Rivian opens up about its mid-term plans

At the

New York Auto Show

,

Rivian

founder R.J. Scaringe was more forthcoming about where the

EV

automaker startup is headed. By 2025 the pickup truck and SUV maker plans to have six products on offer, and at the moment none of them are sedans. Scaringe told

Bloomberg

Rivian would stick to larger vehicles because of consumer tastes and because trucks and SUVs burn more fuel than cars.

We use the word “products” for whatever’s on the way since one of the items in development might not be an automobile. Rivian recently completed a

$700 million funding round with Amazon

as the lead investor. One of the six products was born of that deal, but Scaringe said it is “not necessarily a vehicle.”

Before that funding round closed, it was clear that

Rivian was in talks with General Motors

. Sources had said that

GM

would provide engineering and manufacturing knowledge, Rivian would help accelerate GM’s move to

electric vehicles

, but the two companies

couldn’t come to a deal

. Scaringe didn’t elaborate on what scuttled the potential partnership, but did say that “my reason for starting Rivian was to do big things without anything preventing us from doing that.” It’s thought that GM wanted a level of exclusivity that didn’t appeal to Scaringe.

The six products in six years only include Rivian-branded machines. There could be additional co-developed models or models built for other companies, on top of tangential businesses like stationary batteries. A

Chicago Business

article said

Rivian plans to employ 1,000 workers

by the end of 2024 at its 2.6-million-square-foot Normal, Illinois plant that once built

Mitsubishi

and

Chrysler

vehicles.

The

R1T pickup

and

R1S SUV

will lead the charge as of next year. Having collected “tens of thousands” of $1,000 deposits, a little more than half of those for the pickup, Rivian has plenty of fans rooting for it. The company hosted a gathering for depositors in NYC, and more than 1,200 people showed up, some from Hawaii. The R1T will start at $69,000, the R1S at $72,500 when it comes in 2021, with battery capacities ranging from 105 kWh to 180 kWh and up to a 400-mile range with the top unit.