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we're literally using this like a like a podcast Studio this is super fun yeah first time podcasting in a rivan this is my first time podcasting in rivian yeah amazing RJ thanks for doing this thanks
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for spending the time uh welcome to the waveform podcast uh we have so much to talk about so you're the CEO of rivan
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yep and I've owned and used a rivian that I've talked about in the past and I love the thing it's a truck we've got this r1s here that we're doing the podcast in it's a fulls siiz three row
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SUV mhm um with the ocean Coast interior with the light interior which is pretty sweet and the is this limestone is what
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it's called on the outside on the paint talk to me about how you got started with getting into cars and how rivan
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started what's the like origin story that you give people yeah well I um it's funny we're just talking about origin
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stories yeah started the company about 13 years ago okay and uh initially um we were focused on a very different product so more of a sports car was the initial thought me spent a couple years
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iterating through that but ultimately really shifted um to larg of what you see today but it wasn't as if it was a we went to bed on a Friday and woke up Monday and knew what it was it took us a
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lot of time to really think through the the position the company the brand how we can create something that um was
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different than what was out there but also helped really Advance things thinking around what could electric vehicle be what could you know a new
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form of Mobility be so yeah yeah that that um Journey was was a twisty path But ultimately started to align around the idea of products that both enabled and inspired people to go do the kinds
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of things you want to take photographs of funny as we sit here with cameras um but a brand built around adventure and
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enabling those types of experiences that's really interesting I didn't know you started on the sports car path um I
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did see that the original name for rivan okay was something else yeah and that it
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was mainstream Motors is that true and if so how all the names well I'm glad you
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didn't and go with mainstream Motors that just feels like a very Bland like generic Mega Corp name uh how did that
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choice happen um yeah so uh I I I started the company and when you start a company you have to have a name to start with yeah I didn't have the final name name in mine so I I used
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that as a placeholder my dad has a business called mainstream engineering so I used that name got it uh which is
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fun but then we very quickly switched to AA A R A mhm so we are AA Motors uh for
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about a year and a half and it was sort of a plan words it was playing on the word Verde and Terra so green earth nice um but the name actually sounded phonetically similar to Hyundai had a
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product the Zera ah and so this was back in like 2010 2011 Hyundai basically said
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you need to stop using the name or we're going to sue we had no money of course I'm not going to fight with Hyundai over a name that nobody knows about you got
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it Hyundai so yeah keep it um so we then went through this long exercise of figing out what the name should be and
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um arrived at rivan which I'm so glad that all happened yeah uh I like that name a lot more than than AA same uh but
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it was something we wanted to find something that phonetically was sounded like flowing and moving but um of course
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didn't have a meaning in any language and yeah we could get the rights to so it was a hard process to come up with a
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name I'm I can sympathize we're working on a name for a product that we're making and it's been like weeks of
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debating different words and different madeup words and just trying to think of work and looking up what's out there you
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piece words together yeah yep same thing yeah we and when we were doing it we we like went out and talk to some third
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parties that do like naming and branding and I thought how hard could this be and we got a quoteback for what they charges
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I'm like who okay so it looks like uh it's a it's a real Choice myself and the five or six ior Engineers of the company
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had to figure that out without the support of any uh branding experts that's funny but so you you got the logo
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out of vervan you got the the the sort of font and everything The Branding is all set and Adventure vehicle is the
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theme and it's sort of pieced together in that puzzle piece yeah I mean the the logo we call it the compass is in it's
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basically it's a graphic representation of a compass and it's just beautifully scalable you can imagine it's a brand
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that can go anywhere it can take you anywhere um and that's what we wanted I think the paint colors are a
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surprisingly good indicator of what the vehicle is designed to do do you feel that way I feel like I look at the adventure vehicle theme and then I see
