Tosh Show - My Rivian Hookup/Founder - RJ Scaringe

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Daniel talks shop with engineering entrepreneur RJ Scaringe about building a car company from the ground up, raising capital, and his overall critiques of Rivian’s first pickup truck.

Did you regret buying Twitter? Hi, welcome to Tosh Show. I'm your host. Comedian, Dan, Dan the Mustard Man. It's been a while since somebody's called me Dan, Dan, the Mustard Man. Is this that used to happen? Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, if he was a Dan, Dan, the Mustard Man, swinging on a rubber band, fell into a frying pan.

I don't know what they were saying Do you like mustard? What? Do you like mustard? No, I don't like mustard. I like mustard. I mean, I do like mustard. Wait.

How much do you like it? I didn't like mustard when they used to call me this. I was a child. Yeah. You have to be at least 18 years old before you really start craving mustard. No kid craves mustard, you're right. You don't crave mustard before 18.

You show me a 16-year-old that craves mustard, and I'll show you a 16-year-old got a thumb of his ass. Great to be here today. I'm in a swell mood because Eddie and I are both heading up to Lake Tahoe. That's right. To the mountains. Two experienced mountain men. Yep.

Going to be on the lake. Now, this year has been a tragic time up in Lake Tahoe. Some people died on the boats. There was a, you know, that one boat had eight people, or it had ten people. Two survived. Eight died. The seas got angry. Eight foot swell.

Now, in my lack of boating experience, here's what I do if things got out of control quickly. I would point my boat towards shore and gun it, and I'm going to destroy my boat. Right. But guess what? Nobody's dying on my watch, and I'm certainly not going down with my vessel. Last year, there was a storm on Lake Tahoe, and I had a little tiny inflatable boat, a little jet boat, had a little engine on it. You know, I putted around the lake. It was fun because I could go in shallow waters.

And my wife loved it. And guess what? Stormers ripped her away and destroyed her. And this was a boat that's just left at the house. When I purchased the house, it came with the house. Right. I don't think it was worth much. But believe it or not, it was insured.

And the insurance company gave me a fortune for it. I was like, what? I thought I was going to get like $3,000 or $4,000. No. They cut a big old, fat check. I was like, man, insurance is great. Maybe that's, is that insurance fraud? No, no, it was insured. I mean, they came there. They took the boat away that was destroyed and then they wrote me a check. Yeah, that's,

you insured it. That's why that's why, yeah. That's just weird because it wasn't worth that. They were bad at their job. You probably had replacement insurance on it. Oh, interesting. But you don't have to replace it when you buy replacement insurance. Is that the case? Yeah, they just cut you the check. You do whatever you want. Well, because they gave me the option of keeping it and they gave me an amount or they'd give me a few thousand more and they'd take it away. And I'm like, well, it's a broken, destroyed boat.

Take the whole thing. Yeah. And pay me more. And pay me more. That's great. You're cleaning up and you're giving me more money. That's a no-brainer. I mean, was the amount enough to buy a new boat?

Yeah, they gave me enough to replace it. But the thing is, it was an old boat that they don't really, it's not readily available. but then I found one available in Florida and I'm like Pete see what it would cost to ship this across the country and he did and I'm surprising my wife with this so guys don't say a word but she's going to get this new replacement both this by the way it didn't didn't cost very much at all compared to what they they gave me to replace it it's just win win everything's coming up roses for Dan Dan the mustard man He's making a run everybody

But anyway I'm looking forward to getting up there In Tahoe I know Carl is Carl when he's there The dog just he gets Juvenated Almost immediately As soon as he steps Steps in that

Brisk Mountain Air No I'm bringing the pig up too Which is a horrible idea I don't drive mainly because I don't I have a rivian I don't I don't like doing stops with electric cars And the Rivian's good for the environment, I know, but the PJ is better for my marriage. So get up there quick.

All this outdoorsy stuff makes me want to talk to a real truck guy. Enjoy. Support for today's episode comes from Square, your all-in-one business partner, making your day-to-day easier. And by support, I mean money. I believe in Square so much I do this ad for free. But I will not do this ad for free. I don't even like to say that. I will not do this ad.

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square keeps up so you don't have to slow down get everything you need to run and grow your business without long-term commitments right now you can get two hundred dollars off of square hardware at square.com slash go slash tosh that's square S-Q-U-A-R-S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O-S-T-O-S-T-SH. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. my guest today got his PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT to build pickup trucks for people who want to be off the grid in under three seconds in luxury with Wi-Fi and out of the two people I can think of in the entire world who have built an electric car company from the ground up he is certainly the more likable of the two please welcome

the CEO founder of Rivian RJ thanks for having me what does r j stand for robert joseph oh i was hoping r john john john john has a shirt that says r j did did yeah yeah i got banned for life from rjohn how come i got caught stealing what were you stealing are you ready for this yeah i'm embarrassed by the way it's made it it shaped me into a person i think all kids sometimes go through a phase where they may steal well anyway my sister my older sister was dating a guy that stole something. I was with him. He stole a sticker, and I ended

up pulling a sticker off a tag at Ron Johns and put it in my pocket. And you're banned. And I got busted. And they, but it worked. Yeah. I'll never, I'll never steal. Oh, I would never steal. Oh, I would never steal. Never steal stickers. No. First question, I haven't even started. Do you

believe in ghosts? Do I believe in ghosts? I do not. Mm-hmm. It's the right answer. Imagine if he believed in ghosts. That would have blown all of our minds in here. Are you kidding me? You have a PhD from MIT and started a car company at 26, but you grew up in Brevard County. It just doesn't make sense to me at all.

Why? What's wrong with the barred? Are you kidding me? Are you the richest person to ever come out of Brevard County? I don't know. At your peak? At my peak, I don't know. At the peak, when the stock was at the top, were you?

