Rivian CEO Scaringe Thinks It's Great That Tesla Cybertruck Exists, But There's Not 'A Lot Of Overlap' With Customers

Rivian Automotive, Inc. RIVN, which emerged as the frontrunner in the all-electric pickup truck race, isn’t worried about a rival offering from Tesla, Inc. TSLA landing soon.

Cybertruck Competition: "If you were to think of the Venn diagrams with customers, there’s probably not a lot of overlap," said CEO R.J. Scaringe about the Cybertruck at the Code Conference 2023.

“I think it's great that a product like that exists in the world,” he said.

“If we truly want to electrify everything that’s produced – to give us some scale – there are one and a half billion cars on the planet, and we as a planet produce 90 million a year,” he added.

On Cybertruck’s one windshield wiper, the Rivian CEO said, “If you like that it’s good.”

Order Backlogs: Huge order backlogs are the number one complaint from customers, Scaringe said, adding that the company is still working on its months-to-years long backlog and ramping up production to meet it.

While conceding that it is an “incredibly high-cost problem” to have, the executive said it is good to have some backlog.

He noted that consumers represent 80% of Rivian’s customers despite it having a captive customer in Amazon for its EV delivery vans.

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Product Updates: Scaringe also clarified that a Rivian vehicle without a steering wheel is not on the company’s roadmap as of now. A vehicle without a steering wheel has a “relatively constrained” set of use cases. and can also create a feeling of “steering anxiety,” he said.

Rivian is contemplating some subscription features for the future, the CEO said. Where there are ongoing R&D efforts and provided consumers are willing to pay, it makes sense, he said.

Hinting at a more affordable EV lineup could be in the offing, Scaringe said, "I think in this decade, we're gonna see, in the next handful of years, some very interesting products across all the price ranges." He also said Rivian hopes to drive down costs over time.

Delving on Rivian’s proposed adoption of Tesla’s NACS charging standard, Scaringe said Teslas can also charge on Rivian’s charging networks.

In premarket trading on Wednesday, Rivian stock climbed 0.90% to $22.46, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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Photo via Richard Truesdell on Wikimedia