We Took the Most Exciting Electric SUV on the Planet for a Spin

Rivian’s vehicles are as futuristic as Teslas and drive like Land Cruisers. But can the company keep up with demand?

- ROSECRANS BALDWIN

REMEMBER WHEN everybody switched from cell phones to smartphones, practically overnight? R.J. Scaringe, the founder and CEO of the electric truck maker Rivian, predicts that drivers are about to make a similar jump. “Once you try a product that completely shifts the technology forward, it’s like a diode; it’s hard to go backwards,” Scaringe told me recently. “We’re going to see a level of consumer-mindset shift that’s hard to imagine.”

Scaringe long dreamed of founding an electric-vehicle company to reduce our addiction to fossil fuels, but he knew those kinds of cars would never be an easy sell. Too sensible, too quiet, too dull. Americans love muscle cars or hulking SUVs. But what if an electric vehicle came along that was built like a Tahoe? What if it accelerated like a Corvette? Scaringe had a vision for an entirely new kind of EV—one that could excite drivers across the country and the political spectrum. Rivian, which he founded in 2009, was based outside L.A. but would make its vehicles in a refurbished auto plant in Normal, Illinois—a reimagining of the industrial past to make the car of the future.