You have to be. I was the first person from Titusville, Florida, to make over $75,000 a year. Where are you from originally? I'm from Rockledge, Florida, really close to where you lived. By the way, here's what I used to think of Rockledge as a kid. I used to be scared of Rockledge. I'm like, oh, they have gangs there, and they know how to fight. I just remember that.

Was that a thing? Were they tougher? I don't know if they were tougher. Did you fish? I did not really fish. I didn't fish either. Then I got called gay for not fishing. I was like, good, grief.

Florida was, it was bizarre. It's a bizarre place. Do you consider the term Florida trash offensive, or do you embrace it? Let's see, I was born and raised in Florida. So I guess I'd have to say somewhat offensive, but. Somewhat offensive. No, I don't know. But the shit.

I remember when I first moved. Florida's a unique place. I was immediately like, are you a surfer or are you a rougher? are you a redneck? And I'm like, I'm a surfer. And they're like, okay. Yeah. It was just so quick. I had to make a decision on day one of- Could be both. Oh, I don't know. Where'd you go to high school? Melbourne Central Catholic. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, so the writing was on the roll. Were you valedictorian? No, I worked a lot in college, or in high school. So I had a job as an apprentice machinist, which was, so I could learn how to make things out of metal, basically. And then I also worked in a restaurant.

So I was voted hardest working in my class. Good for you. But, yeah, so I worked so hard. I ended up buying a house when I was 18 when I was still in high school. Oh, so you were 18. I was going to ask about you buying a house in high school. Because technically you are not allowed to sign mortgage papers if you're under 18. Well, I actually bought it when I was 17.

In cash? No, I financed it. Okay. It was a cheap house. Do you somebody co-signed for that? I had to have my dad co-signed it. And then when I turned 18, I took it over myself. That is pretty, pretty impressive.

You named Rivian. because you grew up on the Indian River. Yeah, yeah. Imagine if you'd have grown up on the banana river, just adjacent to it. What would have your company been called? Ravana. What is it? Ravana.

Ravana, yeah. By the way, I'm proud of you. I don't even know you, R.J., yet I'm proud of you. Are you proud of yourself? Some days, yeah. Do you ever take time and just go, holy cow? Yeah, some days. What a nonsense thing you went for.

It's one of those things where you're like so focused on building and you're just like grinding away whether it's the tech or the business or the manufacturing or the product. And then sometimes you take a step back and like, oh, wow, this is like, this is a big thing. And I had one of those moments a few weeks ago I was at our plant.

In normal? In normal Illinois. We have maybe 6,000 people that work on site there. And it's like a full city, like the plant itself. You know, we've got, we're serving 20,000 meals a day. We've got huge infrastructure just to support all the people working in the facility. And when you see that, you're like,

wow, there's a lot of people here. You know, people come with me, like, oh, thanks for starting Rivian. I love working here. And it's in those moments here, like, oh, wow, this is, this is no longer, like, me and three other people in a garage designing a car. This is a big company. We've got 16,000 employees. Yeah, that's nuts. I've got four people here, and every day I just say to myself, job well done, Daniel.

Yeah. Job well done. You started, Rivian, when you were 26? Yeah, yeah. And you're 42? Yeah, I know. That's a blink of an eye, but still. It does feel like a blink of an eye.

Yeah, some days it feels like two seconds ago, it was just myself and a few other people. And those few other people are still at Rivian, which is really cool. But then the companies become, like we're no longer a small company. We have a, you know, huge divisions that focus on different aspects of technology. And so I've had to really learn how to run a much different type of company than what it was a decade ago. And so, you know, the process of relearning, how do you run Rivian when it's got 100 people is different than how do you run? it when it has 1,000, which is way different than when it's got 16,000. And we're about to launch a much lower price product, which we call R2.

And that's going to really massively expand the business. I couldn't be more excited for the next couple of years. It just seems like a lot. Why not just, have you ever considered just like, you know what? I'm going to tap out. That was fun. I'm going to try something completely different. Could you do that?

Is that even possible? Could you just say, I'm going to, I'm done with this. It's completely over. It's not in my nature to do that. Of course it's not. Yeah. But is it possible? Like, is it possible?

Can you shut down Rivian? Could you? I couldn't shut it down. It's a public company now. Uh-huh. I could quit and go, you know, live on a beach. Will you spend money? Do I spend money?

Are you frugal or no? I'm pretty frugal, yeah. I work a lot, so I don't have... Are you getting to normal? How do I get there? Yeah. On a plate? You got a PJ?

On a private jet? On a PJ. Depends where I'm coming from. Yeah. I just... Are you a nerd or a gearhead? Sometimes both? Uh-huh.

Yeah. But growing up. That is a good question. When I was young, so I grew up restoring classic cars. So I've been working on cars since I was a kid. I've always loved working on cars, building cars. But then I also really like tech. And so I'd say it's sort of pretty close.

It's like intertwined. It's sort of one of the things that makes me really unique is I understand how the car is built. And I also, you know, I'm deep on all the technology in the vehicle. When you were an undergrad at RPI, was it still the troilet? Because Troy is actually nice now. Yeah, Troy's, uh... It's like a nice city now, but it used to be referred to as the troilet. You never heard that?

Oh, I've heard that. Okay. Yeah. Was it the troilet when you were there? I was just, I was just there. It's 20 years since I graduated, and the school invited me. Or they gave you an award? They invited me to give the commencement speech.

And you did it? And I did it. Are you nervous? I wasn't nervous. It was very cool because I have three kids, and it's in the list of things that I'd never expected to happen, but, you know, never did I ever think that I'd be giving the commencement speech 20 years after graduating, and look out and see my three boys standing there with like smiles, ear to ear, like, waving at me as I'm doing this. It was surreal. Are they, are they smart?

