R J Scaringe

In the driving seat is Rivian’s CEO and founder, RJ Scaringe, 36, who since childhood – when he helped a neighbour rebuild Porsche 356s in his garage in Melbourne, Florida – has wanted to become a carmaker. The son of an engineer, growing up on Florida’s Space Coast, Scaringe has been obsessed with cars since childhood. By high school, he’d set his sights on building his own brand of cars. After securing a master’s and then doctorate in mechanical engineering at MIT’s prestigious Sloan Automotive Lab, where he learnt all there is to know about car manufacturing, Scaringe walked out of MIT and set up shop. Starting his company in 2009, with less than 20 designers and engineers, it took a while for Scaringe to get the electric carmaker off the ground. The brand name changed, from Mainstream Motors to Averra to Rivian, and so did the cash levels with Scaringe and his father having to re-mortgage their homes to keep things going. Among investors were Ford Motors and Amazon, the latter now owning a 20% stake in Rivian. Scaringe made his vehicle debut in 2018 – nine years after starting out – at the LA Auto Show with two Rivian prototypes, an SUV and a pickup. The buzz was big and the orders rolled in, nearly 50,000 of them as of September 2021, and Rivian’s first-ever electric and semi-autonomous pickup truck, the R1T, was launched in September 2021, beating rivals Tesla, GM and Ford. And if that isn’t enough success, the startup is also set to roll out 100,000 electric delivery vans for Amazon.