real coup was securing a massive contract with Amazon for 100,000 electric delivery vans, leading to its blockbuster IPO in 2021, briefly valuing the company higher than Ford. The retail giant invested a total of $1.4 billion in Rivian, becoming a major shareholder in the process. 

This would become a running theme for Rivian: hitching its wagon to much larger, better-financed companies to ensure long-term viability and survival. Before the Amazon deal went through, Rivian was in talks to build EVs for GM and then Ford, though neither deal would pan out. (In muscling out GM, Ford invested $500 million in the company in 2019, only to sell its majority stake in a $7.3 billion write-down three years later.) 

The Amazon deal would eventually get eclipsed by the 2024 partnership with Volkswagen, which offered $5.8 billion to form a software joint venture — a life preserver for Rivian during a precarious moment. The company closed that year with over $4 billion in losses. 

Rivian is now heavily tied to Volkswagen, which is dealing with its own problems around plunging profits, declining market share, and software reliability issues. Rivian could help fix the lattermost of those problems, designing software for brands across the German auto giant’s portfolio. The deal was too good to pass up. VW now owns a nearly 16 percent stake in Rivian, surpassing Amazon as the largest shareholder. 

In some ways, it’s a hedge against a more uncertain and unpredictable future. In their public comments about the partnership, VW executives have seemed to imply that Rivian could one day become a subsidiary under the German auto giant’s global brand. The company didn’t start as an electric vehicle maker, and there’s a possibility it may not survive as one either.

“There’s a lot of moving pieces that they have to juggle,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an automotive tech analyst at Telemetry. “If they drop any of them, if they drop any of those balls that they’re juggling, that could be an existential crisis for them.”

The most prominent ball is the R2. If Rivian drops it, and the R2 is just a modest hit, will Vreeland and the rest of those fans stick around? 

Scaringe, a longtime vegan, is just finishing up a veggie breakfast before getting ready for an all-hands meeting at the Normal factory. The continued post-tornado cleanup will be a major topic, as will the impact on the R2 ramp. His message will be clear. 

“We’re trying to compete with the best in the world. We have to have a very large engineering budget [and] we’re spending a tremendous amount of money to build truly world-class technology,” Scaringe tells me. “If you qualify the same with the tornado hitting the plant at the start of production, it’s definitely the fastest. I don’t think Tesla or anyone else had to deal with that as well.”

The company desperately needs this vehicle to be a hit. Last year was a tough one for Rivian, with sales dropping 18 percent year over year. Expectations of profitability are being pushed further into the future thanks to heavy R&D spending on autonomy. Still, Rivian projects it will sell upwards of 67,000 vehicles in 2026, anchored primarily by the R2. With R1 sales expected to remain flat, that would mean Rivian expects to sell as many as 25,000 R2s before the end of the year. As TechCrunch noted, that would be one of the fastest launches of a new EV ever recorded. 

“R2 is the most important thing we have because it’s what takes us from being subscale to being a scaled manufacturer,” Scaringe tells me. 

Ramping up production of a brand-new vehicle, especially one as vital as the R2, is rife with pitfalls. Ask Elon Musk. Tesla became a giant in the auto industry based on the success of the Model 3, an affordable EV that seamlessly blended cool tech with an affordable price. But the car very nearly drove Tesla out of business. The company was bleeding cash while being over-leveraged on robots and automation. In a desperate bid to hit a 5,000-vehicle weekly milestone, Tesla set up a giant, makeshift assembly tent in the parking lot to build the Model 3s by hand and ease bottleneck issues inside the main plant. Musk famously referred to the rollout as “production hell.” 

Scaringe could hardly be confused with Musk — one’s an egghead from Florida, the other’s a pro-natalist white supremacist who recently (and briefly) became the world’s first trillionaire — but he knows that dangers lurk around every corner. (Scaringe himself is estimated to be worth $200 million, despite a recent divorce that cost him millions of dollars and some of his voting stake in the company. That said, Scaringe did succeed recently in getting Rivian’s board to approve a Musk-like, performance-based pay package worth over $4 billion. If the R2 is a hit, Rivian lives on — and Scaringe becomes the world’s newest billionaire.)

Like Tesla, Rivian relies on some automation — during my tour, I watch as hundreds of industrial robot arms assemble the trays that will eventually contain the R2’s lithium-ion battery — but won’t be overreliant on it. For Scaringe, the real threat lies further downstream, lurking in the company’s supply chain. That’s why he’s putting such an emphasis on making things in-house, like writing its own operating system software. While many automakers rely on suppliers like Bosch for electric motors, Rivian designs and manufactures its own. It sources its battery cells from LG Energy, but makes its own packs, as well as the cooling systems for fast charging. Soon, it will design its own AI chips for autonomous driving. It’s even considering making its own lidar sensors. Anything less, Scaringe believes, would open the company up to an unacceptable level of risk. 