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your paint colors and I agree with all of them as choices for that specific vehicle the canyon red the red is just
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like red is awes just rust and dirt enough to feel like yeah I can get this thing dirty the the Limestone one the
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blue turquoise one which I'll tell you the story is I wasn't planning on getting one but I did have a reservation
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in for a cyber truck and we were going to do the whole tow hitch rig and thing with the cybertruck to shoot videos and
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then we got an r1t and blue in to do a video with okay so we did the video we I lived with it for a week I had almost nothing negative to say about it I really enjoyed it and within you can ask
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people at the studio like within a week I was just like I kind of think maybe we get one of those instead like that seems
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pretty great and it's not going to be gigantic and it's going to do all the same stuff we want and it's and so
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that's when I plac my ORD is like that's great when the product speaks to me that's that's the most important thing so I feel like strong product thank you
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does the talking for itself and I think that's pretty sweet thanks yeah and my sort of initial question is like all
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right every company's got plans they sort of have this vision of how they want things to go and I think famously
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elon's detailed a master plan where you make a low volume High pric car and that
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fuels the next one which is higher volume lower price so rivan starts with a truck uh smaller pickup truck
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Adventure vehicle type thing r1s the SUV is next yep what is the what is the thinking behind this these two being the first two and how does the rest of the plan
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look yeah the the so as I said when we pivoted the first the sort of core idea was let's build a brand that enables and inspires these types of Adventures as I said and
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we then identified the flagship products we do that with which we're sitting in one of them now the r1s but the The Sibling product the r1t really were
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intended to be the truly the flagship following those uh we have a smaller set of products creatively we call R2 R3 um but they move into different form
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factors obviously different sizes and the goal of those is to continue to take the essence of what we've done here in
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terms of you know config your gear your your kids your pets uh do it in a really
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you sort of refined and fun way but in different packages and in smaller form factors um you know one of the advantages of starting with the flagship product though is it gives you the room to put a lot of content in the vehicle
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so in this in the case of these vehicles electrohydraulic suspension in terms of
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damping um air suspension quad motor so really sort of full content in terms of everything you can put into the vehicle the future products will have a little less stuff um but still deliver on the
00:07:33
the essence of the brand yeah that's really interesting cuz I I talk about and this video is not even out yet but it will be soon which is why I talk
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about why EVS are generally expensive and it's obviously every company has to at some point come out with their first electric car whether you're a startup and it's an EV startup or you're Ford or
00:07:50
whatever and you're coming out with your first EV and it's like you can either differentiate yourself on features and like building it in interestingly and having a bunch of cool things that it
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does or competing on price and it's way more compelling to compete on how good the vehicle can be and useful it is um
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there's a lot of really interesting features with the r1t like the flashlight in the door I mean talking through some of the more interesting
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decisions that you thought would separate r1t when it came out as the first eveve pickup trick yeah we when we
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were sort of at the drawing board stage um there's all kinds of things we we said well if you Electrify the vehicle
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what can you do differently of course obvious ones like the front trunk mhm uh less obvious uh like the gear tunnel in
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the r1t which goes through the side of the vehicle um but then we started to look for opportunities to just create
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these little like almost magical moments and the flashlight was one that we were really drawn to uh just cuz it's it's it
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has a place it's always there it's always charged um it's a lithium battery so it's you know it can last for a
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really long time wasn't there a thing about how many cells are in the battery versus the total number in the truck yeah so in the truck the like in the SUV
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as well there's 7,776 cells okay and so the cool thing about the flashlight is also gives you
00:09:05
that last cell to get to 47 um that was coincidence but we were pretty excited when when that worked out that way that's hilarious cuz most companies would be like oh yeah we designed it this way we were going to do exactly
00:09:16
7777 I'm glad you're admitting it was a coincidence but we really enjoyed yeah but yeah all all those types of little features the the one of the biggest challenges in developing a product like