Yeah, they're smart. Like, off the charts? Are they off the charts? Yeah, that's my, of course. Waiting on the wall? They're all very, very clever in different ways. You know, my middle son can remember like very specific details. My oldest is able to like interpret rooms and read the room in a way that like adults can't and then my youngest is he's a deal maker he just can he figures out he could walk into this room and he'll like okay i own the room you'd be working for him within i i've i've there's zero chance that would happen i'm not i'm not a hard worker no no you know he probably wouldn't hire me my son's just emotional just how old's your son six okay but just sobs at anything really just no matter what it is hey we're going to go out to lunch just balls starts bowling wasn't

ready for that. He didn't know lunch was on the agenda. Let me go to MIT for a second. Only people we have on this show, Stanford grads. But now we got an MIT guy. And there you go, put on the board. What's MIT like? I almost went to Stanford, in fact. I, um, so when I graduated from Ristler, I graduated number one in the school. So I had like a chance to go anywhere I wanted. And it was it was like being recruited for a nerd sports team because MIT offered me like this amazing role. Stanford offered me this amazing role. And I actually accepted at Stanford and was in rolled for like a day, but realized I actually preferred the program in MIT. And the reason I really liked what MIT had is I had an automotive specific program and a lab built around automotive. And I knew

I wanted to start what eventually became Rivian, but I knew I wanted to start a car company. And my reason for wanting to get a PhD was wonderfully naive, but actually, like very intentional. I thought I'll need a lot of money. I don't have any money. And if I'm going to get other people to invest money into this thing that I want to build, me having a PhD from MIT or equivalent makes that more likely. And so, and I didn't want to go work at a car company for 20 years and earn credibility. So I wanted to get like credibility as quickly as I could. You know, when I was 20, I thought that that that would be in the form of PhD. I mean, it's not a bad, it seems like a perfect plan. And it worked. Like it actually gave you, how, you ever, you ever add that up? How much money

have people invested in you before you turned a dollar? Oh, uh, a lot. Isn't that crazy? Like 14 billion maybe before we had our friend? It's just absurd. 14 billion. That was what we raised before we went public. And when we were in public, we raised a lot more. Yeah, good for you.

I sometimes ask for a little money. Everybody just keeps quiet. You'll laugh at early on, though, like, so when you start a car company, you think about the product and the tech and what you're going to build, but you realize quickly, a big part of it is you need enough money. And so I had to learn how to pitch the idea. And in the early years, like in the beginning, everyone says no. The idea of even getting the meeting is a big deal.

So I'd find myself in the most obscure places trying to raise capital, like the first $100,000, $500,000, maybe a million dollars. You know, before I was even able to pitch like venture capitalist, I was in like yacht clubs and pitching people on, like the idea of an electric car company. That was a really wild journey. And then, you know, the challenge is they say, well, you want to start a car company. Okay, great. Well, tell us about the technology.

And you say, well, we don't have any tech. That's what we need capital for. All right, well, you must have a great design. Well, we don't have a design yet. Okay, well, tell us, where's your manufacturing? Oh, we haven't built that yet. All right, well, you must have like an amazing team. You know, who's on the team?

Well, it's me and there's this guy over there. And suddenly you're like, oh, wow, as you're answering all these questions, you're just like feeling like, oh, boy, this is very unlikely to be successful. And that happened over and over and over again. And then slowly, we had a few people invest a small amount of money enough to make a little bit of progress. I wish you would have found me earlier. Yeah, you would have come in, like, here's, here's a hundred million dollars. No, not a hundred million, but I would have been good for a quarter of a million.

Yeah. And at the early stages, thank goodness you were good, look. Imagine if you were hideous. All the doors would have been worse. Was the plan always to start the car company, trucks, because originally you started a sports car. Yeah, yeah. And when did you say, all right, I'm not doing the sports car? Well, this is interesting.

So along that line, we started, raised... maybe a million dollars, worked on the sports car, built the prototype of it. And while we're doing it, you know, when you have to pitch something or sell an idea, you really can tell quickly whether it's like whether you believe it, because you have to like answer all the questions coming in. And so I realized something was wrong. I didn't know quite what, but as we're pitching it, I'm like, something's wrong. I just felt it.

Almost as soon as we completed that first prototype, it was like crystal clear to me that the product was wrong. And the idea was very simple. It's like use a sports car to build the brand, use the brand to then launch mass market products. But that strategy was what Tesla used and used it very successfully. They launched a sports car called the Roadster and then, of course, launched Model S, Model X, and then their high volume products, Model 3, Model Y. I'm going to give a shit. Yeah. Sorry. And so we realized we wanted to do something that was really unique and added something authentic and was totally on its own and there was nothing quite like it. And so I decided to shelve that product. Everyone disagreed with

it. It was really hard if you're on the team working on it to say like, hey, we're just like grounded out for the last two years, we're going to shut this thing down. I'd go tell our investors who just put money into this, you know, less than 10-person car company that we're going to change product strategy, and no one loved that. But we put it on the shelf, and it wasn't as if we knew the next day what we're going to work on. We put that on the shelf and said, all right, now we're going to figure out why we exist,

what we're going to build, how it's going to differentiate us, why it's important for the world for this company to even exist as a company. And that, like, very long, twisty path eventually brought us to what you now see as Rivian. So we realized we wanted to build the brand around enabling active and adventurous lifestyles. We realized if we wanted to build a brand in that space, we wanted to start with an SUV and truck, a flagship product, which you own. And then those flagship products would really be the handshake with the world for us to then launch these lower price products that fill in that same need. Did you physically make the first truck?

Yeah, yeah. You don't just imagine it. You have to make it. You know, whatever. Do you ever do that dumb thing that I always see in car commercials where you're taking a block of clay? Yeah, yeah, we have clay. Yeah, I didn't know everybody's doing that. I still do it, yeah.

You still do it? Yeah. That just seems like so much clay. To make a prototype car, it's, if you do a nice prototype car, it's a couple of million dollars. A clay model is nothing. It's, you can mill and then hand finish a clay model in two days. And so you can really quickly iterate through ideas. You've got a big kilm.

