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Inside Rivian’s design lab and the story behind the special headlights
Rivian made a name for itself when it unveiled one of the first electric pickup trucks, the R1T, in 2018. It followed that up with an SUV built off the same platform, the R1S, and has since built a passionate fan base around a brand that celebrates adventure and the outdoors.
Now it’s preparing for its next chapter with the R2, a smaller spin on the R1S SUV, and the R3, a rally-inspired hatchback.
“A lot of people were surprised on R3” Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud told CNBC. “It’s not something that I think a lot of people would have guessed that Rivian would have done … and that was the key thing we were trying to show, we’re not pigeonholed to one form factor.”
The new vehicles, which were unveiled in March of last year, are part of Rivian’s strategy to reach a broader market for its electric vehicles, which currently start upwards of $70,000.
The R2, which the company says will start around $45,000, is expected to go into production by the end of this year at the company’s Normal, Illinois, manufacturing facility.
“While R1 was designed through addition, we had to look at R2 through subtraction,” Hammoud said. “What are the things we can remove or take away, but still keep the ethos of the product and the brand?”
The R2 and R3 are coming on the heels of a tough time for the automaker.
Weak demand, higher costs and the U.S. cancelling the EV credit could spell trouble for Rivian. But that hasn’t stopped the company from breaking ground on a new $5 billion factory in Georgia, where the next generation vehicles will be built.
“We’re first launching R2 at our facility in Illinois, but this is really the site where we’ll scale global production. We’re building this into a 400,000 unit plant,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau at the plant’s construction site in September.
CNBC got rare access inside Rivian’s design lab in Irvine, California, to see how the company shapes its distinctive vehicles. We see how the EV maker approaches design for its adventure-driven EV lineup, which includes the backstory on how it conceived its iconic headlights, a choice that provoked mixed reactions when first unveiled.
“They were controversial,” recalls John Voelcker, contributing editor at Car and Driver. “It took a while for people to get over it. I think it was smart in that it’s harder to make your truck distinctive. So a front end that immediately is like no one else is probably a good thing.”
Watch the video to learn about Rivian’s approach to design and its plans to expand its brand of adventure-themed EVs.
