When it comes to electric cars, tesla and Elon Musk's names can't be bypassed. But recently, another electric car company in the United States has emerged, and many people call it the "Tesla of the pickup industry". As soon as the new energy vehicle company was listed, its stock price soared for 5 consecutive days, soaring by more than 118%, and its market value surpassed Ford, GM and Volkswagen all the way, ranking third in the market value of global car companies. It's Rivian.
At the time of listing, Rivian delivered less than 200 vehicles in total, and the delivery users were mostly employees of the company. When Tesla went public 11 years ago, about 1,400 vehicles had been delivered, and nio had delivered more than 1,000 vehicles when it was listed. In this way, Rivian's high valuation seems to be indispensable to the bubble.
Sure enough, after the surge, Rivian's stock price has plummeted continuously, and the throne of the world's third largest car company in market capitalization has once again been regained by Volkswagen. But it is undeniable that Rivian, who has been listed on the top, has indeed been unique and is regarded by many as a "Tesla killer". Its low-key founder, RJ Scaringe, has also entered the field of vision, and many people have speculated: Will he be the next Elon Musk?
As the spree dissipates and the stock bubble is gradually squeezed out, it remains to be seen whether Rivian, as a new energy upstart, can gain a foothold in this market with huge potential, fierce competition and burning money. But no matter what the story goes, Scarlinger is destined to leave a strong mark in the history of new energy vehicle development like Musk.
Car obsession
Compared with Musk, who built rockets and cars and studied photovoltaic power generation, Scalinger's resume is much more monotonous. So far, his career has only been to build cars.
Scarlinger was born in Melbourne, Florida, in 1983 to the son of an engineer who ran a company called Mainstream Engineering. The elder Scarlinger improved a lot of equipment for the U.S. Department of Defense, such as diesel engines, water treatment devices, and medical oxygen concentrators.
Like most ordinary American boys, Scalinger has had a strong attachment to cars since childhood, especially sports cars. Slightly different, under the influence of his engineer father, Scarlinger was very hands-on, and he was proficient in various car repair tools as a teenager. At that time, the next-door neighbor had a near-scrapped Porsche 356 in the garage, and he not only let the old antiques run again, but also repaired the old ones. Since then, this 1950s sports car has become the white moonlight in his heart.
Scalinger describes himself as a "super fan", and his keen interest has made him a teenager determined to create a car brand of his own. He was admitted to the Rensselaer Institute of Technology, the first university of engineering in the United States, and then received a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the MIT Sloan Automotive Laboratory, mastering the knowledge to realize his dreams.
While studying, the Sloan Automotive Laboratory housed a silver Porsche 914 from 1976, which students converted into an electric car. Scarlinger passed by the car almost every day, but barely touched it. At that time, he was spending time studying exhaust gas recycling and valve timing, and classmates said that he was "not an electronic person, but an autobot".
Scarlinger is an adventurous and outdoor enthusiast, and the most common thing to do in leisure is cycling, and the motto is "adventure is life". When Musk began investing in Tesla and becoming a director, Scullinger was still immersed in his sports car dreams.
As soon as he graduated in 2009, Scarlinger returned to his hometown of Melbourne to start a business. Although Melbourne is a small city with a population of just over 70,000, there are many high-tech companies, DRS Technology, General Electric, Rockwell Collins all have branches here, as well as an international airport, and the entrepreneurial environment is good.
But this year was not friendly to entrepreneurs. A bloody financial crisis has not yet dissipated, Chrysler and General Motors have filed for bankruptcy, the auto industry is in turmoil, capital is afraid to invest, and it is more difficult for startups to raise funds.
Fortunately, Scalinger had the support of his father. They mortgaged their house plus other channels to raise $3.5 million. In the building where his father's company was located, the same name as his father's company, Mainstream Motors, which became Rivian, was born. Scalinger's vision was to build a sports car that combined high performance and low price, and he hired 15 designers and engineers. Everything was difficult at first, and Scalinger said, "Just built it with brute force." ”
In Scarlinger's envisioned design, such a sports car could replace the steel frame with lightweight aluminum, and the two-door sedan would be replaced by four modules to piece together, without the expensive metal stamping machines and painting workshops of traditional car factories. In this way, the pricing of a car does not exceed $25,000.