“The supply chain environment has not been stable in the last five years. It’s just very, very dynamic,” Scaringe says, citing tariffs, the war in Iran, and high gas prices. (Yes, even an EV company can feel the sting, due to the downstream effects of mining for battery minerals, for example.) “The biggest risk for ramp-up is the supply chain.”

Vertical integration at this level is enormously costly. But Rivian isn’t like Fisker or any of these other EV startups that have already gone out of business, Scaringe insists. He explains that the company is spending significantly on a world-class engineering team, producing its own silicon, motors, power electronics, and computers. Yes, Rivian loses money every year, but it also creates a variable cost advantage at scale. The R2 is the essential vehicle to unlock that scale, enabling the company to cover these fixed costs. But the process will start slowly, Scaringe says. “We’re not pressing a button to have hundreds of thousands of cars produced the day we start production.”

Still, it quickly becomes clear that what really animates Scaringe isn’t talk of supply chain woes or the anguishes of early production — it’s autonomy. A conversation about Rivian’s entry into self-driving cars is when he is at his most Muskian, projecting that the company — which has never publicly demonstrated a fully autonomous vehicle — will eventually develop a Level 4 system, meaning no human supervision required within certain limits. 

“It’s our biggest focus; it’s the largest area of investment,” Scaringe says. “It’s my biggest focus in terms of my activities within the business — this is what I’m spending the most time on.”

This surprises me, almost as much as it did when I was in Palo Alto last year to watch Rivian announce its plans to design its own AI chips. It seems counterintuitive, like a pivot from what the company had previously represented. Rivian is supposed to be an outdoor lover’s alternative to Tesla: rugged and off-road-worthy, while still being fully electric. Now it seems like it’s trying to chase the mercurial billionaire down an AI rabbit hole.

Scaringe subscribes to Musk’s outlook that, eventually, “everything will be autonomous … and that’s not 10 years away,” he says. “That’s in the next couple of years. You’re going to start to see ever-increasing levels of autonomy.”

It’s not just the cars that are getting an AI makeover. Over 70 percent of Rivian’s software team is using Cursor, an AI coding agent owned by SpaceX, to code new software features, said James Philbin, senior VP for autonomy and AI at the company. “I think it definitely changes the job,” Philbin told me last April. “But potentially I think will accelerate a lot of software development.”

I asked whether Philbin, who previously worked at Waymo and Zoox, felt like he was swimming against the tide by developing an autonomous vehicle at an adventure- and off-roading-themed EV company. “I mean, I would flip the question back and I would say, ‘Why are these legacy OEMs swimming against what is clearly the tide of the future?’” he said. “In 10 years, the vast majority of cars will be EVs and I think the vast majority of cars will be increasingly autonomous.”

While some may see the move as savvy, others could construe it as desperate. As EV demand stalls out, autonomous vehicles have been surging, fueled by the incredible growth of robotaxi startup Waymo over the last year. The company now operates in 11 cities in the US. Meanwhile, Uber’s hot on Waymo’s heels. Last March, the ridehail company said it would buy 10,000 robotaxis from Rivian — specifically, autonomous R2 vehicles — as part of a deal that could net Rivian $1.25 billion in new investment. Like VW, Uber has become another well-capitalized benefactor during a pivotal moment. And before the R2 has even rolled out, Rivian has an order for 10,000 of them. 

To lay the groundwork, Rivian is offering more AI-powered products to its customers. Last year, the company rolled out its so-called Universal Hands-Free driving feature, covering 3.1 million miles of road in the US and Canada, for second-gen R1 vehicles. And later this year, it expects to release point-to-point hands-free driving, which includes navigating turns, intersections, and on/off-ramps. Think of it as Rivian’s version of Tesla’s controversial Full Self-Driving feature. 

But early tests have been mixed. Edmunds called it “boring” but impressive. In his review of the R2, Verge contributor Lawrence Ulrich called the Universal Hands-Free system “overconfident to the point of obliviousness.” My own experience in the passenger seat of an R1S using hands-free driving was marked by several disengagements and a couple of close calls with cyclists. And now, Rivian is facing a lawsuit from R1 owners over allegations of false claims about its autonomous driving capabilities.

But while Tesla’s approach to full autonomy relies exclusively on cameras, Rivian plans on adding lidar sensors to its R2 vehicles later in 2026 for extra safety. That was enough to get Uber through the door and into a lucrative deal. And Rivian could certainly use the cash as it wades through the sticky terrain of early R2 production. Scaringe argues that Rivian can outpace Tesla, and even Waymo, given its ability to feed camera data from its customer fleet into its “Large Driving Model.”