Do you put it in a kiln? No, no, no, so it stays soft. Who designed the headlights? I had a design and myself, I was heavily involved with it, yeah. Yeah. So we had a bunch of competing headlight designs, and we wanted one that actually captured this idea of when you see it, you remember it. And so if you saw it once, you could sketch it on a piece of paper.

And there's very, very few products, although in cars, that have that ability to, like, imprint a memory. You see a portion on 11, you remember the silhouette. You see a Jeep. You remember the round lights. You see a rivine. you could sketch the front of it. If you're not a car person, you've only seen it once.

And so that was the idea. And so that was one of the competing themes. And we ultimately selected that. But I remember the day before we revealed the car, Jeff and I, our head of design, were sitting in the studio looking. And I'm like, what do you think everybody's going to think? And it really has resonated.

Wow, we love the look. I remember specifically the first time I saw the truck. And I went, there it is. That's exactly what we wanted. This was designed for me. I had never I grew up in Florida yeah a surfer yeah never had a truck yeah everyone had trucks all the people here in Malibah have trucks I never had a truck I always I had a deal with Subaru for years I was kind of I was like a paid spokesperson but they didn't really like to advertise that

because I was doing subliminal stuff anyway by the way I'm a great spokesperson let me tell you why I'm gonna pitch myself to you they would give me free outbacks and then parents in Malibu would come up to me and say hey Hey, thank you for making the Outback cool because my kid wants one. It's a safe car. It's affordable. These are Malibu parents that'll buy their kids anything. Yeah, yeah.

And so I was like, I was a hero in my neighborhood for a while. But anyway, that ran its course. It's done. I'm not going to get into the nitpicky with you, but I always hated Tesla. I don't know why. It just rubbed me. I didn't. I was never on board.

I feel like I was one of the front runners of the end. tie but anyway i saw the truck i'm like that's it that's what i want so then i start telling pete you know i don't do things for myself yeah i can barely function i'm like get me this fucking truck it exists i'm looking at it yeah and then he's like making phone calls he said nobody would get back to him this was in march of 2019 yeah march of 20 and then by august of 2019 he's like listen they got back they said a lot of people are really interested so then i'm just like hammering like every two months, get us the truck. Never happened, but we got an early delivery.

I wasn't the first in my neighborhood. I was the second, but man, I was happy. Yes, I don't know. I walked in. Yeah, you've got the launch green. Here's the thing, though, I get this truck. I'm not who you want, because people would stop me constantly and want to talk about it. Yeah.

And here's all I would say. I love it. I'm not a car person. Sorry. Like, I don't, they're like, what is? I'm like, I don't know. It's fast. Everything works.

If I've had no problems. Like, I don't want to talk to strangers in the first place. Well, here, I'll say this. You got in some hot water. I don't know if it's hot water or not. I don't care if you want to talk about it. If you don't want to, you can ignore it. There was a price set for the truck.

And it was like in the 7, 70 something. And then all of a sudden you, you know, you go through COVID, everything. And, hey, prices are different. It's going to be this. And you sent out the email. And then people get furious. And you're like, oh, whoa. okay people that bought it this you get it at this price now this is where i get yelled at by my fans

constantly because of how out of touch i am i was like i get it yeah you thought it was gonna be this it's now this i don't i don't care just give me my fucking truck yeah but it that didn't happen but then you honored the first price and i'm like well that's great yeah but that makes sense to me i don't i just don't understand how people can actually you started a company from nothing and you built trucks and then yeah it's more expensive now and people are like oh but you said it was going to cost this much i don't know how you deal with the public anyway we should have you help us on that my boy anyway my wife gets into my truck shows i didn't know it was going to be like this she had a g-wagon okay you know like a typical malibou mom yeah yeah but then she's like well i like this i'm like

well they're making an SUV they'll put you at the top of the list if you want the SUV that's what Pete pulled off. That was my big, my name got me that. Yeah, you really worked it. Anyway. Worked the system. I'm like, well, do I get it at the cheap rate? And they're like, absolutely not. And I'm like, oh, all right. But we got that, we got that one right away. She was the first SUV on this block by a mile. Is the Amazon delivery truck going to have the same headlights? They do, don't they? No, they have big round eyes. They're round, but they'd still look like eyes, kind of. They look really friendly. Can't I get an Amazon truck? You can't. I want to like, like, do I need to buy a sprinter if I'm going to, is

the market or can I wait for you to pull off a we sell them now to we're selling them to other commercial customers so if you want to run like a small logistic service maybe because I just want to customize it yeah it's a great surf fan I have okay where you don't don't say that I can do it if I can I got to find a work around I mean as best you can talk about the unbelievable complexity of running a car company is safety alone how many trucks have you destroyed like intentionally yeah like just gone out there with a like a big hammer with your dumb crash test? Yeah, yeah, I don't. Oh, hundreds. I mean, hundreds of trucks you've just had to destroy them. Well, not always, not always a crash test, but we do, um, durability testing, we do crash testing, we do

life testing, we do extreme off-road situations, we drive vehicles through water. Yeah, I watched that one pool video a few times. I don't feel confident enough to do it for my truck. By the way, let me, let's, you know, the only thing that your, your company did bait and switch that it has me furious. And then if, if anybody has filled you in, I've said it. I've said it on this show before. I don't, not, oh, this, this, this,

let it rip. This is the one that got me that made me upset is you sold us on tank turns. You advertised tank turns. And then we get trucks and we're not allowed to do tank turns. And then you say, oh, it's because the environment, we don't want you guys destroying the thing. But then I came up with a perfect scenario of where I can do my tank turns safely in a church parking lot in Tahoe City when the snow is out.

It's, it's where I go to do my donuts. Yeah, yeah. I took my father-in-law, he's from Florida. I'm like, come on, have you ever done a donut? He's like, oh, Daniel, I've never done a donut. And I'm like, well, watch this. And we start whipping around. But my point is, that's a safe place.

