American-Made Electrification, With RJ Scaringe of Rivian

Summary

Podcast Summary: "American-Made Electrification, With RJ Scaringe of Rivian"

Episode Details

• Title: American-Made Electrification
• Host/Author: Inc. Magazine
• Release Date: May 12, 2025

Introduction In this episode of From the Ground Up, Inc. Executive Editor Diana Ransom and Editor-at-Large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin engage in an in-depth conversation with RJ Scaringe, the visionary founder and CEO of Rivian. The discussion delves into the challenges and triumphs of building an electric vehicle (EV) company from the ground up, Rivian's strategic pivots, and the future of electrification in the automotive industry.

Starting the Journey: RJ Scaringe’s Early Aspirations RJ Scaringe shares his lifelong passion for automobiles, expressing, "Since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to start a car company" ([04:03]). His journey began with hands-on experience in car restoration and apprenticeship as a machinist, laying a solid foundation for his future endeavors. Scaringe emphasizes the importance of adaptability, recounting how initial resistance from investors fueled his determination to innovate and learn rapidly ([07:04]).

Strategic Pivot to Full Electrification Originally contemplating a hybrid sports car, Scaringe observed parallels with Tesla’s Roadster, prompting a strategic pivot to full electrification. He explains, "We took the really hard decision... to completely shelve what we were working on and pivot" ([09:13]). This decision was driven by a desire to maximize impact and align Rivian’s mission with sustainable transportation, leading to the development of their flagship products, the R1T truck and R1S SUV.

Introducing the R2: Making EVs More Accessible Scaringe details the introduction of the R2, Rivian’s more affordable electric SUV priced at approximately $45,000. He notes the extensive cost optimization measures taken, such as part consolidation and simplifying the electrical architecture, which enabled Rivian to offer a high-quality EV at a lower price point ([14:12]). The R2 aims to address the limited choice in the EV market, hoping to entice a broader consumer base by providing a compelling alternative to traditional combustion vehicles.

Scaling Production and Expanding Capacity Rivian is scaling its production capabilities to meet anticipated demand for the R2, with plans to produce 155,000 units at their existing facility in Normal, Illinois ([20:05]). Additionally, a new 400,000-unit capacity plant is under construction in Georgia, where both the R2 and the upcoming R3 models will be manufactured. Scaringe envisions the R3 as a unique crossover that defies traditional automotive categories, further diversifying Rivian’s product lineup ([20:54]).

Autonomous Driving and Integrated Insurance Services A significant portion of the conversation focuses on Rivian’s advancements in autonomous driving technology. Scaringe describes the integration of high-performance compute capabilities and advanced sensor systems, allowing Rivian vehicles to progressively achieve higher levels of autonomy ([23:11]). Furthermore, Rivian has ventured into the insurance sector, offering insurance products tailored to their autonomous and electric vehicles. Scaringe explains, "Your insurance rates go down as you start to use self-driving more because the risk of a collision drops significantly" ([25:18]).

Software Integration and Strategic Partnerships Rivian's commitment to controlling its entire digital ecosystem is highlighted through their development of a zonal architecture for vehicle computing. This approach reduces complexity and cost while enhancing feature integration and customization. A milestone achievement is Rivian’s $6 billion software licensing deal with the Volkswagen Group, marking a significant validation of Rivian’s proprietary technology stack ([33:31]).

Navigating Supply Chain Challenges and Tariffs The discussion also addresses the complexities of global supply chains, particularly in sourcing materials for EV batteries. Scaringe acknowledges the impact of tariffs and international trade disruptions but remains optimistic about Rivian’s ability to navigate these challenges through strategic partnerships and domestically focused manufacturing ([37:21]). He remarks, "We're very aligned with the administration's objectives," underscoring Rivian’s commitment to American manufacturing ([40:42]).

Expansion into Micromobility with AlSo Rivian is expanding its horizons by launching a new micromobility startup named AlSo, aimed at providing sustainable transportation solutions beyond traditional cars. Scaringe explains that AlSo focuses on electric two-wheelers and other compact vehicles tailored to diverse global markets, enhancing Rivian’s impact on sustainable transportation ([41:10]).

Public Offering and Future Outlook Rivian’s transition to a public company in 2021 provided the necessary capital to scale operations. Scaringe reflects on the challenges and resilience gained from navigating market fluctuations, emphasizing Rivian’s preparedness to capitalize on future growth opportunities with the upcoming R2 and R3 models ([44:13]).

Conclusion Diana Ransom and Christine Lagorio-Chafkin conclude the episode by highlighting RJ Scaringe’s optimism and strategic foresight. Scaringe is poised to lead Rivian through the evolving landscape of electrification and autonomous driving, positioning the company for sustained growth and innovation.

Notable Quotes

• RJ Scaringe: "Since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to start a car company." ([04:03])
• RJ Scaringe: "We took the really hard decision... to completely shelve what we were working on and pivot." ([09:13])
• RJ Scaringe: "Your insurance rates go down as you start to use self-driving more because the risk of a collision drops significantly." ([25:18])
• RJ Scaringe: "We're very aligned with the administration's objectives." ([40:42])

Key Takeaways

• Passion and Persistence: RJ Scaringe’s early passion for cars and relentless pursuit of his vision were crucial in founding Rivian.
• Strategic Pivoting: Rivian’s decision to focus solely on electric vehicles allowed them to differentiate from competitors and maximize their environmental impact.
• Cost Optimization: Through innovative design and supply chain strategies, Rivian successfully reduced production costs to offer more affordable EVs.
• Technological Integration: Developing proprietary software and autonomous capabilities positions Rivian as a leader in automotive technology.
• Market Expansion: Introducing models like the R2 and launching AlSo demonstrates Rivian’s commitment to broadening the accessibility and versatility of electric transportation.
• Resilience in Adversity: Navigating supply chain challenges and market fluctuations has strengthened Rivian’s operational resilience and strategic positioning.

This episode offers a comprehensive look into Rivian’s journey, showcasing the blend of innovation, strategic planning, and unwavering commitment that drives the company forward in the competitive electric vehicle market.

