Customer R2 deliveries are about to start, and the next 30 days are going to tell us more about where Rivian is actually headed than anything that's been pitched on a stage in the past year. The marketing is done, production is rolling, and the story is about to shift from pricing and trims to what real ownership actually looks like. I've got an R2 coming too, so I'll be sharing the full experience here as it unfolds.

Rivian's RAP1 chip and Gen 3 Autonomy Computer aren't just spec bumps. They're the moment Rivian stops renting compute from someone else and starts owning the whole stack, the same way Apple did when it walked away from Intel and built its own silicon.

RJ Scaringe’s headline $403 million pay package isn’t actually money in his pocket. Most of it is grant-date fair value on stock options that only pay out if Rivian’s stock more than doubles, the company hits real profitability targets, and he stays CEO long enough to see it through. The cash he actually took home in 2025 looks more like $25 million, and most of that came from selling existing shares back to the Also spinout.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you're configuring a Launch Edition Performance R2, the 20" All-Terrain wheel upgrade is the smarter long term pick. The 21" All-Season runs a tire size nobody else makes yet, and R1 owners already know how that story goes. The range tradeoff is smaller than you might think.

The gap between what RJ Scaringe has actually shipped in the last eighteen months and how anyone is talking about him feels wider than it should be. Here's the case for why he might be the most underrated CEO in automotive right now.