The first production Rivian R1T electric pickup truck rolled off the assembly line in Normal, Illinois in September 2021. It was a long road for the company to get there, starting a decade earlier as a company under a different name, in a different state, and with a completely different idea for what kind of vehicles the company would make.
CEO RJ Scaringe (then only 26), initially based in the premises of father RP Scaringe’s Mainstream Engineering facility in Rockledge, Florida, initially called his automobile company Mainstream Motors before deciding on the Avera. The company’s initial goal was to create an economical, fuel-efficient hybrid sports car called the R1 (above).
The Scaringes, both father and son, took out second mortgages on their homes to steer the company through the development phase, hiring 15 engineers to begin with. A blog post on Avera’s website The car was touted as having “supercar-like handling, aggressive looks, affordable pricing and efficiency that beats the Prius.” Put all this in a 2+2 body style, shaped somewhat like the Honda CR-Z, and it’s a car enthusiast’s dream. At least it’s mine.
2011 was a big year for Avera. Earlier in the year the company was presented with a legal objection to the Avera name, as Hyundai believed it was confusingly similar to its larger Azera sedan, so a name change was appropriate. The young Scaring chose Rivien, a disused port on the Indian River, where he spent much of his free time in his youth. That summer the newly renamed company hired Peter Stevens, the man who designed the iconic McLaren F1, to reshape the R1 to more modern tastes. So far I have failed to see the downside!
Why did the car break down?
Later in 2011, as the Rivian R1 sports car prepared for production, Scaringe and his colleagues took a step back to examine their go-to-market plan. He didn’t like what he saw and gave the company a HA Sketch shake-up to get a fresh start. Scaringe said in an interview with his alma mater, “It has become clear that we are not answering the question that the world needs answered.” MIT. Rolling the entire car into a ball and starting over was a chaotic move for a startup, but probably the right move.
It took Rivian a full decade to recover from this decision and actually beat out the Big Three and Tesla with an electric pickup truck. With a few years of production under its belt, a small new R2 just launched, a new production facility underway, and an upcoming R3 to further the process, Rivian is quite busy these days without building a low-volume sports coupe in the largely dead two-door market.
Honda has attempted to create something similar to the original R1 prototype twice between 2010 and 2016 with the CR-Z and the current Prelude. Neither effort resulted in major sales, as the CR-Z never actually came to market, and the Prelude only sold around 300 per month in its first year. Even an international giant like Honda can’t get this concept off the ground, and sales are a far cry from the 42,247 vehicles Rivian will deliver in 2025.
It seems that the car buying public (at least in the US) doesn’t want a compact hybrid (or electric) sports coupe. As much as I’d love a compact EV coupe with supercar handling and Peter Stevens-designed bodywork, Rivian has made the right choice in building a truck.
