With President Donald Trump announcing his intention to roll back EV subsidies and loosen tailpipe pollution regulations, the US EV industry is at a crossroads.
Against this backdrop, Rivian founder RJ Scaringe took the opportunity to join a panel discussion last week with reporters, sharing his insights on the future of EVs
He noted that EV-only manufacturers like Rivian must focus on long-term financial success and building vehicles that will attract new clients without a subsidy. However, he did raise some concerns for traditional OEMs and that the short-term gain of focusing on ICE and hybrids could see the US fall behind China in terms of the EV race.
Scaringe said:
 If you’re optimizing purely for profitability the next two years and you’re a traditional legacy manufacturer, you could very easily make the spreadsheet case to say, ‘Let’s double down on combustion,’ or ‘Let’s double down on hybrids,’ which I think is a big miscalculation for the long term.
Later on the InsideEVs panel, Scaringe doubled down and said:
I say this all the time to friends of mine who run big car companies: ‘Don’t stop investing. You’re going find yourself in the 2030s, upside down. Rivian, Tesla, the Chinese—we have a full-throttle focus on EVs. And if you’re doing that as your 10% job as an [automaker], you’re going to be in rough shape in 10 years.
Least to say, it will be an interesting next few years for Rivian. Many believed the upcoming R2 crossover was built and priced with the EV subsidy in mind. However, with the EV subsidy pretty much gone, the R2 might be the proving ground for Rivian’s new sales strategy and how it will approach new vehicle sales moving forward.