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this is you have to decide what you're going to say yes to what you're going to say no to and you're you have to make
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lots of trade-offs so the size of the size of the vehicle the seating configuration and and some of those
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decisions are really big they sort of set the tone for the whole product and some of those are small like let's say
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like a radius on the on the instrument panel but the collection of those millions of decisions ultimately feels
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like a product that either is like coordinated like all those decisions were cohesively made across the board or
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you can sense an org structure and so our goal has always been to have it feel as if one United team made several
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million decisions together over the course of a couple years yeah um and the the result is is of course what we're
00:10:13
sitting in today and I'm sure that comes from teams within rivan working together communicating often all of that yeah
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yeah and one of the challenges in automotive historically is you you like the teams and a lot of the Technologies
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either siloed are very often outsourced so Electronics software infotainment these are not typically things that that car manufacturers uh do themselves MH so for us vertically integrating our
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electronic Stacks so it's all the computers in the car the software stack that sits on top of them allowed us to
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integrate features in a way that you you typically don't see honestly I think this is one of the differentiating features of this EV which is this
00:10:50
software is really good uh and I think that's also kind of curious because a lot of traditional car companies are I've described them as Hardware
00:11:01
companies first really good at manufacturing and then they happen to also have to do software to make it all work where some of the really good ones
00:11:07
rivan Tesla Lucid you might throw in there really good software companies that are also making a car that works
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well around it do you think of that as an advantage for rivian just it's a huge Focus for us on when we talk about
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software there's the things we see you know that manifest into UI here but the everything that exists under the surface so the way the chassis controls work power TR controls management MH all of
00:11:31
that being developed in house allows us to quickly iterate and improve the product and add new features add more
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range uh the our this year's product is more range than last year's product but it's lar software software updates yeah
00:11:44
which is really fun um but you but you have to control the the entirety of the software stock to really fully leverage
00:11:50
right all the capabilities so no Android auto no carplay correct which is what a lot of people it's kind of surpris have
00:11:56
you seen the stat Apple posted about like 75% of people won't even consider a car without carplay I don't even know if
00:12:02
that's true or not but it just strikes me as like every car video I watch they at least have to mention oh yeah you can
00:12:07
just put carplay on it the software doesn't even matter just put carplay on it how do you is I'm assuming that's no
00:12:13
plans to add those things but it's sort of a balancing act you have to make this as good as that I mean a lot of the
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things we do like whether it's music or mapping you know we have to make sure we integrate in with the the best-in-class
00:12:26
platforms but by controlling the system it just allows us to the you know the the Arbiter the the the head chef in
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terms of the the experience that you get uh versus handing over control of what we think is one of the most important
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parts of the experience yeah I saw Lucid added the Android I know they added carplay and it was just like a little
00:12:44
square in the corner okay it didn't look well integrated well you kind of get the feeling like they're pressured into
00:12:50
adding it and now it's there and people are going to use it but like imagine how good they could make their own software
00:12:56
to accomplish all those things yeah yeah and and the thing about controlling uh the software stack is we get to
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continually make it better so you've had your r1t you've hopefully seen this so each every few weeks we have a new
00:13:10
software release that either adds features addresses gaps we listen to feedback um our head of software
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development is on Reddit all the time uh that's amazing yeah like hearing what people are saying and interacting so
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it's it's great to get the feedback and then we it drives our our software road map and make sure we're delivering what
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customers want do you guys feel like you're like leaning enough to respond to like you you mentioned Reddit but like YouTube videos like literal customers
00:13:33
and forums talking about things that they would like are you like actively going in there and going you know what
00:13:39
this this is a good idea we hadn't thought of it let's let's add this to the road map all the time all all the time I mean whether it's Reddit um
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videos um my dad sending me a text today had had some feedback and we integrated
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in got to add that Dad feature so I mean there's um there's all that kind of content that comes in and we have um you
00:14:01
we have a road map that every roughly every 3 weeks we have a new software release M and so we'll review what the plans are for that release and I'll
00:14:08
spend time with with our head of software and the team and we often bring things in and say hey look this is