That's not going to destroy anything. Unlock my tank turn. So, you know, we have a gen 2 of the R1 vehicle. We're about to launch the new quad. So now we have a dual motor, a tri-motor, and a new quad motor. The new quad is incredible. It's way more powerful than your quad. I don't care.

Mine's powerful enough. But in the new quad, we'll have something called kick turn, which is even better than... So you can do a tank turn, but you can also do turns while you're driving and it spins on its axis. Okay, but just unlock... You can unlock mine to make it do it.

We designed it all around the new motor design. I'm sorry. I just don't know why. I saw it do tank turns. It can do, but the control isn't as... The new version's ready. I don't care about the control. I don't care about the consequence.

Don't... You're about to be just shredding it. You sent me a... You made a video. videos of tank turns. I want to do it with my truck. By the way, let me just go, should I go into venting real quick? Yeah, go to venting. People mock you for the vegan leather just because it's called vegan. You shouldn't call it vegan leather. You're just asking people to be like assholes about it. What would you call it? I don't know. Just call it. What's the shitty

stuff that we used to have? Pleather or final or whatever. Yes. You just because you're just asking the other side. And you know what I mean when I say the other side. You know, real truck people. I hope you're sitting on anything called vegan leather. Those people. I think I made my point. The headrest are hard to remove. And I need to get my child's seat through there to hook to the latch. There's like one button you have to push. It's a little difficult. That's my complaint. It's not a big one. It's a little tough to do. The phone charger is garbage and you know it. So my brother got me an aftermarket thing. I'm going to just show it to you just so you can see this thing is beautiful. We have a new one that's coming, and it's backwards compatible.

My brother got this in. Oh, yeah. I love it. But anyway, he has a Rivian, but he told me, he's like, how they've got an e-bike in the works. We got a whole, yeah, we started a whole micromobility company. Okay, well, anyway, I want the e-bike. It's insane. Yeah.

Whatever it is. We haven't said anything about it, but what? I rode, I have one of those ride cake, which, by the way, is the worst name in the history of e-bikes, but their brand is good. They have it visually. It looks good. Yeah. You know what else I do on my Rivian?

Look at this. I get the stickers to cover your warnings. Why? Because I don't like to see stuff. That's, that warning's required by law. Yeah, yeah, not anymore. No, no, no. No warnings required by law.

By the way, this company sells the stickers exactly the right size on all of them. They're all covered in my car. And it looks beautiful. So we would love to not have all those labels. Of course you would. But we have to put the box. I understand. I just want you to know that I would, I appreciate that.

Okay. That's good. That's nice. Our headed design and I, like, we try very hard to put all that things. No, that's a, that's a $2 Amazon purchase. Yeah. Nice little cover. The rear seat, it doesn't come up easy to get the storage underneath there.

I don't, is there a trick to it? I'm just yanking on it. And then sometimes it opens. Well, it should open every time, but. Well, eventually it will open, but not every pole. Yeah. Yeah, that's my only, that little one. You know what's funny, that rear seat storage, most people with the truck don't even realize it's there.

I know they don't know it there. That's why I put stuff in there. You know what I, normally I have, the reason I'm really in there is because I got to tell Buzz, my car wash guy, hey, lift that up. There's probably 300 yogis from my daughter in there. All your contraband goes in there. I don't, I don't do anything illegal. I'm running clean. Oh, I do love watching TV now on the screens.

I'm glad you guys finally got that. Worst coming to. This sounds like an infomercial. I'm not even doing it for, if I'm not even getting paid for this. Jesus. But. For all your venting. I would.

I haven't fented that. None of my complaints. All of them, you know, you're like, those seats do stick a little bit. The headrest is a little tricky. Okay. But the screen, any way I can keep that screen on while I'm driving. God, I could. Is it you going to watch movies?

I'm not watching movies. I'm trying to keep knuckleheads in the back from me. Unfortunately, no. We do have a new accessory, though, for the rear seats where you can plug an iPad in the back of the seats. Well, yeah. And there is an outlet in the back there. But that I don't like the old screens. Driving and watching TV is hard.

Even when you're in self-driving mode, unfortunately, we still have to turn off. Well, your self-driving mode is its own thing. It's a little sketchy. Well, you're on Gen 1. You've got to get to the newer. Don't tell me to spend more money right now. I mean, I got to keep...

How far away are we from battery life just going 500, 600 miles? I don't think we're going to see it like a non-linear step like that. We're going to continue to see progress. But the thing is, as we make progress, we're just going to continue to reducing the amount of batteries to take cost out. I don't think there's a market for five or six hundred miles. There's some, but it's a pretty narrow market. We think the sweet spot's like three to four hundred miles.

Here's my mom. This is my mom goes, I heard in California all your roads are destroyed because you guys have all those heavy EV cars. And I'm like, yeah, I don't think that's true, mom. But she's like, oh, that's what we're hearing and here in Florida. The cars are too heavy. Although it does make me feel safe. Very safe car.

It's the safest car you can drive right now. What about the person that I run into? Depends on what they're in. Yeah. Did you regret buying Twitter? Have you ever owned a Tesla? I have, yeah. You've owned two, yeah.

You've owned two? Yeah. Do you embrace all these people trying to get into this world? Yeah, yeah. I mean, jokes aside, you've got, if you want to buy an electric car today, there are very few what I would call, like, highly compelling choices. And, you know, Rivian today exists. We're the best-selling premium electric vehicle in the market.

So over $70,000 were the market shirtleader by a significant amount. We're the best selling premium electric SUV in the United States. We're the best selling premium SUV electric or non-electric in California. But when you move down into that $50,000 price point around there, there's really very few choices. But if we really believe in the idea of going from 8% of new vehicle sales being electric to, let's say, 50%, 70%, or eventually 100%. We need more than a handful of choices. We need lots of choices. And so we like fully embrace it.

