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Rivian's new R two is rolling off the line in Normal, Illinois. Big milestone for the company. It's a smaller, more affordable suv and for many this is the vehicle that will define Rivian's path to profitability. The company continues to burn through cash. Joining us now from the factory is CEO RJ. Scaringe, who has driven quite a few R twos off the line already today. It's a big moment, but our j we should point out that on Friday the facility was hit by a tornado, by a big storm. There was
damage to certain parts of the factory. What was the net result of that? Is everyone okay? And has there been any material impact to the start of production plan?
Yeah, I mean, of course, of course, you can't plan for these kinds of things, and we didn't expect a tornado to hit Friday night, but you know, the teams responded really well. Fortunately everyone was safe. We followed our protocols as soon as we knew there are tornadoes in the area. But yeah, tornado went through the south end of the plant and ripped the roof off the building and knocked down some of the some of the plants as well, and so the last you know, seventy two
hours have been around the clock. You're getting all the water out of the facility and getting ready to rebuild the south end. But you know, it's like the ultimate example of resilience of the business where the teams have come together and we still had vehicles come off the line this morning.
Is the plan still the same You can get through the same kind of ramp strategy that you had the same volumes in that initial output.
Yeah, our ramp up this week and into next week. We're not making changes to the plan. We're obviously having to make some accommodations for the fact that a big it's the logistics area of the plant and so the way that Materira was flowing into the plant through the dock doors is not to come in in a different way.
But you know, we're working through it. We're working through it.
What's interesting is orders demand configuration r Jay. What do people want and how willingly are they putting in the orders?
Yeah, I mean, I'm as you said, I drove a bunch of our twos off the line today. I've been driving in our two for a while and the car is just incredible. It's the combination of the package, the driving dynamics, the efficiency of course, the design, and just the aesthetic feel. So we're really excited to get folks into it. There's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. We've had a few events where we've hosted potential customers to experience it.
And you know, we were in Denver a couple of days ago and there's like a super long line just to sit in the car.
So we'd love to see the enthusiasm.
And I can't wait to continue to ramp up production and start seeing these on the road.
I mean, I loved Ed's enthusiasm when he came to have a look at your in How's AI chip? And I'm interested is where therefore that vertical integration comes in. You're also including light O. Look there, there's a roadmap for these variants. When does that enter production?
ALJ so our in house silicon, which is an eight hundred tops per ship.
We have two of those chips in the vehicle and we couple that with.
Cameras, radar and a lighter that sits at the top of the windshield that comes in at the end of this year and so our launch edition still has a very highly capable self driving platform, which is essentially a further development of what's in our our one vehicle now.
But across the vehicle, you know, our two just represents so many learnings for us as a business, whether it's the drive line, the power electronics, just the way it's being built in terms of cost and cost efficiency, and so there's there's like not a there's not a detail in the car that hasn't been thoughtfully evolved or developed relative to what we've done in our one.
Oh Jae, I want to go a bit more specific on what carry is talking about. The story with R two has changed a little bit. I think you'll probably thinking about an autonomous future a bit more than you were. But the idea was to get close to that forty five thousand dollars mark a vehicle for the masses. You start with a premium and more expensive variant, but what are you seeing in the demand pockets for getting to a lower price point that is where you want to take on the established lowems.
Right, Yeah, Well, the average price of a new car in the United States is about fifty thousand dollars, and so really important US as we're developing R two is recognizing we wanted to be right in that range, and so having a variant that starts at forty five and then going up to our top spec for the performance version with all the kit for the interior is at fifty seven.
It allows us to really nicely straddle that.
And of course, you know, launching any product, you have the decision of what do you launch first? You launch the base BAC midspec topspec right, and it's impossible to sort of make everyone happy with when you have a launch edition. We decided to launch with the premium spec, but we'll be introducing like a middle like a midspec vehicle, and then the forty five thousand R version will come thereafter.
But that all rolls out over roughly the next year, and you know, there's so much enthusiasm for the product that we're very like, we feel really confident with the way we've configured the specifications and even the pricing. We feel quite strong that we've we've priced it appropriately, especially when you look at the capabilities and then the cross shop of what other vehicles are in the space.
I've experienced the R two that does have the ld R and the in house silicon, and it's so interesting there's going to be a generation of R twos that don't have it. I know that you said they're very capable with the Nvidia silicon and without lid R, but
that's a big call to make, right. Is there any flexibility to accelerate the timing of where you can start production on the R two line in Illinois and bring in that gear, because what you're pitching for the autonomous capabilities, even the advanced driver assistance capabilities of our two, they are predicated on that next gen gear.
Well, the launch edition still has a very high ceiling, and so this will get to and our Gen two R one will also do this. Later this year will start to roll out point to point level two, so I meaning hands off wheel, eyes on road, but you type the address and the car completely drives you there. And then into next year we'll start to roll out level three, so hands off, eyes off for specific domains
in this case, you know, starting with highways. And that will be true for Gen two of R one, It'll be true for the launch edition of R two, and will of course be true for the variant of the vehicle that has the higher compute stack and more capable perception. And what that more capable perception is going to allow for is a higher ceiling of what the vehicle can ultimately achieve, and so it'll achieve higher levels capability. And importantly it serves as a really valuable part of our
data flywheel. And so think of the R two fleet. It's a high volume product as being part of training are what we call our large driving model, and the existence of a light our plus the enhanced inference just allows us to do a better job of capturing lots and lots of driving miles to train our model.
Look, other automakers are probably looking at that flywheel. Ah Jay, I'm really interested in some of the hints we're getting some of the coverage in the markets about discussions to license your software, your autonomy stack, your underlying technology to other automakers.
Is that in the works?
Well, I think in the fullness of time.
You know, when you look at what we're building as a business, there's really two revenue opportunities. One is we continue to grow by selling vehicles, So of course R two is the embodiment of that, that's what we're driving towards. But there's another element of our business, which is leveraging the technology we're developing. And the first example that was
what we did with Volkswagen. We did a five point eight billion dollar software licensing deal and that allows us to deploy this is not our self driving but our compute stack and our software platform, our os across a
wide range of electric vehicles within the Volkswagen portfolio. And so we're excited about the potential to do more deals like that with our operating system in the vehicle, with our vehicle, and certainly as we think about autonomy, the potential that's there for us also license that in the long term.
Ravian CEO RJ scarrange. We'll let you get back to those R twos that are rolling off the shop floor. We so appreciate your time today from an annoying