00:14:13
something it was a great idea let's get an inst possible so it might be a matter of weeks before it gets into the vehicle nice so if you have any ideas can we can
00:14:20
we can put some things in for the next release full of ideas I mean I talk about this on the autofocus Channel where like I give my feedback and it's
00:14:26
been cool to see companies take that feedback back and then I see a software update or maybe it's the next car and
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they're eager to point out like hey look at check this out we fixed what you're in the releas exactly um okay something
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else about r1t uh is when you look at the other EV pickup trucks that are out now like
00:14:44
F-150 Lightning and even cybertruck pre-orders a lot of people's first truck which is really interesting to me is that also true about r1t do you know a lot about like the typical r1t buyer
00:14:56
yeah um so most of the customers r1t haven't owned a truck before and one of the things that we're seeing is that um often there's the desire for the function that a pickup would have
00:15:08
provided in terms of like an open bed storage the ability to throw things in very easily but the inefficiency the the
00:15:15
sort of the ride Dynamics the clumsiness of a traditional pickup pickup truck has kept them from making a purchase so
00:15:20
maybe they had a SUV maybe they had a hatchback so it's it's just it's a very large percentage of customers um that
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just have an own pick up before so it's not only in many cases it the first evv but it's the first EV and it's their
00:15:33
first pickup yeah and so we've had uh folks that you just fall in love with the fact that they can put stuff in the
00:15:39
back and then the gear tunnel feature is something we're finding is really heavily used as well yeah yeah first TV
00:15:44
is also interesting because then you get to the how do we design this truck in order to accommodate people who have
00:15:50
only ever driven a gas car and make them feel familiar with it but also give them the advantages like a lot of things what
00:15:56
I think about a lot driving my Tesla is that is really just geared to an E it's not really trying to accommodate people who have driven a gas car meaning lift off to Coast doesn't happen anymore uh
00:16:08
lift off the brake pedal to creep forward doesn't happen anymore but if you drive an EV Cadillac or an ev4 like
00:16:16
a lot of them will have those features by default the Tai can um what's the balance like in this car is it mostly
00:16:23
optimizing for what EVs do best or do you think about like H I think gasc car people would like this yeah you you
00:16:29
referenced regen that's that's a big one we um you have two yeah we have two regen modes we have what we call
00:16:35
standard and high mhm um we don't have a regen off and what we found is for those
00:16:42
that are like used to coasting MH once you use it for just a little bit of time the ability to do one pedal driving is
00:16:48
just a a better Driving Experience um so we haven't added that uh and we don't have a creep feature either so we don't sort of emulate or simulate a you know automatic transmission you think that's
00:17:01
silly for others to do it it feels like a lot of them make the decision to add that ability specifically just to give I
00:17:06
believe it's for the familiarity of like I don't want to stop this Behavior I've learned for the last 20 years of driving
00:17:13
gas cars I it's hard to say we I I think what we found is um a lot of more of our
00:17:19
customers you know it's like 3/4 of our customers have never owned an EV before since I think it's like 80% yeah um so
00:17:26
they come into an EV for the first time and very quickly reorient around regen re you reorient around sort of when you actually need to use the brake pedal which is not that often and um and it
00:17:38
you know it's like you learn in a few days so we haven't had the need to add it it is it's an interesting question
00:17:44
though because it's it's really simulating something that's not mechanically here like you're simulating
00:17:50
a torque converter you're simulating a an automatic transmission which is sort of a funny simulating an inefficiency
00:17:55
which is interesting it is funny that's uh that's weird well something else I think a lot of EV first time EV buyers
00:18:01
have to contend with is charging that's like the number one question I get when I'm out in the rivan or any other EV
00:18:08
people ask about it what are your thoughts on the current state of EV charging yeah it's it's a challenge in
00:18:15
in the United States there's um there's been a massive underinvestment in charging infrastructure um and realizing
00:18:24
that we decided to build out our own infrastructure so it's it's it's early stages but yeah we call it the rivan
00:18:29
adventure network uh it's a DC fast charge Network we have about uh we're early today we have about 30 sites that
00:18:36
are up each one has six DC fast Chargers that can charge the charger can charge up to 300 Kow which means it's protected
00:18:43
for future products as well cool uh these take up to about 220 kilowatt today but um you know as we have new
00:18:50
products come out that that'll continue to grow to fly utilize the charging capability of of the Chargers um but in
00:18:56
terms of independent networks there's only a couple that are out there outside of Tesla and
00:19:02
um and they're not very good A lot of them have real reliability problems or uptime problems or not very predictable
00:19:07
so this is one of the reasons we're investing you so much money and so much Capital into building out a very large Network what we've said publicly is
00:19:14
we'll have over 600 charging stations uh within about two years so it's worldwide
00:19:19
uh in the well first States just in the US and and really opening up you know as you'd imagine the key corridors so up
00:19:26
and down the West Coast the east coast and then connecting you know the West Coast the East Coast so that's the
00:19:31
prioritization I think you know Tesla's network is a very strong Network um clearly the best network that's out
00:19:37
there today um and what we're building we hope to create a Network that has equal level of density in terms of
00:19:43
chargers but also in terms of uptime yeah do you think of it as like competing with Tesla because I feel like with the rivan the more you can build
00:19:50