Transcript

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

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[Diana Ransom]

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[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Find it in the app store [e-mail].

[Diana Ransom]

Christine.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Diana.

[Diana Ransom]

So tell me about your first car. Was it a beater? Was it a hand me down. Was it something new?

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

I would call it a beater, but it was a red 91 I believe. Saab 900.

[Diana Ransom]

That's impressive.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Four door. Yeah, you know, it was not new, so. Yeah, but it was a beautiful.

[Diana Ransom]

That's crazy. My first car was a Geo. So storm. Yes. Two door. It was I think in 1990.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Amazing.

[Diana Ransom]

A similar era going on. It had seen better days, this car and then I put it.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

How many people could you fit in that?

[Diana Ransom]

I fit eight people in that car. And it was a two door.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

So not legally eight people, but that's how many people could fit in a geostorm. This is from the ground up. I'm Diana Ransom.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

And I'm Christine Ligorio Chavkin. Today's episode American Made Electrification.

[Diana Ransom]

So, Christine, what are your thoughts about electric cars?

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Ooh, I like them conceptually a lot. I've pondered buying one in the past and I find it absolutely fascinating to watch what's happening going on with Tesla right now with the share price just like dropping precipitously and so much tumult in the government over and in the press over. Elon Musk. So what a fascinating market and moment in time right now.

[Diana Ransom]

I'm intrigued by the whole Tesla takedown right now too.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

And have you been watching the protests and everything?

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, the protests and people basically setting Tesla's ablaze and trying to resell their Teslas or like trade them in with like funny bumper stickers.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

A lot of logos popping off Teslas lately. I see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, my kids call them garbage trucks.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh. Because the cybertruck.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

The cybertruck, when you see it parked on a New York City street, it looks like a dumpster. The back is so square that just like visually what it reads, I've never.

[Diana Ransom]

Seen that or I've never gotten the dumpster vibe from that. But yeah, no, they're definitely odd looking. But I sort of respect that it's different, that somebody's trying to do something different. What's an electric car maker that you know of besides Tesla?

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

They've been in the news this week. I've read of two different electric car companies that I believe are owned by women. One makes a $20,000 really bare bones truck. I think it's called Slate.

[Diana Ransom]

Slate, yes. I have been hearing about that one.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

And then I certainly have heard of Rivian.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, well, to some degree. So we live in New York City and you know, I. It's rare to even have a car in the city. So it's funny to like actually realize that you step back and realize that much of the population is considering purchasing an electric car. And so it actually a significant and growing industry for our audience and for people generally.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

And charging. The charging networks for EVs are hugely growing businesses as well and in just, you know, infrastructure across the country.

[Diana Ransom]

Absolutely.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

And then following that a bit.

[Diana Ransom]

And entrepreneurs are heavily, heavily in on that too. So, yeah, it's definitely great. So I wanted to sit down with RJ Scringe. He's the founder and CEO of a company called Rivian. Rivian is also an EV maker, which you're aware of. So RJ's one of these rare entrepreneurs who at the young age of six, I want to say, knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life and what he wanted to do one day. And he wanted to make cars.

[RJ Scringe]

Since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to start a car company.

[Diana Ransom]

That's wild. Yeah. What inspired you to actually, I mean, you know, when you're thinking like, I'm a six year old, I want to play with Spider man, you're like, I want to start a car company.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. I don't even know the exact age. But as long as I can remember, I know I wanted to do this. And equally, as long as I can remember, I was always really fascinated by and just incredibly enthusiastic about cars and everything about them. The way they look, the way they were designed.

[Diana Ransom]

What kind of car did your parents have?

[RJ Scringe]

I didn't really grow up. My parents didn't really have anything cool.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay.

[RJ Scringe]

My mom had a Pinto.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, wow.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. My dad had a pickup truck, so.

[Diana Ransom]

Wow. No offense, but the Pinto is decidedly not cool.

[RJ Scringe]

But it had a sunroof which made it cool. But yes, we didn't really have anything extraordinary to say the least. But I just grew up so into cars and as I started to get older, I realized that they were causing a lot of issues in terms of local air quality issues, a lot of disputes we have across the planet around access to liquid fuel. And of course, as I really started to look at it, as I got Older, realizing the impacts those are having on our climate systems, and so decided I wanted to start a car company. I had no idea what that meant or what it would involve, and started sort of just thinking about that from again, from some of my earliest memories.

[Diana Ransom]

But your every decision you made, I mean, I've heard past interviews with you, every decision you made has been to help better position you to be a leader of a car company.

[RJ Scringe]

Yes, essentially, yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

So you went to RPI for. You got your engineering degree and then you went and got a PhD at MIT, also in engineering.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, mechanical engineer, but in the Automotive Life lab. So I was in the Sloan Automotive Lab since I was a kid. I was working on cars, restoring cars. I worked in a restoration shop and then worked as a apprentice machinist to learn how to make things from nothing, from scratch. And then from there I went to school, as you said, and all the while knew that I was going to start this company. I didn't really know how or exactly when. For a while I thought I'd go work at a car company for a few years before I started Rivian. But while I was doing my PhD, I realized both the opportunity was so significant, but importantly that the things I was going to learn by working in a car company didn't overlap really, with the things I would need to be able to do in starting a car company. So when you think about starting a car company, if you're being intellectually honest, you need a lot of really hard to get things. And at the beginning you have none of them. So you need many billions of dollars of capital. You need thousands of engineers, you need hundreds of suppliers to provide all the components that go into the vehicle. You need a manufacturing plant that's enormous in scale. You need a design that people are going to want to buy and technology that's compelling and robust. And you have none of those. And so the beginning, you need those things to get capital. You need capital to develop those things. So it's a really interesting chicken or the egg problem where it's like, how do you start? And if you overthink it, you can almost convince yourself to never start.

[Diana Ransom]

If I knew all those things were standing before me, I don't think I'd want to do it.