“We’ll have a lot more data than Waymo,” he says. “Tesla, by far, has the most data but the most constrained sensor sets … Waymo has the most sensors but a very small fleet. We have something in the middle.”

Of course, the money won’t come unless Rivian hits a series of crucial milestones, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on the Decoder podcast recently, including testing without a safety driver behind the wheel. “They’ve got to deliver,” Khosrowshahi said, “and based on everything that we’ve seen from RJ and team, putting together a first-class AI team, we’re confident that they can deliver on those R2s.”

Scaringe seems equally confident in Rivian’s success. Of course, he has to be. Throughout our interview, he projects confidence. Rivian won’t be acquired by VW, but the partnership allows for cost sharing of parts and content between brands — much in the way a subsidiary would. 

It isn’t until later, when we’re walking the factory floor together, that the mask slips a little. 

“The R2 is how all that [vertical integration] comes to a realization,” he says. “It’s why R2 for us — if R2 is not successful, then we’ll need to resize how we’ve set up the business.”

Which is to say: If the R2 doesn’t work, Rivian won’t look like Rivian much longer.

When the R2 comes out, it won’t be available in the world’s largest market for electric vehicles: China. 

Unlike most American car companies, Rivian only sells its cars in North America. Tesla’s decision to open a factory in Shanghai is widely seen as a pivotal moment in the company’s history and a key waypoint on the road to its current $1.24 trillion market cap. 

But China’s domestic brands, not Tesla, are the ones that are currently devouring the world. Backed by heavy state support and massive domestic overcapacity, China currently manufactures roughly 75 percent of all EVs worldwide. Many of them sell for less than $20,000 — half the price of any comparable vehicle in the States. Tariffs and other protectionist policies have kept China from selling its cars to US customers, though experts wonder how long that will hold. Ford CEO Jim Farley has warned that allowing China to sell its cars in the States would be a death blow for Detroit. 

Rivian has imported its own fleet of Chinese cars for benchmarking purposes. It tests them on a private course, and then tears them to shreds to examine every bolt and computer chip. Xiaomi’s SU7, in particular, has impressed Scaringe, with its clean-sheet approach to software and superior quality execution. But the Rivian CEO doesn’t ascribe the same industry-killing abilities to China as some of his automotive counterparts. 

“We’ve taken the cars apart … there’s no magic,” he says. “They’re using stampings, they’re using castings.”

The country’s actual competitive advantage, according to Scaringe, is that labor is so much cheaper over there. Even if the cars are built here in the US, that advantage vanishes, and China has to compete on a more level playing field.

Still, Washington seems to have taken Detroit’s apocalyptic warnings to heart, throwing up seemingly insurmountable trade barriers to prevent China from exporting its cars to the US. Tariffs make it prohibitively expensive for any Chinese car to be sold here. And cars with any connected vehicle software that originates from China are barred from sale under a Biden-era law. 

But many auto experts think it’s inevitable that Chinese cars will eventually find their way to US dealerships. The US could require Chinese OEMs to create a joint venture with a domestic brand, much in the same way that China does for foreign automakers that want to sell to its residents. Even President Trump has expressed willingness to allow China to sell in the US, as long as the cars are manufactured here.

If they do, Scaringe is confident Rivian won’t get snowed under. “If the Chinese companies decide to produce domestically in the United States, those advantages disappear,” he argues. “The cost of labor for a Chinese company operating in the United States and the cost of labor for a US company operating in the United States is going to be the same.”

But expecting a level playing field in this day and age seems a bit foolhardy, if not outright unrealistic. Detroit is trying to insulate itself from a Chinese onslaught by going back to the drawing board on EVs. Can Rivian engineer its own solution? 

The relationship between small towns and the big-name employers who come in promising lots of jobs and investment is always a bit fraught. There’s concerns about putting all your eggs in one basket when relying heavily on a single employer, especially one deeply rooted in a volatile market environment. Normal certainly knows this better than most, having endured the “changed fortune” headlines after Rivian’s purchase of the former Mitsubishi plant in 2017. 

But those fortunes could reverse if the EV market fails to climb out of its current slump. Like most automakers, Rivian has gone through several rounds of layoffs in its short history, most recently in June, with cuts from its sales and marketing divisions. The company’s salaried factory workers were excluded; next time, they might not be so lucky. 

“It’s been kind of a culture change for the Bloomington-Normal community,” said Adam Campbell, dean of career and technical education at Heartland Community College, where Rivian runs an apprenticeship program. 