out your own network the better experience it will be for rivan customers and the better the public
00:19:55
charging experience gets the better it is for going on road trips and if you get a charger the whole thing starts looking really good um but there's just
00:20:02
like a couple of Tesla Chargers that have added this adapter that can out work and they'll show up in the map
00:20:07
which is great do you wish there were more open on Tesla's Network yeah I I think that I think more will open on Tesla's Network we've the rivan can
00:20:18
charge on that on Tesla's Network where they're open um the the way I think about it is over
00:20:25
time I hope um charging starts to become more ubiquitous and it becomes less of an issue um because we can't rely on
00:20:33
that happening independently from us we've decided to build our own network sure it's a you know it's many hundreds
00:20:38
of millions of dollars to go do that but it um but it creates a much better customer experience so you know year
00:20:44
from now the density of rivan chargers will really help solve a lot of these core issues and and we'll see third
00:20:50
party networks start to build up as well but because our chargers are we design them we build them we build them
00:20:57
actually in the same plant we build the vehicles the the're really high quality so the up time is high we monitor them it's a key
00:21:03
key part of the customer experience yeah and so one of the challenges with the independent networks is if you're a first- Time EV buyer and you buy and
00:21:11
you're on a road trip and you go to one of the choices let's say electri America and it doesn't work yeah that's a really
00:21:17
frustrating experience and it's not something rivan can control uh it's it's outside of our control and so by
00:21:23
building our own network we can ensure that the Chargers themselves are wellmaintained and and working so you're
00:21:28
you kind of have like an infrastructure in place to keep the uptime high there's people monitoring them for sure cuz that
00:21:34
seems like the biggest difference between a well-maintained and a not well-maintained charging network is it's
00:21:40
just like there is there has to be some level of effort to maintain quality yeah so I mean I I review every week I get
00:21:47
the uptime report for every one of our chargers and that's one of the things is we we deployed our these first initial sites with mostly concentrated on the
00:21:53
west coast um we wanted to make sure the systems were all working our teams were able to service them the up time is
00:22:00
extremely good on those what is a good up time on a charger I mean like as a percentage 99
00:22:06
99 okay yeah five something like that it needs to be cuz it's if it doesn't work
00:22:12
if it doesn't work it's like immediately it starts affecting it's a very bad experience yeah I'm on a road trip charger doesn't work um that's not good
00:22:20
yeah so the also having multiple Chargers per site ensures that if if there is an issue with one of the
00:22:25
dispensers uh there's another one there okay yeah so every one of our sites has two cabinets that do um that do all the
00:22:32
power conversion and then we have six dispensers gotcha are there I guess I always ask about future plans but
00:22:38
potentially larger sites in the future other cars can charge on rivian's network right and we're going to open it up right now it's it's rivian only but
00:22:44
it's 6 9 12 sort of groups of three yeah cool I like that I think we have we have
00:22:50
two sites of nine Chargers today got it are there any on the East Coast I feel like I've looked for them but there a
00:22:55
couple okay but in like a month there'll be more and a month after that it'll start populating and growing
00:23:09
quickly has it surprised you at all how much investment is required to also build out the charging Network aside from the vehicles no we we we we sort of went into it knowing it's going to be
00:23:20
expensive I think what's more surprising is sometimes just how hard the um the process to get everything approved is
00:23:27
you so to build the site sometimes the everything from a zoning and and permitting point of view takes more time than the site itself right interesting so the the pipeline there's we have
00:23:38
several hundred sites in the pipeline that are like in various stages of Perman Zing yeah and charges of being
00:23:44
built and then the charger gets set up really quickly got it okay that's cool so so you've got r1t is out then you get
00:23:51
to r1s M for customers there is also and I don't know if you even know this like
00:23:56
a qu mile down the road around the corner there's an Amazon facility and sometimes I'll drive in here and I'll see like nine rivan delivery Vans pass
00:24:04
me in a row and I'm like they're doing it too they're also doing that what's that business been like is that a huge
00:24:10
part of what keeps rivan afloat is that uh sort of a 50/50 split with the customer business what does that look like for you yeah the one of the challenges we've had in the last uh in
00:24:22
the last year really if we look at 2022 as we launched the truck the r&t mhm we launched this the r1s and we launched two versions of the van a 500 cubic foot version a 700 cubic foot version and a
00:24:35
product launch you know launching manufacturing on something like this is any vehicle is really hard there's
00:24:41
several thousand parts that have to come together from hundreds of suppliers and um the wiper going on there uh she
00:24:49
hundreds of suppliers with thousands of Parts all of them that be synchronized and coming together and to do that on any vehicle is hard to do that in a
00:24:55
vehicle when you've got this supply chain price is happening in the backdrop it's really hard to do that when you've
00:25:00
got the challenges of operating with Co it was it was incredibly hard um and to just sort of Stack those four different Vehicles over the course of the last year was was yeah was uh tested our our
00:25:13
operational capabilities and it showed all the gaps we had and and we learned so much the last year but as it stands
00:25:18
today the the T and the S the R1 platform is ramping and the van program uh while it's a completely different
00:25:24
vehicle Top Hat we do share some of the electronics okay uh share some of the propulsion ele elements of the propulsion platform but um but it's a much easier vehicle to build it's you
00:25:36
know there's like one seat and a jump seat it's like a big box with shelves in the back so it's it's it's a it's a
00:25:43
different kind of vehicle than this you look at this this is a lot of content is a complex vehicle to build definitely so