[RJ Scringe]

I think most investors are probably like that. If you focus on the things you don't have, you can quickly convince yourself not to do something. So I started the company right out of grad school, right out of my PhD program. It was like in the early days, I was doing everything I Was designing parts in CAD out trying to raise capital. And I had no experience raising capital, no experience running a company. So it was very much a steep learning curve. Lots of meetings would end in like, this is crazy. Imagine you go to an investor meeting. If you can get the meeting, which is a big step in the first place. But you start to describe it and you say, I'm starting a car company. The person looks at you as if you have three heads. And then they say, well, you must have some technology. And say, well, not yet, I will. Okay, well, you must have some great supply chain access. No, not yet, but I will. Well, what does it look like? Well, I don't know yet. We still have to figure that out. And so you go through this series of questions and by the end, both you haven't convinced the person to invest, but also you've partially challenged yourself to say, boy, I do have a lot of work to do. So that was the nature of how it started. And I look back now and those were some of my favorite moments in building the company because it was so fluid, the learning velocity was so high, the level of adjustments to the plan. So every day there would be like, okay, if they tweak this or think differently about this, the strategy needs to look a little different. So the fluidity through which we could adjust and pivot the overall strategy and technology roadmap and product plan was really lightweight. It was very nice in those early days. And of course now the company's much bigger. We have just under 17,000 employees. We've got, obviously, products in the market. We're about to launch a much lower priced product we're super excited about, which we call R2. But all that scale is great for getting things done, but it also means that things are less loose. And so those early years are really fun.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. So part of what you, I think, determined in the early years was to actually make an electric vehicle like you. I think the initial model started out as a hybrid.

[RJ Scringe]

That's right. Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

Right. So why, why electric?

[RJ Scringe]

It was always clear that that was the end state. And when I first started, the question was, could we jump straight to that? And a lot of things were different when I first started. It was the thought was build a extremely efficient hybrid with a sports car form factor. And it's sort of obvious place to start as a car enthusiast to say, let's use a sports car, build a brand and take the brand and scale it to other products and.

[Diana Ransom]

Sounds familiar.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

And.

[RJ Scringe]

And so as I was out raising capital and trying to sell this idea to investors. Every time you sell an idea or present a strategy, you have to almost question your own self. And in doing that, I realized there was like this problem. I felt like this bulge in my stomach where something wasn't right. And I realized over time that not by design, but by coincidence, our strategy was really similar to what Tesla launched with. And of course, Tesla launched their brand and their company with a sports car, which they called the Roadster. And they launched it before I even started the company. So I realized we were sort of on top of a strategy that had already been deployed. And the whole reason I started Rivian was to have as much impact as possible. And in fact, we wrote on the wall, we're building this company because it does not exist. So we took the really hard decision a couple years in, after building, building an early prototype of this vehicle to completely shelve what we were working on completely and pivot and hit the reset button. And when I say pivot, it often, like, maybe implies that, like, we shut down one strategy and the next day we picked up a perfectly put together strategy of the next thing. But rather it was shut down what we were originally working on, and then began this long journey of asking lots of questions around what we should do? And the core question was, what can we do as this small startup to drive as much impact as possible? And it ultimately led us through a series of iterations to what you see today.

[Diana Ransom]

Right, but you started with the pickup truck, correct?

[RJ Scringe]

Yes.

[Diana Ransom]

So what were you seeing that made you think a pickup truck was needed in the marketplace? Well, Americans love their pickup trucks.

[RJ Scringe]

No? Yeah, sort of. But it was a little bit, I guess it was more philosophical than that. So we started asking the question, how can we maximize impact? And we realized that in order to maximize impact, we need to drive influence. And the way we thought about driving influence was to make products that excite people around electrification and importantly, expose people to the importance of electrification. And so that led to this idea of a brand that both enables people to go outdoors and explore, but much more important than enables. And by enables, I mean it has, like, storage capabilities and you can fit your pets, your gear, your stuff into the vehicle. But just as importantly, or more importantly, I should say, a brand and a product lineup that inspires people to go outside. And if we're inspiring people to be outdoors and enjoying an active, adventurous lifestyle, by doing that, it's likely to create more awareness of the beauty of the planet that we have and the importance of protecting it. And that's Not a while. This has been somewhat politicized recently. That's not a political view. It's like we have this amazing home, the planet that we live on. And the more exposure people have to it, the more we're going to be inclined to find ways to protect it with our choices as consumers, with how we, you know, what we ask of our politicians, with how we conduct our daily lives. And so that was like the really raw idea. And then as we sharpened that idea said, okay, if we want to create a brand that both enables and inspires adventure, what are the form factors that speak to that most fully? And we landed on a flagship brother sister, if you will, product launch set, which was the R1T, the truck and an R1S, an SUV. And those being the vehicles that most embodied and epitomized the idea of vehicles that enable and facilitate adventure. That you can fit kayaks or bikes or surfboards or telescope, whatever your thing is.

[Diana Ransom]

You're really starting with thinking about what the ultimate consumer wants to do with those activities.

[RJ Scringe]

It's really like activities based. And that was why when you think of what we built with R1T as a flagship product, it's a premium pickup. We didn't intend it to be used for commercial activities. It's not a people you can put concrete in the back, but that's not its designed use case. And with that as a flagship, we then said under that we'll launch a whole series of much lower priced products over time. The first of which is what we call R2.

[Diana Ransom]

It's a good segue.

[RJ Scringe]

So you like creatively we call the next product R2. Following that is R3 and the continually different form factors, also lower prices.

[Diana Ransom]

Are we going to have an R2D2? Sorry.

[RJ Scringe]

So we have to do that. Yeah, we'll have to figure out a way to do a special edition.

[Diana Ransom]

So the R1s starts at 77ish thousand dollars.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

And the R2 is going to come in at $45,000. So what did it take to get the vehicle to be as less expensive as it is, as it will be like? Did you have to scrap the bells and whistles? First of all, what is R2?