And in fact, that idea of embracing more competition, more choice is what underpinned how we approach this big partnership we put together with Volkswagen. So we did a $5.8 billion software licensing deal with Volkswagen. It's across the whole group. So Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen, they have a few other brands in Europe where we're helping them basically with their software stack in the vehicles, which will make their vehicles more, you know, highly compelling vehicles. The microbus was a miss. Have you, have you been in it? No. But I loved it when I saw it and then when I saw it in person, I was like, ah, that's too big.

Yeah. It's big. That looks weird. I don't, I'm not into it. I wanted to love it. I love microcrum. I have an old 1969 Subaru Sandbar. Yeah, yeah.

And like that, I drive that around. I take kids in the neighborhood to school in it. The brakes aren't good. It's very dangerous. But I was going to get, I was how you tell the other parents that. Nah, I think, if their kids live on a flat area without this big hill, I can pick them up, I can do it. But, yeah, no, it's so far, nobody's gotten hurt. If there's a hill, all bets are off.

Evie range anxiety is real. What do you say to people to calm those fears? So charging network's key, and I think for people that don't own an EV, which you know, one of the nicest things is the car charges at home. You get in the car in the morning and it's charged. And so this is like a very different concept than if you, like, have to go to the gas station, you're running late, you got out. at bed late, running to get in your car, you're like, oh, shoot, I've got 10 miles of gas left, and you've got to stop at a gas station with an EV, provided you have a charge at your house, which most do, it's just charged.

So it's a whole different mindset. That's why I got into it. I just, I hated pumping gas. Yeah. I despised it. It's a weird thing. Once you go back to a gas car and you're at the gas station, so it's a... I still have tons of gas cars, too.

It sounds like you got a 25 horsepower Subaru. I do. I also have a... You know Jonathan Ward icon? Yeah. Do you know him? I don't know him, but I know the icon. Yeah.

made, I have number 17. The 17, right, I, I, I loved it. I was so excited about, but then all of a sudden, Ford brought back the Bronco, and I'm like, ah, yours is cooler. It is, but I, I've liked it better when, you know, the 5-liter? Yes. Yeah. I like it.

Yeah. I don't, I, I don't take care of it the way you're supposed to. People with those type of trucks do, and I just, you just beat on it. I do. Yeah. It's fun. Are you a car person? Nope.

Not at all. My dad was, but he didn't pass it on to me. But you're not at all. You have a 1969 Subaru. That's because I was worked for Subaru for a long time, and I thought it was funny and cool. You have a coyote-powered redo Bronco from ICON. That was my midlife crisis purchase. I was like, oh, I need to have, do something.

Yeah. I drove around. Is that or Harley? I drove around the Subaru Outback. You know what Subaru used to tell me when I would, was there kind of unofficial spokesperson? They gave me three rules. They said, please don't bring up. World War II, I swear to God.

That was one of the rules? Yep, that was Rule 1. I'm sure they love you giving out the rules here, too. That doesn't matter. They don't give me free cars anymore. They actually took one of my cars back and made me re-buy it because they're like, oh, that was just a loner. I'm like, what? Anyway.

Rule 2. Rule 2, don't mention lesbians. Okay. And Rule 3, don't call the outback of station wagon. What do you call it? They wanted me to go a crossover of, I don't know, whatever the fuck they cared about. I guess an SUV? Hmm.

What's your dream car, like, to own? Like, if I went back to a 16-year-old version of you, what was your dream car? 16-year-old version of me would have said, like, a Porsche 356th Carrera, Carrera 1. Do you own that car now? No. Do you own any Porsche? No. But, like, the version of me now, probably would still say, like, a classic, like a 356A, maybe speedster, like a 57.

Do you ever drive other cars, or do you have to only be seen in Erivian? I drive other, like, for testing purposes all the time. Okay. Yeah, we have a big fleet of... All right, but what about for fun? You don't have just some weird old classic car that would be like, that you're like, you care about? I don't know.

I have, the first car I ever owned was a Volkswagen Corrado with a VR6, which is a narrow 15-degree angle, V6. I don't know what that means. It's like a V6 that is like this, it's very tight. So it packs in, it fits into the front of the car really well. Anyways, I bought that car again, which is sort of fun. But similar or the exact one? Not the exact one, but similar.

Same year, same car. I had a Honda Civic. You don't have that anymore. No, now I got totaled. I sold it to someone at the end of its run, and then he totaled it. So I could have no chance to buy it back. Ah, she was nice. 91.

91, a special year for the Civic. I don't know that it was. You have a similar story to me. about smoking a Ferrari on the PCH in Rivian. You've done that? Mine was a Lamborghini. It wasn't a Ferrari, guys. It was a Lamborghini.

I was at the light in front of Pepperdine. Yeah, right there, yeah. And with my son, in his car seat in the back, and literally like the movie Fast and the Furious, where the guy pulls up with the hot chick in the front seat. And I looked at him, and I told my son, I go, buddy, we're going to do this, okay? and we went and you know zero to 60 i didn't smoke him but he he went for it too yeah and at 65 70 i

stopped but uh if you get a new quad you'd easily smoke them all the way way past 100 you got to get the new quad i'm not getting the new quad i don't guys i'm i'm gonna let you borrow one and then you'll be you'll be stuck what's your ferrari story uh the same you just got them at a red light no I mean, it was... Did you look at them? Well, we talked, so we're sitting there at the light. Does he know who you are? Did we recognize?

I do. More than I used to, which is... By men or women? Both. Uh-huh. Well, I don't know. It's just a question. I don't know where that's going. But, um, yes, I looked over him. He looked at me. He says, hey, that's the new Rivian.

