How to build a $16B car company with RJ Scaringe, founder of Rivian

Bullish:

• $RIVN - Rivian has 35% market share in premium electric SUVs over $70,000, plans to produce 175,000 R2 vehicles at their Illinois plant, and secured a $5.8 billion deal with Volkswagen for their zonal architecture technology

  • “We have about 35% market share as we draw that boundary diagram. Said differently, we have the best selling electric SUV over $70,000 in The United States.”

    RJ·16:00

  • “R2 we're gonna build first in our plant in Illinois, just South of Chicago, a town called Normal. And there we'll be building up to 175,000 R2s.”

    RJ·16:25

  • “We did a $5,800,000,000 deal with Volkswagen where we're providing them this is the second largest car company in the world, where we're providing them a zonal architecture.”

    RJ·47:10
• $VWAGY - Volkswagen recognized the need for modern software-defined architecture and partnered with Rivian in a $5.8 billion deal to acquire this critical technology

  • “We did a $5,800,000,000 deal with Volkswagen where we're providing them this is the second largest car company in the world, where we're providing them a zonal architecture.”

    RJ·47:10
• $CHINESEEVS - China has 3.5-4x higher EV adoption rates than the US with a steep growth curve, indicating structural advantages for Chinese EV manufacturers

  • “China is a three and a half, four times higher level of adoption of electrification than we are, and the slope of the curve is very steep.”

    RJ·1:08:14

Bearish:

• $AUTO - Traditional automakers without software-defined architectures will lose market share by early 2030s as the industry undergoes fundamental transformation

  • “I think it's inconceivable that by, call it early 2030s, that a car company can exist at scale and maintain their market share and not have a software defined architecture.”

    RJ·48:45
• $AUTOSUPPLY - Traditional auto suppliers face disruption as integrated architectures replace fragmented systems with 50-150 separate computers per vehicle

  • “With the exception of two companies, Rivian and Tesla, every car on the road has anywhere from 50 to maybe 150 little computers that run the car.”

    RJ·46:14