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. So let me first, I was going to say, let me first describe it. Could you call that out? So whereas R1 is a bit of a larger vehicle, the R1T being a truck, the R1S being a seven passenger three row SUV, R2 is a two row, five passenger SUV. And it embodies really the spirit and the character that we see in R1s, but with a smaller form factor, as you said, already at much lower price. And so we achieved the lower price and importantly, I should say, the lower cost to make it through a bunch of different things. First and foremost, we just drove a lot of focus into part consolidation and in many cases, part elimination through that consolidation. So as an example, we're using large high pressure die castings and the structure of the vehicle to get rid of a lot of the stamped panels. We're dramatically simplifying the electrical architecture even beyond what's in our R1 updates. To consolidate the number of ecus to simplify the wiring harness. We redesigned the closure systems very differently than what we did in R1. And what we've achieved is a cost structure that's less than half that of what R1 is, which is important, of course, to get the price profitably down. You have to be able to be profitable at a $45,000 price point. But it's like every single you think of a car, there's many millions of decisions. Every single decision has been looked at through the lens of cost optimization. And then in addition to that, very different than what we had in R1, our leverage with suppliers is much stronger. So when we selected suppliers for things like seats or tires or headlights on our launch vehicles, this was in 2018, 2019. And you can imagine that was right.

[Diana Ransom]

When you were conceiving the idea. You hadn't even gotten the idea.

[RJ Scringe]

We just unveiled the product end of 2018. So some of those discussions were before we even unveiled it to the public, and some are slightly after. But we had to sign supplier contracts well before we had any products in the market that were sold well before there was any market validation that this was going to be successful. And so imagine walking into a supplier and 2018 and saying, we need to buy tires. And they say, well, what are you making? We're making electric SUV and an electric truck. And they say, nobody wants that. And then you say, well, yeah, they do.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, they do. Why would you ultimately be so dismissive of that? I still don't understand that.

[RJ Scringe]

I mean, it represents a big shift. You know, a lot has happened in the last six, seven years, but in 2018, 2019, it was, you know, if you go to the traditional automotive supply base, there was very little conviction around electrification happening, and in particular that happening in large vehicles, particularly vehicles that can go off road. I mean, a question I used to get all the time which, what if.

[Diana Ransom]

It runs out of power? Right?

[RJ Scringe]

Well, no, it's actually, like, what if it gets wet? Can you drive through? Like, can you drive. If it's an off road vehicle, can you drive through?

[Diana Ransom]

Can you drive through water? Okay. And what do they think it's going to?

[RJ Scringe]

The vehicle can drive underwater.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay.

[RJ Scringe]

So. But these are all, like the kinds of mindsets you have to work through. And so that was really hard. So without that leverage, there was a big, what I would call, like, startup risk premium applied to a lot of our pricing. And this was when the auto industry was at peak demand. So 2018, 2019 was really busy for the auto industry. So it wasn't as if these suppliers were hungry. We had to pay a significant premium to traditional vehicle manufacturers because of the risk, because of the perceived both market risk and then operational risk. Can we build a plant, launch a plant, launch a vehicle? And so that all played out and we fully sourced the vehicle. And then all the suppliers signed up. And then, of course, Covid hit right as we're launching. And then that was followed by just an extraordinary supply chain crunch that we saw across many industries. It was hard to buy drywall in 2022, but it was also really hard to buy parts for vehicles and things like semiconductors. So that was, and I remember computer chips, terrible, terrible. So we anticipated in 2022 being able to negotiate out a lot of these risk premiums that were in our initial bill of materials because of the success of the product. And so out of the gate, the R1T and the R1S did extremely well. R1T was truck of the year. R1S continues to be one of the best selling SUVs in the United States. It's the best selling premium electric SUV in the United States today. It's been that for a couple of years now. And so just this enormous success, we thought would translate to price reductions. And that was not as easy as we'd hoped because of this supply chain crunch. And in fact, the opposite occurred where many of these suppliers instead asked for further premiums just to provide us parts. And so, all that being said, I guess I can illustrate the difference of sourcing R1 to R2. Best is saying in 2018, to get a lot of these suppliers to work with us, I would need to fly to wherever the supplier's location was. Often this is in the Detroit area. And so I'd find myself, like in the lobby of a supplier waiting for meetings to start, usually a little bit late, usually having the person that represents the company be no more senior than like, let's say, a director And I contrast that with the sourcing of R2, where the CEOs of those very same suppliers will fly to meet us at our location in our plant in Normal, Illinois or at our location in California with their full team and make it very clear they want to work with Rivian. And it's because they see the success of what's occurred with R1. And you know, if R2 can generate frankly even a fraction of the market share that we have on the high priced product, you know, we'll have significant market share.

[Diana Ransom]

Where do you see the volume of the R2 going? I mean, it sounds like you're going to bring the price down significantly. So volume should.

[RJ Scringe]

We're planning on many, many hundreds of thousands of units. So our first production line, which is going in now as we speak, is 155,000 for R2.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay. Which is significantly more than your R1 production.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, R1 today is about 60,000 of capacity. So that'll put our full site in Norwell, Illinois at around 215,000. And then in parallel to that, we're also building a 400,000 unit capacity plant in Georgia.

[Diana Ransom]

And are you building the R2 there?

[RJ Scringe]

We're building both the R2 and the R3 there, yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

I was going to ask you about the R3. So at the launch party for the R2, you actually showcased the R3 as well. What is the R3?

[RJ Scringe]

So R3, it's on the same platform as R2, so it shares a lot of content and components. But it's a bit smaller than R2. And it's more of a. It's actually a hard to define vehicle, but it's more of a crossover.

[Diana Ransom]

It's like a hatchback.

[RJ Scringe]

It's like a hatchback meets a crossover, meets like a mini suv. But we actually wanted it to be hard to categorize. Our head of design and I used to always say, well, we want people to say, what is an R3? And the answer to be, well, it's an R3, meaning it defines itself, it is unique and it's the one that gets a lot of car enthusiasts excited. We have a performance version of it which we call the R3X, which with a tri motor configuration, meaning two motors in the back, one in the front. It's like silly exciting.

[Diana Ransom]

How so? Like if one breaks down, the other.