I said, yeah. And he said, let's go. And I was like, you want to see this, what I can do? And he said, yeah. And so we took off and I was way ahead of them, like completely smoked. And we get to the next light and he's like, this sucks. And I'm like, why? He's like, your pickup truck just smoked by $350,000 Ferrari. Yeah, I know. And I was like.

People time traveled. Yeah. I mean, is there a cap to this? Is this zero to 60? I mean, what's terminal velocity for a pickup truck? Our new quad does zero to 60 about 2.4 seconds. All right. But at what point are we like, that's it, guys.

That's probably, we were just having this. I don't think we're going to, that's probably the limit. Maybe we get down to two point. Is that a selling feature? It is, isn't it? Well, it's like we're talking about it. It's totally unnecessary. Like, no one needs a car that could do zero to 60 and two and a half seconds, but it is.

I do it. I, I, I, we, my wife gets nauseous, but I constantly am doing the, uh, the floor thing. I mean, what's the point? It's, it's fun. Yeah, and the new version, we have this launch mode where the car, the front leans forward a little bit, the dampers tighten up a little bit. So it's just, it's like getting launched out of a can, and it's just like, it is so much fun. What do you like to do for fun?

I love outdoor sports, so hiking, biking, surfing. What kind of surfboard do you? Do you ride a traditional? I've just actually just started surfing. Okay. Skiing, I love skiing. Can you do things? Are you like one of these little geniuses that like every minute of your day is planned out forever until you're five hours of sleep?

Yeah, it's not overly planned. I, as I want to go surfing right now? Right now. Yeah, I have a private surf spot, right point break. I got some soft tops, and we'll go out and you just cruise for now. I could do that. Yeah, I've got everything. I would do that.

All right, I'll take you surfing. We'll see if you do it. I'll let you know if he does it. I'm in my head right now. What do you think? 20% likely that he did. Coin flip, man. Oh, you say coin flip.

That's better than I thought. All right. So you're always exercising and everything. Yeah, I do something outdoors every day. And I didn't for like the first more than 10 years, from like 2009 to 2020. 2021, 2022, I was just so heads down. And it actually was, I was less productive. And so what I figured out is that if I exercise, get outdoors, do something every day, I'm just better.

And a big part of my job is making decisions and making high quality decisions. So I just find I make better decisions, more inspired. Make decisions quickly? Depends. Oh, man. I always feel like that. Yeah. That's the key.

Do you like to be referred to as a former billionaire? Or do you like to say, or do you prefer like, like, or do you prefer like, like, like, like a future billionaire once again. I don't, I've never thought of that, but it's a funny question. Did you stare at your account constantly? Like when it was, no. You didn't just go, look at this, what I'm worth right now. No.

No, why not? It's, I'm, I know you're not in it for money, but it's. It wasn't the objective. And once the number, once you have, like, I'm fortunate to have, be, you know, because of the success rate to be well off. So it's like, it doesn't really make a difference in the end. How about the folks? Were they just like, are they just tickled pink at what you pulled off?

Uh, yeah, I think they're proud, yeah. I mean, because I get so proud. My mom doesn't quite appreciate it. She doesn't. Oh, she does. No, I don't think she fully, like, realizes the scale of it because she'll be like, RJ, sent you a birthday card. I put $100 in it for you.

So if you want to get something really nice, and I'm like, mom, I really don't need $100 from you right now. And she's like, no, but if you want to buy something, I'm like, okay, thanks, mom. That's sweet of her, but she needs to, like, my mom, years ago just said, like, just, I will never give you another thing. you just all you do is make fun of us for giving you things and then you then you give it away to somebody else so on my show i i give people stuff uh for coming on the show but it's just stuff at my house that i don't want anymore okay and i and some people would be so stressed out

giving gifts to you know the head of a company but uh let's see all right here's what i here's what i got today um my favorite uh shaper from uh from flor's from Titus Hill, Florida. He'll love this. He'll get a kick out of this. Oh, wow. This is a Daniel Toshboard that he made me. This is good for your kid, probably for your nine-year-old. It's going to, it's epoxy. It's a little too small for me. Well, whatever. It doesn't matter. It's nice. Just keep it down here.

But this is a, this is a good board for one of your kids if they want to start playing in the water. Yeah. It's Durham. This is a board. You could probably play on this if you wanted it. I don't like, Al Merrick. This is local. This is the hoglet. I never got into this shape. So I was like, by the way, I have just. Tons. We'll get rid of that board. I've got some fins for you. This is a coffee table book. It's all about Florida. You put it in your bathroom. They sent it. The spine was a little broke, so I complained.

They sent me another one. So then you get this one. But it's just all about Florida. Yeah, whatever, you'll like it. And the reason people were probably, if they're going to get you get it. Yeah, you'll like it. You'll have fun. But why not get the EV guys? guy, just, you know, I was like, oh, give them electric bikes that are laying on my house. No, no. I went with stuff that makes your kids, you know, play outside. Maybe this is for you and you're where this skateboard. This is never even been ridden.

It's beautiful. There's an Arbor skateboard. You'll love that. Wow, this is great. Yeah, you ride there on your, how many square foot is your factory in normal? Six million? Yeah, six. Big is a better invention than your trucks, okay?

Whoever invented this, the air before. Frisbee. That person, that person was a true genius. Let's be clear. Um, but I don't have enough property for this thing. Every time my kid throws it, I'm like, now I have to go to, I hate my neighbors and I have to go talk to them. So I'm like, I'm, I figure you've got land. Okay. Do you have, do you have you bought land yet? I don't land. No, do you own like some like, like horrible ranch in Montana yet? No. Like 10,000 Yellowstone acres. No, you're going to do that soon, aren't you? On the list, yeah. By the way, I like the tent. I like the tent for the day. Those are the things I want from you in the future. I want two e-bikes and I want a tent.

