Though it’s only been producing consumer vehicles for three years, Rivian’s doe-eyed full-size R1T pickup and R1S sport utility vehicle are distinct and recognizable enough to feel familiar. Yet, as a recent visit to the electric carmaker’s Irvine design headquarters reveals, the innovative startup has, in many ways, relied on experimentation, or even accidents, to define its aesthetic sensibility, a factor that will play out as it prepares to launch its mid-size R2 SUV and sub-compact R3 hatchback.
“Not a lot of people know this, but R1 actually came from a design of an R2,” Rivian chief design officer Jeff Hammoud said as we toured the various studios. Hammoud’s advance team was designing the R2, while a core group was working simultaneously on the R1S.
But the larger flagship wasn’t gelling. When an advance designer produced a 3D model for the R2, Hammoud showed it to company founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, who loved the concept. Hammoud had to go back to the designer with some good news—and bad news. “RJ loved it, but it's not going to be an R2,” he recalled. “Now it’s the R1.”
The shape of the forthcoming ’80s rally car-inspired R3 was derived from similar internal experimentation. Instead of creating a further shrunken, boxy CUV for its third model, designers ideated on more playful and less predictable shapes. This, according to Hammoud, derived from key leadership realizing, “Hey, our brand is not just trucks and SUVs. We can go into other segments.”
Even the startup’s signature front fascia was the result of an accident. A material and trim designer had brought in a bi-colored anodized aluminum carabiner, thinking such an expressive oval locking clamp could be integrated into the hood as a kayak tie-down. “I saw the graphic of it, and thought, that's actually really cool,” Hammoud said. “So, we scaled it up and made it into the headlight. It started from there.”
With this kind of happenstance as an organizing principle, it’s easy to see how “Surprising and Delightful” became one of Rivian’s three brand pillars, manifesting in unexpected features as diverse as the brand’s integrated flashlight, travel kitchen and gear tunnel. And it’s clear how this playful pillar works in concert with the other two.
“Inviting and Iconic” capitalizes on creating adventurous vehicles that, Hammoud said, telegraph “power and strength” without “all these aggressive, gaping SUV and truck grilles that look like they’re going to devour small children.” And “Honest and Simple” conveys a genuineness and accessibility in the vehicles’ functionality, and a sincerity regarding the materials used. It even includes honesty in the brand’s communications. “So that if we promise to do something, we're actually going to achieve it,” Hammoud said, seemingly contrasting Rivian with prevaricating domestic EV makers, like Tesla.
The big question now—as Rivian attempts to roll out two new models, plan successive vehicles and consider next-gen replacements for current ones—is: Can incidental fortuitousness and good vibes propel the upstart brand into an uncertain future?
A significant portion of Rivian’s ensuing success will revolve around the company becoming streamlined, sustainable and profitable. In the third quarter, the automaker lost $39,130 for every vehicle it sold, not exactly a recipe for solvency.
A recent overhaul of R1, according to Hammoud, simplified systems and features, diminishing production costs. While he confessed that he is “not the finance guy,” at the company, design remains key to fiscal viability. There was thus a strong focus, in designing R2 and R3, in simplifying manufacturing, and saving money.
Hammoud walks me around a rectilinear R2 prototype pointing out ways his teams’ efforts will aid the bottom line. He discusses the SUV’s “full-drop” rear windows, one piece glass that rolls down all the way into the door, allowing for fewer parts than the divided back glass featured on most competitors.
This component limitation is also invoked in the way that the vehicle’s belt molding is integrated into the body side, how the Rivian brand icon is included in the side marker light and how the blacked-out A-pillar and roof allow these components to be pressed as one piece. It’s even present in the simple masses that compose the dash and door-card designs, allowing distinct interior expressions with simple shifts in the materials in which they’re wrapped.
I posited that one of the key design-derived means of ensuring the company’s profitability could result from its vehicles’ elemental, nostalgo-futuristic appearance, allowing it to amortize its product over longer generations without their looking archaic. I cited the recent R1 update, which barely altered the truck’s/SUV’s exteriors. Hammoud concurred. “I think we didn't need it,” he said, “because the design was so simple and timeless that it didn't look old.”
This, he said, is intentional. As a small, young company, he said, Rivian “had to find that sweet spot of, how do we make sure the car feels modern and unique and new, but is not something that will look old very quickly?”
The marque is aided in this enduring aesthetic by its tech-based underpinnings. More than many other vehicles, even other EVs, Rivans are software-defined, and are thus focused on providing meaningful upgrades to vehicle functionality, utility, range and delight via over-the-air updates—like the kind deployed on cell phones. Intriguingly, many of these changes originate directly from consumer demands, which are tracked religiously by Rivian’s development team. “Our chief software officer Wassym [Bensaid], we joke that his title should be chief Reddit officer because he’s on there so much checking customer feedback,” Hammoud said. “We’re always like, ‘What did we hear today?’”
This attentiveness to, and capacity to elicit, direct suggestions has resulted not only in deepened brand connection, but all manner of new and forthcoming innovations. According to Hammoud, these include an in-car water cooler, an integrated external battery that doubles as a hand warmer and a collapsible rooftop camping tent. It also includes a seemingly endless flow of Easter egg graphics for the vehicle’s screens, many of which incorporate its “Gear Guard” character, a goofy Sasquatch that first appeared on its OLED displays to alert people peering into the vehicle that they were being recorded, but has since gone on to become a corporate mascot. Hammoud includes all of this in another brand sub-pillar, “Joyous Utility.”
At the end of our conversation, I connived Hammoud into discussing Rivian’s future product plans. He said it wants to continue to roll out its Adventure Network stations, a system of fast-chargers, with on-site retail and dining options and other experiential opportunities, that will be located near iconic outdoorsy locations like National Parks.
The company wants to consider means of utilizing autonomous driving capabilities in ways that further its customer’s spunky pursuits, such as being able to self-drive to meet a mountain biker or kayaker at the terminus of a long ride. And it wants to continue to ensure that its branding identity, all under Hammoud’s purview, is consistent across various platforms and touchpoints, allowing it to meet its current, and future, customers where they are.
“I was reading some market analysis recently that showed that my generation feels that any big purchase needs to be done on a big screen, like a laptop or desktop,” Hammoud said. “But Gen. Z will do it on a phone. They’ll buy a car on a phone. So we need to be ready for that.”
Hammoud is less certain discussing the incoming presidential administration, and its manifestly unpredictable relationship to emissions reduction and fleet electrification. “It's hard to know where things are going to go right now. But we know for us, we just have to keep doing what we're doing in terms of getting R2 to market as quickly as possible and making sure it's on time and on cost,” Hammoud said. “Nothing changes for us. We have to just keep moving forward.”
Finally, I managed to get Hammoud to hint at how far the Rivian brand may flex in terms of product offerings. He said the automaker could go nearly anywhere, so long as the product abides the brand’s “adventurous” motif. He doesn’t rule out a mono-volume consumer product like a one-box van. (I suggest styling that apes the original Toyota HiAce). But he said that he “doesn’t think we’ll do a car” like a traditional sedan.
I asked him what other product categories he thought Rivian would avoid. He smiles. “We’re not going to do an airplane. And I don’t think we should go underwater,” he said. “Though in some of the recent hurricanes, we were apparently doing pretty good, under three feet.”
Brett Berk is a freelance automotive writer based in New York. He has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is a contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair.