[RJ Scringe]

Two will, or if they all work, it's really quick. But the R3s, we think of it as something that you'd cross shop with a sedan, with a hatchback, with a crossover Maybe an suv. Its small size makes it perfect for more urban environments, but it still has the ground clearance and the capability to go on a trail. And we have a bunch of features in there, as I said before, that consistent with our brand, enable it to fit your gear.

[Diana Ransom]

So is it going to have like a. What is this thing you have in the R1? It's like a tent on the roof.

[RJ Scringe]

We have a tent. Yeah, we have a really cool tent we're developing for R2 and R3 that we showed. I think there's a few pictures of it, in fact, on our website. But it's a magnificent tent is how I describe it. It's like, wonderfully good.

[Diana Ransom]

Right. Okay, we'll have to. We'll have to stay tuned for that one. And is the price point going to be similar to the R2?

[RJ Scringe]

Lower? Lower? We haven't announced the price, but it will be meaningfully.

[Diana Ransom]

Feel free to announce it here.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, that would be fun. Our comps can go crazy, but it's a notable step down from where to is in terms of price.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay. I mean, 45 seems like the going rate for a car these days.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. And this is, you know, this is the thing I talk about all the time with electrification. We're just under, as a country, just under 8% of new vehicle sales are electric. And I think the biggest limiting factor is actually lack of choice. So if you're in the market to buy a vehicle today and the average transaction price of a new vehicle today is around $50,000 and you want to buy something that's $50,000 or lower, there's very, very few great or highly compelling EV choices in the market. And so we hope R2 gives customers a really exciting choice that hopefully compels them to make the leap into electric. And then we hope to further expand that with R3.

[Diana Ransom]

And then R2 and R3 are both going to have autonomous capabilities.

[RJ Scringe]

Correct.

[Diana Ransom]

Is that right where you're just going to, at some point flip a switch and that will. Then they will potentially be autonomous at some point. Are they going to be out of the gate autonomous, or are you going to make a software update that happens?

[RJ Scringe]

Well, I look at it as an ever expanding spectrum, meaning at launch they'll have autonomous capabilities and that will just continue to grow. And so we've designed, and we just put this into our R1 vehicles with a big upgrade which we characterize on the vehicle, we call it the Gen 2 of the vehicle, where we increase the level of compute in the vehicle by 10x. We dramatically improve the camera set. We now have the more megapixels than any other car sold in the United States. With 55 megapixels of cameras, incredible light performance. We have five radars, including a front imaging radar. And that's in every R1 produced now. And the beauty of that is it gives us a ton of headroom on the capability growing. So today on an R1, you can get on the highway and you can take your hands off the wheel and the vehicle drives itself. That's going to expand to, from highways to being able to go point to point. So you get in your car, in your driveway and you put in an address and it drives itself. And then we expand from there to go not just hands off, point to point, but hands off, eyes off, where you can take your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. And there's so much confusion around how we characterize these levels of autonomy. But say level two or level three, this, this means it's a true level three, which is hands off, eyes off. And so that's the roadmap for R1, but it has the same self driving platform that's going into R2. So the way these are now built is we're building an offline large parameter model. Think of it as like a big foundation model and we use a distilled version of that in the vehicle running on this really capable inference platform to do all the real time decisioning around what's happening around the vehicle. But it's, I'd say it's one of the most exciting parts of the vehicle is the ability to see it increasingly drive itself and importantly still have the ability to operate the vehicle if you'd like. But you know, under most conditions, you know, in the not too distant future, the vehicle will be fully capable of driving itself.

[Diana Ransom]

Are we ready for that as a society? Like you have kids, are you ready to take your eyes and you know, hands off the wheel when your kids are in the car?

[RJ Scringe]

I think it's a great question. Ultimately, this all ties back to safety. So the challenge with us as human drivers is we're really good at highly complex situations and we're very bad at really simple boring situations. So us picking up our phone and looking at a text and looking away from the road for 3 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds is incredibly unsafe. The beauty of a self driving vehicle is it doesn't blink, it doesn't look for texts, it's not looking at billboards, it's not listening to music, it's completely focused and so with the way we're rolling out our features, we're being very thoughtful. We've done highway first and this hands free feature on the highway is very, very, very safe. And in fact we offer our own insurance product. And one of the reasons we developed the insurance product is your insurance rates go down as you start to use self driving more because the risk of a collision drops so significantly relative to even the best human drivers. And so that's the metric for us, is the vehicles need to get safer and safer and safer. And the beauty of it is it's not something we are forced to do it. So if you can decide where you use the, you know, the capabilities, do you want to use it on the highway, do you want to use it only on certain highways, or would you rather drive the vehicle yourself? And so our job is to make the platform so capable, be transparent around how safe it is, and provide customers this choice to get their time back to be able to be in the vehicle and not be as focused on driving the vehicle, but rather have the vehicle drive itself.

[Diana Ransom]

I wouldn't say I'm convinced, but it definitely. That sounds convincing.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Wait, wait, so Rivian is not only an electric vehicle company, but also an insurance company too?

[Diana Ransom]

Yes. That odd. Yeah. For a car company that also sells insurance, I think that's interesting.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

And it sort of seems like obvious why, why isn't this a more broad thing? Why isn't this more generally available that car companies do this?

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Interesting.

[Diana Ransom]

But it seems obvious like you're selling them the car. Why don't you sell them an insurance policy while they're, while you're doing it?

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Because you're often like doing financing.

[Diana Ransom]

Yes. If you're doing financing. So car companies have been doing financing for eons, but selling insurance has usually been this kind of like specialized other party doing, doing the action. So I think it has to do with the fact that Rivian is kind of specialized in the sense that their parts are, it's not like a car car you like, there's no engine in there. There's, there's stuff that's rarefied for an EV car company to make and, and probably to work on should something happen to your car. So insurance might be this kind of like newfangled thing for them.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Insurers wouldn't know how to handle it.

[Diana Ransom]

Insurers might not know how to handle it.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Got it. And what about their technology?