And then I want... We have a new tent that's insane. Okay, fine. I want that. Then I want that. Then I want the R3, but I want to give that away to somebody that deserves it. This is called a backcountry bathroom. This is for your outdoorsy people. They just hook it to a tree and then they can poop. Somebody gave this to me because I have IBS. And I said, guys, I can't, I don't have time to hook shit around a tree to go the bathroom. When I have to go, it's like now. Yeah. And I got to run. It's a different kit for you. No. Yours is just, for me, it's just, I just need toilet paper in the, in the truck. Get all this off my desk. Good gosh, RJ. How good does it feel to know that out of all the brilliant people who've gotten an engineering degree at MIT, you are the most successful. There's a lot of successful

people at MIT. I know. I didn't really research it. But I figured you're up there. Yeah. probably oh i'm the most successful person of the marketing degree from ucf you see yeah there you go oh man i use my marketing you know where my marketing degree is it's in my chicken coop it's not a lie either i don't know i just i was like i'm where am i i'm not going to throw it away i'm like i don't want this anywhere so i hung at my chicken coop yeah that's what people do with degrees usually what do you do with yours i can a closet at my folks my dad's place i think i don't know it's somewhere. Obviously most people could never achieve what you've done. What do you say to someone who thinks they can start a big company in a difficult industry? That's a good question. I think if you're

starting a complex business, you just need to recognize it's going to take a while. It's going to be really hard. For me, at least, it's been way harder than I expected, and I expected it to be really hard. So it's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of capital. So this is in our case, many, many billions of dollars. Like, you have to really be convicted. around the idea not necessarily the tactics of the specifics those will evolve and change but like do you believe in building this business in this space it's over i mean i get and people used to say that they thought i was really hard working but that's in show business and show business is garbage like it's not you don't really work hard uh but it's just amazing i can't do you is

the electric market the same is are you eventually going to have to start churning out a different model every year? Or is that done? We think we'll probably end up with like maybe five or six different vehicles. So there's after R1, there's R2 and R3. And after R2 and R3, there's R4 and R5. And that's as far out as our product like plan goes today and what we're working on. But there may be like an R6, I don't know. But like the I can't obviously talk about it here or show to you.

I could show it to offline. But the R4 and R5 is so cool. It's like, but that's the next, next thing after R2 and R3. When will my R1 look like it's, oh, it's really dated? Oh, it'll still look. That was one of the big things we focus on design. We want to feel timeless, so it doesn't age that quickly. Yeah, it'll be okay for a couple years.

Good. You still upgrade to the quad. The thing is, you're doing this to the right person because I can be shamed in the stuff constantly. I'm working on it, yeah. It's very easy. By the end of the day. I'm like, all right, I got rid of this.

I'll have delivered tonight, yeah, his old launch edition truck. RJ, thanks for being here. Oh, look at that. I want to thank RJ for being on the show. And I don't want RJ to think that I have ulterior motives since he's got cool toys in the pipeline that I certainly want for free. But, uh, I mean, I, this may be a little, a little cart before the electric horse, but I feel a bromance coming on.

Me and RJ hanging out. Just two dudes, you know? What do you guys think? I think we'd all like free rivians. You see, you're going to ruin the relationship by asking for free stuff. Now, I've already said that I think he should send me two of these free bikes that he's not saying that they're working on, which I know they're working on. And I also want that new tent that he talked about. And I tell you what, they twisted my arm about getting the upgraded truck.

fine take my truck give me the upgrade and and then down the road when the r3 comes out sure i'll take one of those to give uh a special person in my life and then if there's room uh give you guys uh five six percent discount on some trucks thanks bud he's looking out for us no if he wants to give us a slew of trucks that'd be nice how well would this podcast have to do for him to be like guys uh send them four trucks. Now that would suck because Dylan wouldn't get one. Eh, anyway. Let's talk about plugs. Toshoshostow store.com

Eddie's tour. My tour, come see me in NorCal. Come see me in Vegas. Okay. Our final free plug, hit the music. Our final free plug is for Lindsay Lohan. This is for a person. Not a project or a store

or anything. Just for Lindsay, huh? Good for her. She's looking great. These days you guys seen her oh yeah is she having to glow up or is that not consider that do you not say that for women yeah you say that i mean she's definitely having a moment again she looks good she's she had a movie come out last week i doubt i doubt it's any good but the freaky friday thing right yeah freakier that's not freakier oh all right i've always liked her i've always felt like oh she she got you know you know who i think is responsible for her downfall i'll go ahead and say it. I'll say names.

Now, Wilmore Volderama. Yeah. I think when he talked about her privates, that caused a snowball effect. Hmm. But anyway, I'm glad she's having a moment. She's married now. She's got, she has a kid. Mm-hmm. Did she have that kid? I believe so. Good. I remember that one video of her one time where she was talking in a weird accent, like, children, children, come, come with me. She was like trying to rescue children

that were just clearly fine. Right. I remember that. Yeah, she's like, come to my hotel. I have movies. You're like, what are you doing? Where's this accent? And why are you stealing these children? She was like live streaming it. Doesn't matter.

She was on drugs. That was a while. That was when things were a little haywire. But now she's back on track. Carl. Carl. Lindsay, Lindsay Lohan, she's back. She looks great.

And she should do one of those Herbie movies again. Oh, yeah. I'd love a new Herbie movie. So good to get another Herbie one. Well, yeah, and you don't have to do it. Now you could do it with the microbus. from VW. You wouldn't have to do the bug.

Mark. Eh, I'm just thinking. I'm just in an EV state of mind right now. Yeah. You know that Lindsay used to, she used to be the voice on Tosh. Point O, she would do the warning for many years before the show started. We weren't a lot to talk about it.

We still might not be able to. I could get Comedy Central in trouble, I think, if they said it was her voice. Maybe I'm not supposed to. She was nice. Anyway, I'm glad she's doing well. I wish her nothing but the best. And I can't wait to see freakier Friday.

Carl, head up. We're talking about Lindsay Lohan. See you next week.