00:25:48
the Amazon bands and the commercial bands we're ramping those as you say you're going to start seeing a lot of
00:25:53
them on the roads yeah it's it's kind of I feel like that's the most common review vehicle I see on the road right
00:25:59
now maybe it's just because of being in New Jersey being around the Amazon facility there's more r1s on the road um
00:26:04
there are a lot around here the the key is we deploy those in in clusters I see so there's probably a big cluster here
00:26:12
and then they also have to have their own like charging setup and they get do they get like walked through the advantages of the vehicle and like what
00:26:18
to do versus not to do for for a driver I mean imagine um you're in a van all day long driving this is this is your office so the Comfort the driveability things like regen these all become
00:26:29
really key elements of of your of your what it feels like to be a work during the day yeah so we've spent a lot of
00:26:35
time on driver comfort and with drivers in the feedback loop through the development process and one of the things we found was um most important
00:26:43
was actually getting in and out of the vehicle you have to get in and out of the vehicle a lot about 300 times a day
00:26:48
jeez okay so the van is asymmetric so on the driver's side there's a forward hinge door right uh which actually on a
00:26:55
on a route you don't use that often and on what we would call the P turn side there's a pocket door so a door that
00:27:00
sort of slides into the body itself and so the ease at which you can hop out of the driver's seat grab a package and
00:27:08
then get out of the vehicle through this open pocket door makes just that whole process a lot easier and so that coupled
00:27:15
with of course the drivability of an EV and then a really heavy focus on thermal control so the seats are cooled and
00:27:22
heated nice um and when I say cooled not just vented but actually uh you know cooled refrigerated blowing up through the seat which on a hot day feels really nice to hot sit
00:27:32
down a on a seat and it's almost like when you when you go into the kitchen you open the refrigerator to cool off and it blows a burst of cool air it's
00:27:38
like your seat does that to you so it's really something that the drivers um have responded to posibly and it's the
00:27:45
sought-after vehicle right within the you know within the distribution centers that's really interesting yeah yeah I
00:27:50
see him a lot now which is funny but I guess that that kind of reminds me of like all the decisions that have to go into making like each every little thing
00:27:58
was someone's like real choice they had like an A C choice and they were like all right we're going to put the little
00:28:03
logos here on the wireless charger uh and I've even mentioned in some of the autofocus videos like little tiny
00:28:09
feedback on what I might have done a little differently like in this one I'll say when I pop something on the wireless
00:28:14
charger it slides around we're fixing that a little Ridge are you okay this is this was there's a lot of things that aren't right about the charging pad but
00:28:20
it's um phone slides around too easy the way the induction coils are set up they're not spaced well enough to allow
00:28:27
for such a wide variant and phone sizes yep so this is um this is going to get updated pretty soon you're here first
00:28:33
it's it's being updated Focus VI absolutely it is super frustrating right now the phone slides but there on top of
00:28:39
that there's a lot of really well thought out things like the charges back here and then the cable routing coming out here so do a wired phone that works
00:28:45
great there's also the the speaker that's more of like an that's okay there are some features that skirt the line
00:28:52
for me right between feature and gimmick I'm like am I going to use this speaker yeah where is is this skirting the line
00:28:59
for you to just like a fun thing let's just add a speaker just we got the space why not the speaker's fun um we have a a
00:29:05
option that's coming going to come out soon which there's another first uh that speaker when it goes in there's a you
00:29:11
look on the back of it yeah can I pull this out uh tripod's probably in the way but I think on the bottom there's on the
00:29:16
bottom there's like a little retaining hook and what that's for is if the vehicles when the vehicles didn't drive that latch closes yeah so that if you
00:29:24
were to break hard or get into an acccident the speaker doesn't become a projectile yep but but that that latch
00:29:29
and the whole electronic mechanism around that creates an opportunity for this to be a modular space so we
00:29:34
actually have instead of a speaker we have a drawer module that's going to go in so imagine like a little that could
00:29:40
be box that carry stuff yeah that's going to be uh an optional basically you could choose the speaker or this drawer
00:29:47
okay that's cool but the um the thing about the speaker is it's really handy when you don't plan to need a speaker uh
00:29:54
and you have a speaker flashlight if you're at a campsite if you're at a friend's house helping them move a couch if you're have a garage dance party
00:30:04
whatever whatever which my kids love to do like all those kinds of things you're not planning for um you have a really
00:30:10
nice speaker with a big battery that can last a while it's also a charging dock which is handy so we a lot of people use
00:30:16
it for a charging dock which is like the most overdesigned charging dock you can imagine it's pretty great yeah yeah yeah
00:30:22
I I think there's a lot of things that that are like that when I see a vehicle that has a feature I immediately think like is this design for a person or for
00:30:29
a demo and I wonder like okay yeah most of the features in here are like very well laid out and then there's a couple
00:30:35
that are just like huh I think I might use that flashlight once in a while well flashlight I flashlight we find gets
00:30:41
used a lot I use all the time yeah the theme is the the speaker is probably bigger than it needed to be you probably
00:30:47
we probably could have gotone away with a smaller one I mean I I've literally used it where my phone's dead and I'm like damn I need a phone charge so I
00:30:54
grab the speaker I'm like carrying the speaker out with me a wire attached to it okay boy I wish we' made this a little smaller that's funny um yeah what
00:31:01
is another thing that you find is something you don't use a lot um okay the one small detail small detail with