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. So Rivian interestingly has made it a point to invest heavily in building out its own software and basically technology stack. So As I mentioned before, like these are not traditional cars. They're not like combustion engines, they're computers. So when you really think about it, at the end of the day, like they're building the technology and the software that powers the computers. And interestingly, Volvo is one of their biggest clients. They just had a pretty interesting strategic partnership with Volvo which was 5 or 6 billion dollars worth. So Rivian is powering Volvos now too.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Fantastic. So what's next in the interview?

[Diana Ransom]

So, yeah, we were Talking about the R1 model and the various iterations there. So that car can start at around $70,000 and ranges all the way up to 100 ish thousand dollars. So the exciting thing is where they're going next is the more consumer friendly model where they actually can hit mass market appeal. So $45,000. This is going to be game changing for the company. So stick around and we'll, we'll talk about that all next. Part of what I've heard about you and your company is that you have in the past chafed about this idea of not being considered a tech company. A lot of people think of it as a car company. Right. So, and they look at it in a different, in a different, you know, through a different lens than being a tech company. But you actually make a fair number of sales through the sale of software.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

What percentage of your sales actually come from software and who's buying it?

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's unique about building a company like Rivian is it's so many different types of businesses in one. So we're.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, and I learned insurance too, which.

[RJ Scringe]

Is, yeah, we have an insurance company, we have a finance company. I mean we have a lot. It's just the nature of this business, it's so broad. And then because we are direct to consumer, we have a large service footprint. So we're a vehicle service company, we have a large sales network, we have a large distribution network. So we own parking lots throughout the country for accumulating and managing inventory. But as you point out, we also develop all of our electronics and our software in house. And this was a decision we took, I mean, very, very early on in the business, which was this deep belief that ultimately the features, the capabilities, the product attributes, if you will, are going to be a lot better if we can control the entire digital ecosystem. And so in order to do software really well, we felt it was really important to do the hardware really well and sort of vice versa. That decision, which we took years ago was at the time, folks Even investors we had in the business were like, this seems like a lot. There are suppliers, tier one suppliers, that can make the little computers that go in the car and provide software. And so in the auto industry, These are called ECUs electronic control units. And like a modern traditional vehicle architecture will have, let's say, 100 plus of these little computers in the vehicle. And when you buy a seat or when you buy an air conditioning system from a supplier, it comes with this little tiny little computer, a little microcontroller. And all of that dates back to the first microcontrollers, the first computers going into a vehicle which. Which actually, ironically came with fuel injection systems. And over time, that proliferated into all these different things. You source bring little computers and you have, as a result, this wildly complex, I'd call it horrifically inefficient network architecture and compute topology that exists in a traditional vehicle. And so we really thought that was wrong. And so what we've built into our vehicle is what we think of as a zonal architecture, where we have a very small number of computers that do a lot. So we have a computer that's on the east side of the car, we have a computer that's on the west side of the car, we have a computer that's in the south part of the car, and they do all the functions in those zones. And we own the software, we own the hardware, and that that architecture takes a lot of cost out, many thousands of dollars of cost out. But it also very, very importantly allows us to control the features much more seamlessly. So if we want to change the sequence of events that occur when, let's say you walk up to the car, we're not coordinating amongst 10 or 15 different suppliers. It's just us. So if we want to change the chirp of the vehicle when you lock it to what the seat does, to what the air conditioning system does, to what the audio system's doing to the vehicle ride height. Each of those in a traditional car would be a different supplier that has to be coordinated with. Whereas in our case, we control the entirety of that software stack.

[Diana Ransom]

So you can change the way somebody has customized their own car after they've purchased it.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. So we do a monthly over the update that adds new features. And because we can, with software, we can do almost anything. It's the question of, like, what features, what capabilities do you provide? But that platform has proven to be so powerful. I remember when we made the decision to do this, I said to our board at the time, this Was like more than a decade ago. I was like, maybe someday this will be something other car companies will want to buy from us. Fast forward. In the fall of last year, in the fall of 2024, we did the very large software licensing deal with Volkswagen Group. This is the second largest car company in the world.

[Diana Ransom]

It's a $5 billion deal.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, it's just under $6 billion deal to license this software stack. And then some of our controllers, some of these ECUs for use across all of their products. So that's Volkswagen Group is Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi in Europe, brands like Skoda and Seat. So you have this broad spectrum of brands that will now be using our technology. And as you said, this is a, it's a wonderful thing for us from a revenue point of view. But importantly, it's a really strong validation to see this thing that we've worked on for so long now get deployed across a very large car company.

[Diana Ransom]

Absolutely. That's so interesting. I have to imagine part of what I guess the headwinds that you face when we're talking about expansion of EVs. You were saying how 8% of the population has an EV at this point.

[RJ Scringe]

Well, 8% of new vehicle sales.

[Diana Ransom]

8% of new vehicles sales.

[RJ Scringe]

So of the car park, it's still a very small percentage.

[Diana Ransom]

So what's preventing more adoption? And I believe you've said in the past that, that if we can bring down the cost of batteries, that would. And the efficiency of batteries, for instance, that would also kind of encourage more EV usage.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

Is that right? And what's happening in the battery world as far as you can see?

[RJ Scringe]

I mean, the causality of adoption or what's driving the adoption rate to be what it is. There's so many factors and it's really easy to simplify to say it's a singular thing. I'd say it's a mosaic of element of items that need to happen.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh yeah. I mean there's the lack of charging.

[RJ Scringe]

Yes. I'd say if I were to list the top issues, I'd say first is vehicle choice. There's very few choices. I would argue that that's the biggest issue. And you sort of see that present pretty visibly in the fact that there's a very significant amount of market share concentration with one manufacturer. With Tesla, that's reflective of a lack of choice. Tesla's historically had well over 50% market share. Tesla has some amazing products with the Model 3 and the Model yeah. Being the vast, vast majority of their sales. But not everybody wants that form factor, that look of a vehicle, that set of features. And so when you contrast that with let's say the internal combustion world where you have 300 choices under $50,000, you just have such a discrepancy of choice. And so I think that's one that needs to be solved. Of course we hope to help solve that with R2 and R3 and eventually.