Campbell said that aside from its vast cornfields, Normal has always had a sizable white collar community, with State Farm’s international headquarters and two universities. “With Rivian coming in as a major manufacturer within the state, that’s kind of shifting the culture a little bit for the better. So now we are moving more into advanced manufacturing.”

But even Heartland realizes that the winds are changing. The future, at least the American future, won’t necessarily be “EV only,” as some had previously predicted. Hybrid vehicles are now the new growth product of the industry, which has spurred the college to add a new hybrid diesel equipment technology program to its curriculum. 

“We’re not stuck in the old way of doing things,” Campbell said. “We do try to be innovative.”

It may not be enough. Rivian has already experienced significant turnover in its short history, shedding thousands of employees. Campbell knows he needs to structure his curriculum to respond to a rapidly changing economic environment. 

“Hypothetically, if the electric vehicle industry ebbs and there’s a pause in that, the students that come through our programming, what they learn is still 100 percent viable,” he says. “It can work across multiple industries.”

It seems like everywhere you go in Normal, there’s some reminder of Rivian’s outsize role in the community. The Parkview Inn, a restaurant in Bloomington known for its broasted chicken, slot machines, and decor that leans heavily on license plates as art, is a typical haunt for Rivian workers, current and former. Joe (who declined to give his last name) worked at the factory for a year and a half before deciding that spending hours indoors every day on the assembly line was not the best use of his time. He now works in landscaping and is much happier.

Joe, who is still wearing his “Keep Normal Adventurous Forever” T-shirt, says he keeps in touch with his friends at the plant, who report that the pace has picked up considerably for the R2 production. “All my friends say it’s, like, at least 10s if not 12s right now,” he says, referring to 10-hour and 12-hour shifts. Some workers are on four 12-hour shifts a week on a three-week rotating schedule. 

He has a lot of opinions about Rivian, like about the managers (“Everybody’s chill”), the high-end e-bike the company says it’s making (“In my opinion, they were late to the game when they dropped it”), the skilled workers that Rivian brought in from out of the country (“They bought houses for people to come here”), and the rumors of a secret hydrogen project Rivian is allegedly working on (“I don’t know if they’ll ever speak about that again”). But ultimately, he wishes Rivian well and is actively cheering for the R2 to be a success. 

“I hope so,” Joe says. “Just for the sake of my town.”

Joe may not know it yet, but Normal isn’t the only town relying on Rivian’s future success. The new Normal is a town called Stanton Springs North, about 45 miles east of Atlanta, Georgia, where Rivian recently broke ground on a new $5 billion factory to build hundreds of thousands of R2s. While the Normal plant is a retrofitted facility with a capacity of only 200,000 vehicles a year, the upcoming Stanton Springs campus is designed to be the platonic ideal of a Rivian factory, built from the ground up to manufacture up to 300,000 EVs annually. 

It represents Rivian’s dream for its future. But the company recently was forced to scale back the plan after Trump’s Energy Department slashed a loan agreement with the company from $6.5 billion to $4.4 billion. It’s still getting a big loan, but even its dreams are getting downsized. Its own government appears to be actively working against it, first by eliminating pro-EV policies, and now by renegotiating a settled loan deal. 

The myth Americans tell themselves about their country is that it’s a place that breeds innovation and nurtures the entrepreneurial spirit. A well-regarded company that makes interesting, thoughtfully designed products that are also environmentally friendly, one that employs thousands of people, with the potential to employ thousands more — you’d think a company like this would be on a glide path to success. And yet Rivian is struggling to secure its future in the face of a volatile market, a hostile government, and fatigued consumers. If Rivian stumbles, or worse, fails, that myth of American innovation may suffer an irreparable blow. 

The R2 had its official launch June 9th. The reviews were broadly positive, and fans are already crowding into the Rivian subreddits and other forums to yap about specs and test drives. Will the non-fans, the hundreds of thousands of regular people that Rivian desperately needs to dig its way out of this rut, show up too? The company is riding high on the positivity of loyal customers like Romy Vreeland and her club cohorts — even as its stock never seems to rise above $20 a share. Clouds loom on the horizon: Days after the R2 deliveries started, Rivian announced it was laying off hundreds of employees. 

The market headwinds are blowing, gusty and gale-sized, but not yet spinning fast enough to classify as a tornado. Rivian can only batten down the hatches, and face the storm.

Correction, Wednesday July 1: An earlier version of this article stated that Rivian was designing software for Volkswagen’s internal combustion engine vehicles. It is just for electric vehicles.

Update, Monday July 6th: An earlier version of this story said that Rivian’s factory in Georgia will have capacity for 400,000. After renegotiating the loan with the Department of Energy, the capacity will now be 300,000 vehicles.