00:31:10
the gear tunnel and the r1t is if I have something that's not big enough and I'm driving and it slides around I might put
00:31:16
it in on the left side but when I arrive at my destination it's on the other side is a little Ridge maybe a good idea or
00:31:23
is it just like should I only ever put golf clubs in there like what's the usual use case for the gear tunnel
00:31:29
that's fun um so there's a whole series there's a whole group of people that have thought about what like do we put
00:31:36
retainers or different sort of Cubbies if you will within the gear GE tunnel there's a floor mat that work kind of
00:31:42
has a ridge okay um what we're finding most people use it for duffel bags yeah which is very common yeah um not basketballs are things that roll easy for exactly that point yeah uh but but
00:31:55
things that sort of you put there stay in place obviously golf clubs M uh snowboards is a really common one uh
00:32:01
that we see all the time snow boots is a really common one the camp kitchen's gone the C the camp kitchen's it's gone
00:32:06
gone it is but was it just not enough people um it's a good question no it's a really popular feature it was more there was more people that wanted it than more the take rate was higher than we
00:32:19
expected we went we're going through a redesign process to redesign it to something that uh it's very cool we're
00:32:27
going to show it soon that doesn't consume the whole Space okay so one of the challenges with the kitchen as we
00:32:32
originally designed it is people had this painful uh decision between do I want to use my gear tunnel or do I want
00:32:38
the entire thing the entire thing used up with a kitchen yeah so we have a cheaper lower cost update design that
00:32:45
that is much less that doesn't take up the whole thing that's cool yeah yeah I feel like that's so we pulled it off the
00:32:50
off of our configurator while we go through the redesign originally we thought we'd keep it the same but it's changing so much that it's it's going to
00:32:56
be a a set how we think about kitchens we think the kitchen space is really interesting for a vehicle that's
00:33:02
designed to to be out to go out doing things it's you know we all congregate around food it's a really great way to
00:33:07
bond so and you have enough power to cook many many meals in the vehicle so uh that was something we spent time on interesting yeah so I guess in the in the larger big picture you're the CEO of
00:33:21
rivian I'm sure a lot of decisions get to the point where like other leaders have talked to me about this if it's an
00:33:27
easy decision it gets solved quickly by people who work in that specific department and if it's a more difficult
00:33:33
decision it gets escalated more and eventually your job just become sifting through the most difficult interesting
00:33:38
decisions that you have to make along with strategy how do you think about steering the rivan ship and the
00:33:45
decisions that you have to make and maybe if you have an example of some tougher decisions how you go through that process yeah it's you know in in
00:33:53
something as complex as a vehicle um you know if our products were you're making
00:33:58
I don't know installated cups or something much simpler conceivably like you could be I could be involved in
00:34:03
every decision you what's the radius of the edge of the cup how does the the top scre on on something like a vehicle
00:34:09
there's so there's so many millions of decisions that need to be taken that by but by very definition I should be
00:34:16
involved in a small fraction and as you said it's it's the really key foundational decisions or the really hard subjective decisions um so on on
00:34:25
these products on on R1 um the team was a lot smaller when a lot of the core decisions are made so I was very much in
00:34:31
a lot of the details of R1 as we're now working on future products uh where I'm focusing a lot of
00:34:38
my time is on the the key technical decisions so the decisions on compute platforms uh battery cell
00:34:45
architecture um Network architecture so what's our topology of computers within the vehicle um and I get very involved
00:34:53
in those items but then we have really strong teams that can do some of the detailed design work on let's say
00:34:59
executing seats or executing body structures um but of course whenever anything escalates around like a design tradeoff That's a classic one like it would you like it to look like this it'll cost more it'll weigh more I see
00:35:11
or we can make it look less cool um but it'll cost less and way less those types of trade-offs sometimes it's hard to
00:35:19
have them made automatically it's to require some level of escalation and they kind of I guess add in they they
00:35:25
compile so you can make one of those decisions and might feel like just one but if you made all of the decisions in One Direction then you'd end up with a
00:35:32
different product entirely where maybe there's one thing that you steer one way while another thing you steer the other
00:35:37
way for sure I mean it's it on a vehicle with a cost Target if to decide where you're going to spread investment like so do you want to put ,000 more dollars
00:35:48
into the interior do you want to put it into the hood do you want to put it into the chassis do you want to put it into range so these are all this complex web
00:35:55
of tradeoffs yeah well that that trade off web gets super complex when you aim for like a $35,000 car like this is the
00:36:03
this is the ultimate question I always get which is man I want an EV but they're all so expensive when are they
00:36:08
going to have like a Volkswagen Golf that's electric and it's got all the same range and everything and it's the
00:36:14
same price I don't know about you but I see that as like a horizon thing like the battery technology has to get cheaper there's a lot of expensive parts of electric cars how do you think about the eventual goal of potentially a much
00:36:28
more affordable attainable EV for the masses yeah it's it's really important and what we don't want to happen as as consumers or for us as a company is to just dilute it down to where there's no
00:36:40
personality or excitement so I think that's where we talk about this a lot is um you you can do Innovation through additions you add features you add content um you add technology um the
00:36:54
ability to do Innovation through subtraction where you really distill that to the cores and so what is what is
00:36:59