[Diana Ransom]

Our four wheels, I was going to say. And also, also, also, and also, also.

[RJ Scringe]

But I think that's one, I think the second is charging infrastructure which you've talked about. That's a major gap and the next is cost. And the biggest driver and cost of an EV that's different than a non electric vehicle and a combustion vehicle is the battery. Most of the other systems are actually cheaper. So the drive units, the motors, the electric motors are actually cheaper to build than combustion engines. But battery is much more expensive to make than a fuel tank. And so taking the cost down on that requires a lot of things. It's technology advancement is one and we've seen that where the cost of batteries come down by 10x over the last 15 years. But we also have real challenges in the supply chain. So how do we source lithium, how do we source nickel? Not only how do we source it, but where do we source it from? What are the trade agreements?

[Diana Ransom]

So this gets, I was going to say we can't have this conversation without talking about tariffs.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, so there's, there's big, big challenges I'd say with just sort of recognizing that the United States, you know, doesn't have the perfect geological set for all the materials that go into a battery. And so it requires international trade, it requires partnerships to be built with companies that operate both mining facilities and processing facilities in other countries. And so that's been a huge part of what we've worked on over the last, over the last three, four years.

[Diana Ransom]

So how have the tariffs impacted Rivian?

[RJ Scringe]

So we produce, 100% of the vehicles we make are produced here in the United States.

[Diana Ransom]

I suspect you get some parts abroad and we talked about.

[RJ Scringe]

But the supply chains are very complex. And so yeah, I think often when we talk about trade in the economy from an economist's point of view, you can simplify it to look at it as if world trade is consist of simple products. The quote unquote, are we good enough.

[Diana Ransom]

To talk about the eye pencil, the.

[RJ Scringe]

Quote unquote widget or you know, the things we sort of think of like just singular items. But in automotive you have many, many tiers in your supply chain. So I use as an example, let's say a headlight. So we buy our headlights from a supplier in the United States. That supplier has six tiers of suppliers that feed into it. So you go back a step, that supplier is getting parts, in this case, sub assemblies that go into the headlight, the supplier that makes the sub assemblies. So these are things like the, the LEDs that go into it. There's suppliers to that supplier, there's suppliers to that supplier. So you go back the chain and eventually you get back to the raw material source. And this is everything from aluminum to plastics and composites. And in the case of a light, you actually have some rare earth metals that are used in the LEDs.

[Diana Ransom]

Those are used more in electric vehicles.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. And so they use a lot of things used in LEDs. They're used in magnets, so electric motors. So essentially nearly every electric vehicle uses magnets with rare earth metals that come from other countries.

[Diana Ransom]

So these are the latest. The latest on that was that China had imposed new restrictions on exports of these, these sort of rarer magnets. So, I mean, when you hear news like that that seems to be changing daily, do you have like a war room set up at Rivian? You address these things?

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, I mean, just navigating the trade environment, something every company and every business is doing. The more complex supply chains and businesses in aerospace or automotive that have these very long supply chains are certainly have, you know, have a more complex look at this than, let's say, companies that are in apparel manufacturing or soft goods manufacturing, where it's pretty simple. It's usually one or two steps at most. And so I do think a lot of discussion ends up looking at the economy as if it's all apparel or coffee cups. This is a much more complex economy. And the intricacies of how dependent we are around this global supply chain that's been built over 100 years is real. And so we're working through that. I think the interesting thing here is this is very consistent for all car companies. So we're all working to navigate just, I think, a changing trade environment.

[Diana Ransom]

For sure. Yeah. But it is hard, especially when you're about to come out with a more cost efficient vehicle and then you start to see like, oh, your own costs start to spike. I can imagine it being hard to kind of like make sure you deliver.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, in some ways, R2 launches next year. And so we do have some time to respond to the new environment. So I think what everyone's looking for is to try to understand where is it going to settle. So where's the end state? And you know, we understand the objectives and so we're very US centric. We have, as I said, thousands and thousands of people here working in the United States.

[Diana Ransom]

And yeah, you're developing technology here.

[RJ Scringe]

So I think we're very con. We're very aligned with the administration's objectives. And now we're just navigating some of the realities of our global supply chain.

[Diana Ransom]

But you're also starting a whole new startup.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

And this is a micromobility firm called Also, which is a very confusing name, I have to say. I'm sorry. But so why did you call it Also? And why do you think now is a good time to start a micro mobility company?

[RJ Scringe]

So I love that you ask the quite the name before I even started. Rivian. When you really look at what's necessary to transition the global transportation system to something that's truly sustainable, meaning when I say sustainable, meaning it can work hundreds of years from now. So said differently, like not dependent on fossil fuels, that requires us to look at a lot of different form factors. In the United States and in a lot of the developed markets, we're very trained to think about transportation through the lens of a car. And as a car enthusiast, it's very natural for me to think of it through the lens of a car. But as you look at transportation in let's say Southeast Asia or India or Brazil or Central Africa, you look at a lot of these areas. We have a lot of people that also need to conduct commerce, need to move around, need to go places, need to carry things. A lot of the form factors used in those markets are much different than what we think of as a car. So they're often two wheelers and in some cases three or four wheelers, but not four wheelers in the sense of a car, more four wheelers in the.

[Diana Ransom]

Sense of like an EV golf cart.

[RJ Scringe]

Kind of thing, not a golf cart in the sense of how we'd think of it, but like a four wheeler type thing that carries stuff.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay.

