Rivian Bets on Autonomy Over Profits, CEO Teases R4

By Amara Osei

Rivian is willing to delay profitability to develop autonomous vehicle software, founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said last week at TechCrunch Disrupt. He argues autonomy will let the company build radically different vehicles than the SUVs and pickups it sells today.

"Where it gets really interesting is when you think beyond R2 and R3 and start to imagine the form factors that you want to build for a personally-owned autonomous vehicle," Scaringe told TechCrunch. "You know, it opens up all kinds of design opportunities. It can create dramatically different experiences."

He added: "I'm wildly excited about what the next 10 years look like in transportation because of what this enables us to dream and think about."

Why the design argument matters now

Scaringe's pitch isn't new. A decade ago, autonomous vehicle companies and legacy automakers promised that autonomy plus battery-electric drivetrains — simpler and more compact than combustion equivalents — would trigger an explosion of new vehicle form factors. Mercedes-Benz showed a pod-like concept and a tech-laden long sedan. Toyota and others dreamed up "rooms on wheels." Hyundai displayed a car with legs.

That design revolution never left the concept stage. Autonomy took longer to develop than those companies expected, and automakers old and new struggled with the realities of manufacturing and selling an entirely new category of vehicle.

The difference today, per the report: real robotaxis now operate in multiple cities worldwide, their software capable enough to run safely on public roads at scale — even if integration with cars, bikes, pedestrians and emergency vehicles still needs work. EV motors and batteries have gotten cheaper, and companies like Tesla, Rivian and many more in China have improved at building them at scale.

What has Rivian actually shipped?

Not driverless cars. On autonomy, Rivian reworked its self-driving software approach completely just a few years ago and still has distance to cover. Its roadmap:

• A hands-off, eyes-on driver assistance system has already shipped.
• By the end of this year, Rivian promises that software will drive start to finish — what it calls "point-to-point navigation" — without intervention, still under driver supervision.
• The company is working toward full autonomy, which it plans to deploy in robotaxi versions of the R2 SUV available on Uber's ride-hail app.

Rivian also must scale production of the R2 SUV — an effort just beginning — to reverse years of losses incurred while building its position as a major EV player.

Who owns the autonomous car?

If Rivian achieves full autonomy, most of the driving will happen in personally-owned vehicles, Scaringe said.

"You know, 95% of the miles driven in the United States — so this is trillions of miles — 95% of these miles are in things that we personally own, so like you own it, or your household owns it," he said. "And so our view is it's unlikely, even with Level 4 capabilities, that we're going to see a dramatic societal shift away from that."

Level 4 is the Society of Automotive Engineers' classification for vehicles that operate autonomously within a specific area. Scaringe expects only modest change: that 95% figure "may go from 95% to 90%, it may go from 95% to 80%, but still the vast majority of the miles driven for a lot of societal and psychological reasons are likely to stay the same," he said.

That belief drives his thinking on designing a fully autonomous, personally-owned Rivian.

What comes after R3?

Scaringe stayed quiet on specifics. "So we did R1, then we did R2, then we did R3. The thing after R3 is going to be called R4 — we just haven't shown what it looks like," he said. "It's going to be cool. It's going to be great."

Rivian's bet rests on sequencing: get R2 production right, hit point-to-point navigation by year-end, then robotaxis with Uber — before R4 can test whether autonomy really unlocks a new kind of personal vehicle.