the product and the brand stand for m so you know we're deep into our our next set of programs on the R2 platform and those Vehicles there's huge debates
00:37:09
around like where we apply spending where where we put build materials cost is it in the suspension you know how
00:37:16
capable does the vehicle need to be off-road relative to let's say onroad driving Dynamics or in terms of interior content and so these are these are really big decision so you know
00:37:28
something like this we have a sunglass holder here yep that adds money cost you do we want to do something like that or would you rather have you know a removable flashlight in the door these are those are the decisions and so for
00:37:41
the the R2 product lineup we have less dollars to spend and so there those like things that we didn't have to debate as much on a flagship product like this we really are debating heavily that's really interesting yeah and so what's
00:37:53
core to the brand is a flashlight in the door really critical right versus um you know being able to manage certain
00:38:01
off-road conditions which which Drive costs into the body structure and into chassis so these are these are the
00:38:06
really fun crunchy debates that we have internally so R2 is a lower plat lower cost overall platform for a vehicle
00:38:13
that's why that's why the decisions are more frequent between potentially things instead of just why not both because it's a $90,000 Truck Yeah so we have um
00:38:21
we talk about a lot there's only so many really cool features we can add in the vehicle yeah and and each one has a
00:38:28
price tag and we you know we're constantly adding all those up and saying we is the some of the parts where we want it to be it's a balancing act
00:38:35
yeah yeah and this evolves over time too because I'm sure you know whether the target for R2 is low or you get like 10
00:38:42
12 years down the road and then there's a $25,000 vehicle like eventually accessibility is the goal is there a
00:38:49
future do you share the vision of like eventually every car is electric is that like an inevitable future so it's like
00:38:54
needs to be the outcome yeah yeah I guess that that just means yes eventually we will have to get to incredibly affordable EVS everywhere
00:39:02
that do satisfy various people's needs yeah I mean when you think about um it's pretty wild we're we we we lived through this period of time in human history where we like this brief moment the
00:39:14
whole world ran on fossil fuels mhm and you can imagine history books 500 years from now thousand years from now looking
00:39:21
back and there was like this blip of time where like our generation and our parents and our parents parents yeah
00:39:27
lived on like hundreds of millions of years accumulated carbon in the form of fossil fuels and that just won't be the
00:39:33
way the planet runs and it shouldn't be the sooner we can get off of it the less risk we put in our on our you know
00:39:39
planet's ecological systems and of course on climate so like our view is we need to make the switch as fast as we
00:39:45
possibly can but it's it's unquestionable that the switch will certainly happen in in you know in the
00:39:51
very near term in the next 15 years I I would say yeah what would you uh what would you say to other
00:39:57
more traditional car companies who are lagging on their switch to making good EVS CU there's a lot of them out there and I talk to them and I talk to obviously the ones that do make EVS I review the products and then there are
00:40:09
some that just seem to not be super interested in making a good quality EV or maybe there's a legislation that's like we got to get our emissions average
00:40:15
down but like we're not really focused on that yet is there are there messages that regular people can send voting with
00:40:21
their wallets like what would you say to them I think people are starting to vote with their wallets you're seeing
00:40:27
I mean you own EVS you own rivan you own a Tesla I mean this is um once you move
00:40:34
into an EV it's really hard to go the opposite direction and and I think that is going to become even more true as we solve charging so as we build more charging structure the reason as I said
00:40:46
rivan's investing so heavily in our charging Network um but I'd say the the other reality is is we shouldn't make
00:40:52
the choice to go to an electric vehicle just about electrification it should just be the best thing you can buy so if
00:40:58
you're buying a 7 passenger through SUV mhm and you want something that's a premium capable vehicle this should be the best thing you could buy and that's yeah and the fact that it's electric is
00:41:09
is a great thing from from an environmental point of view from a Dynamics point of view but but ultimately the the product in totality
00:41:16
needs to just be the one you want yeah yeah I think that's kind of what makes uh the cheaper E A tougher sell right
00:41:22
now is cuz they're not necessarily the best thing at that price where you see like the 30 to $45,000 EVS where they
00:41:29
they had to make a lot of the choices which were we're going to cut a lot of Personality here or we're going to cut a lot of the the things that people
00:41:35
typically expecting a carve of this price to offer an EV where I guess strategically speaking the best way to
00:41:42
start is at the top where you make that convincing value proposition this is the best version and it is electric so now
00:41:49
we've set the tone for electric and then we can work our way down in price yeah what that's what uh for us with R2 is so
00:41:57
EX exciting is the ability to have you talked about like cut the personality the vehicle have all the same like Rich
00:42:02
personality that we find in the R1 platform okay but like curated so thoughtfully that the fact that there's
00:42:08
less content and maybe we spend less money so instead of a quad motor there's less Motors but but the Dynamics the
00:42:15
capabilities all of that still really feel special yeah okay well I'm looking forward to R2 sounds like that's going
00:42:21
to be exciting when should we expect to see the first R2 stuff if it's not too far out uh we're not going to show it
00:42:26
for a little while um but sometime in the next roughly year okay nice yeah well uh I think we should
00:42:34
do a walk around of the vehicle and we'll do that on the autofocus channel so if you're watching the podcast thanks for watching thanks for spending the
00:42:40
time for the waveform audience I'm sure they'll enjoy it and uh watch the autofocus video when we walk around the
00:42:45
r1s thanks for watching see you guys later peace n [Music]
