Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe sat down with Yahoo Finance for an exclusive interview breaking down the $1.25 billion Uber robotaxi deal and why autonomous software, not just vehicles, is the real business Rivian is building toward.
The EV market isn't dying, it's sorting itself out. At least 18 automakers have canceled or scaled back EV plans in the U.S., but companies like Rivian are doubling down. The difference between who's folding and who isn't comes down to one thing: who actually believed in this from the start.
Rivian is rolling out a new magnetic wireless phone charger in the R1, and we have photos of it already installed in a production unit headed to a customer. The new charger uses two magnets to keep your phone locked in place, and we tested it firsthand to see what it's actually capable of.
Rivian's $1.25 billion Uber robotaxi deal is exciting, but only $300 million is actually guaranteed. The rest depends on hitting autonomy milestones, the Georgia factory doesn't exist yet, and Uber has 25+ other AV partners it can fall back on. The strategy is sound. The timeline is not.
Rivian and Uber are teaming up to deploy a fleet of fully autonomous R2 robotaxis, and the scale of this deal is hard to overstate. Uber is committing up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, with an initial $300 million locked in right after signing, and nobody saw this coming.
