On his first day in office Monday, President Donald Trump declared war on the electric vehicle. In an executive order, Trump signaled his intention to roll back the $7,500 subsidy for clean car purchases, relax tail pipe pollution regulations, and, in a sense of scale, take a hatchet to gig-era policies that help fuel the growth of EVs.
However, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe isn’t done on how the policy shift will impact his company.
“We spend a lot of time talking about short-term financials, but we’re building a business over the next few decades,” he told InsideEvs on Thursday, adding that he remains convinced that transportation will be 100% electric. “So, who cares? It’s going to be more challenging, in the next couple of years.”
Scaringe said he didn’t start Rivian because of what he thought its EV policy might look like down the road. Besides, any changes to pro-EV policies will hurt all EV makers in the near term, and it creates what he described as “small speed bumps.” We still don’t know how all this will pan out, because Trump can’t do it all with a stroke. It would need Congress to delete tax credits for EV buyers and manufacturers, for example.
The difference between Rivian and some competitors, though, is that other automakers could lean into their gas-powered offerings if EV sales don’t go their way. California-based Rivian only makes battery-powered vehicles: the R1S SUV and R1T, along with a commercial vehicle. This fact does not worry. But he’s not envious of its flexibility — and hopes the upcoming rollback in EV policy won’t make other companies pump the brakes too hard on EVs.
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If competing automakers prioritize immediate financial and practical considerations in EVs, that might actually be good for Rivian from a competition standpoint, he said. But it will leave the United States behind the ball in the global shift to electric vehicles in the long term. It will leave the country with an underdeveloped electrical market and not enough choices for consumers.
“If you’re improving purely for profitability over the next couple of years and you’re a traditional heritage manufacturer, you can easily make a spreadsheet case to say, ‘Let’s double down on combustion’ or ‘Let’s double down on hybrid,’ hybrid.” “Which I think is a huge misjudgment in the long run,” he told reporters during a roundtable on Thursday.
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Regardless of where U.S. policy does or doesn’t go from here, the transition to electric transportation is underway around the world. Take China, for example. This country has exploded onto the scene as the largest and most popular electric car maker on the planet. EV sales are growing rapidly in China, and domestic automakers like BYD are building roads around the world at a leisurely pace.
Sales of internal combustion vehicles peaked globally in 2017 and have been declining ever since. Experts say government policy has started this shift and is certainly helping, but consumer demand and falling EV prices will keep things going.
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“I say this all the time to my friends who run big car companies: ‘Don’t stop investing.’ “You’ll find yourself in the 1930s, upside down,” Scaring said. “Rivian, Tesla, the Chinese—we have a complete focus on EV. And if you were doing that as a 10% job of yours as an (automaker), you would be roughly where you were 10 years ago.”
No one is quite sure which policies will get the ax under Trump, and which are safe. Automakers are pushing for some incentives to remain in place, because they have already committed billions of dollars to build EV and battery facilities in the U.S. The fact that many of those new factories and jobs may sprout in Republican-led states shields the fact as well. Rivian, for its part, is building its second factory in Georgia.
The startup automaker is planning its $7,500 incentive to buy an EV (known as the 30D) to exit, and Scaringe thinks the tax credit that subsidizes battery manufacturing in the US (45x, if you’re curious) may expire. Both programs were created under the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed unprecedented amounts toward clean energy initiatives. “What is quite clear is that the fundamentals of the IRA will take,” he said.
Scaringe said the end of EV purchase incentives won’t make much of a difference in sales of the R1S and R1T, Rivian’s two consumer vehicles. Rivian customers generally don’t fall within credit income limits, since these models typically cost more than $90,000. “It’s more of an R2 question,” he said, referring to Rivian’s upcoming and affordable crossover that lands in 2026. He did not comment on the credit for leased vehicles, which does not implement an income cap.
Rivian launched its first EV in late 2021 and sold more than 50,000 vehicles in 2024 but has yet to turn a profit. The startup hopes R2 will bring it the kind of scale needed for long-term financial health. A $5.8 billion investment from Volkswagen should help, too.
Do you have advice about the world of EV? Contact the author: tim.levin@insideevs.com