[RJ Scringe]

And so one of the early questions I had was whether we wanted to focus on that market or vehicles. And this was a question we asked 15 years ago. We decided to focus Rivian on vehicles and what you've ultimately seen us build as a product set because we felt that that would have the most impact of also influencing other manufacturers, influencing consumer demand in these big markets that are the largest markets in terms of emissions. But we recognize that we do need to go solve electric mobility in smaller form factors. As well. And so a few years ago, we decided to put a Skunkworks team together that said, boy, we've developed this incredible vertically integrated technology set around high voltage systems, so batteries, drive units and then all the connected systems in the software platform. Can we squeeze that into a much, much smaller form factor and a much lower cost structure for non traditional mobility applications? And really a heavy focus on two wheelers. And we started to do the work on that. And a few. After a couple years of work on it, we realized, wow, this is going really well and the idea is way bigger than we originally thought and the scale of the opportunity is enormous. But it's going to be a different brand story and it's going to be something that's a different product set. And while there's some overlap in some markets with Rivian, we need this company to go blossom on its own. And so we decided to spin it out and we raised, we announced it earlier this year. We raised $105 million of outside capital to come into it. So it's a really well financed from, you know, as a sort of first outside investment. And the name came out of exactly what it is. We said if we want to transition a world to sustainable transportation, we also need to go do all these other things. It's not enough to just do vehicles. And so the name was born out of its existence. That it's, it's doing the, it's also focusing on the other forms of transportation.

[Diana Ransom]

All right, so I guess that does make sense. You took your company public in 2021.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

Do you have any reservations about having gone that route? Obviously you can do more. You have a little more freedom as a privately held company.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah. I mean, being a private company has all kinds of advantages, especially when things are really dynamic. There's no limitations to what you can discuss with your investors. You can pivot more sharply, you can be more restrained in what you say publicly. So it's really helpful, I think, in the early days, but we really felt that Rivian and the impact it's trying to drive and the scale of the business we're working to create. We want Rivian to be building many millions of units a year and be one of the largest car companies in the world. And so it really needed to be a public company. And we also recognize the amount of capital we would need. So we raised over $12 billion privately before we went public and then went public. We had a very large IPO, which ultimately brought in another around 14 billion. And we timed it really well. The Market was really.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, it was a huge ipo.

[RJ Scringe]

Yeah, it was a big ipo. The capital markets were in a really heavy growth state, so they were very bullish on big swings, like a company like Rivian. And so it worked out really well, I'd say, had we waited to. When the market flipped pretty significantly almost immediately after we did our IPO in 2022, to a much more bearish market where there was a lot less emphasis on growth. If we had took our same S1 that we went public with in 2021 and used the exact same S1 in 2022, it wouldn't have been a successful IPO. It was fortunate that we did it the way that we did it when we did it, because it allowed us to build up this big capital base that's facilitated us continuing to grow. But it, like, for me, it was really challenging. I had not been a public company CEO before. We went right into just an incredibly tough situation with a supply chain crisis we had in 2022, with the financial markets becoming very bearish on large capital, big growth businesses that were focused on growth as opposed to profitability, which is what we were. And so just navigating that was, again, I look back now and I'm like, that was really fun because I learned a lot. It was painful. You know, it sort of helped build us some of the resilience that we now have within the business. And now we're much more familiar with being a public company. And we're obviously very hopeful that we'll see our. The value of our business continue to expand as we launch R2 and dramatically increase the revenue for the business and profitability of the business. But this type of a company, I think, needed to be public.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[RJ Scringe]

And you could debate if. Did it go too early, too late? I don't know. But we're public now, so we are where we are.

[Diana Ransom]

Well, you could always go back private again if you wanted to. Anyway, I've learned a lot about cars. Thank you so much.

[RJ Scringe]

Thank you.

[Diana Ransom]

This has been a real pleasure to speak with you today, so appreciate your time.

[RJ Scringe]

Thanks.

[Diana Ransom]

So one thing that really struck me about the conversation that I had with RJ was just how optimistic he is. He's a big fanboy of American manufacturing and also just seemed completely unfazed by tariffs.

[RJ Scringe]

Tariffs?

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Yeah. I mean, I can see that this is a great moment in time for him. He's manufacturing most of his stuff directly in America. The vehicles right in America. And I mean, I think Trump today just also released some of the tariffs for automakers, right?

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

And he's riding this wave of just distrust of Elon Musk and Tesla. Right. I mean, this is a. It's a fantastic moment. How prepared do you feel like he is for the future, like beyond this wave and beyond this moment?

[Diana Ransom]

I feel like what he mentioned was interesting in the sense that, like, when you're starting up a company, there are a lot of things that you don't have negotiating power over. When he was starting the company, he didn't have, you know, long ties to vendors, so he could be like, you know what? I'm going to do this thing and it's going to be great. And here you're going to. If you ride along with me, we're going to succeed together. So he didn't have that track record. Now he has that track record. So he can actually make those conversations or have those conversations with vendors and he has more leverage in the conversation. So I actually think that he is better prepared for negotiating better deals and this is why he was able to bring the price of the vehicle down. So, I mean, with some respect, with tariffs, his products are not all made. It's manufactured in the United States, but it's not all made.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

He needs to import some parts.

[Diana Ransom]

There's still some issues with, in terms of importing and exporting. So there's a lot of, like, exogenous things that could happen.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Sure.

[Diana Ransom]

But he seems like he's on a smooth path.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

Right, right. I mean, I feel like the starting up of an automaker is extremely, extremely difficult. And he's gotten over that hump. Like he has reached a consumer, a level of consumer appeal now. So what do you think is next for Rivian?

[Diana Ransom]

Obviously they're coming out with new models, but they're also. They just. And they. We talked about this, but they're launching this new company called Also, which is pretty significant in micro mobility. So that's with global aspirations. So there's a lot of countries where cars are not a big deal, but micro mobility is a thing. So I suspect we'll see a lot more from Rivian in this company. Also, in terms of micro mobility, it's kind of interesting to see, like, even in the face of all this potentially bad news, these days you still have people who are out there trying to innovate, trying to bring something new to the world. So we'll see what happens.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

That's all for this episode of from the Ground Up.

[Diana Ransom]

Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice. Also, if you like this episode or have suggestions of topics you'd like to hear about. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or reach out to us on all of the Ink's social channels.

[Christine Ligorio Chavkin]

From the Ground up is produced by Blake Odom and Avery Miles with Diana Ransom and myself, with help from Sam Gebauer and Hawa Ohtori Editing by Matt Totter, mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. Our Executive producer is Josh Christensen. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.

[Diana Ransom]

Panoply.