This self-confident vision gradually collapsed under financial pressure. The initial capital does not consume energy for long, and for the company to continue to operate, it must have funds continuously injected. They have to design something, get investor acceptance, and the weekly plan changes almost every day. Once, a Spartan-style race car developed by the team attracted a Brazilian investor, and Scalinger decided to switch to expensive supercars. The brand name was also changed to Averra.
After more than two years of groping, Scalinger raised a little money, but not much, and his house was used as a second mortgage. At this time, he slowed down, and he found that the company's development had reached a fork in the road: is it to continue to do supercars, to see if it can unlock more capital to expand the scale? Or do you shelve all of this and use these experiences to rethink your business?
Having been a supercar fan, Scarlinger knew he couldn't survive with obsession alone. He just wants to build a car, and it doesn't matter what it looks like or what its name is. He had to think about why they existed here.
10 years of electric car exploration
It was at this time that Scalinger attended a workshop organized by MIT. At the meeting, he met Jamel, CEO of Saudi car dealer Abdul Latif Jameel ("ALJ"). A few months later, Skarlinger sat on a carpet in Saudi Arabia, drinking tea and eating candy while listening to Jamil's son give him "homework": designing a high-performance, rugged desert truck.
At the end of the year, ALJ received a rough proposal agreeing to make the investment. But Scalinger thinks the desert truck is inconsistent with his original concept, and he wants to make a luxury pickup truck. The idea stemmed from his love of outdoor adventures. And, for a long time, luxury pickup trucks have been the most profitable models in the United States, with EACH and Ford's net profit exceeding $10,000. ALJ agreed with the idea.
How to make this pickup truck different?
For more than two years, Scallinger felt that he hadn't built what the world really needed, and that he knew that what he liked caused a series of problems, such as making the air dirtier, which left him at one point in contradiction. Now, he can make some changes on the pickup to make it "sexier."
At the board meeting, Scullinger announced loudly: This will be an all-electric car, and we don't need to discuss this further. At the end of 2011, the company changed its name to Rivian and transformed into a new energy vehicle company. The name originates from the Indus River in Florida, where Scarlinger used to go on a rowing boat. This name change not only represents a change of direction, but also solves the problem of averra's defendant trademark infringement.
In the years since, Scalinger has been very low-key, the public knows almost nothing about him, and there is no sign outside their office building, which is very different from Musk's style. In the fierce electric vehicle market in the United States, countless brands have been killed, and Tesla's monopoly and muffled work have won Rivian a chance to survive in the gap and also won the favor of traditional investors. Rivian continued to receive financing, bought factories, had multiple branches, and had an ever-increasing number of employees.
Until the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show, The Rivian made its debut after nearly 7 years of silence. It launched two pure electric models: R1T and R1S. The former is a five-seat pickup truck with a starting price of $67,500, while the latter is a seven-seat SUV with a starting price of $70,000. As soon as it was unveiled, the R1T pickup truck became the most eye-catching one at the exhibition, and even the chief designer of Tesla came to observe the shape and interior of the R1T up close.
Founder and CEO Scarlinger also made a rare high-profile appearance at the show. He is tall, muscular, has a partial distribution, wears glasses, and bears a seven- or eight-point resemblance to his idol, Superman.
After that, It was difficult for Rivian, who had become a star car company, to keep a low profile, and investors from all walks of life flocked to it. Just look at some of the data for 2019: In February, Amazon led a $700 million investment; in April, Ford invested $500 million and then led another $1.3 billion; in September, Cox automotive platform invested $350 million, and Amazon ordered 100,000 electric vans that month as part of its 100% renewable energy conversion plan for its delivery fleet by 2030. In just three years since its debut, Rivian has raised more than $10 billion, a proper gold sucker. It's no wonder that Musk announced in a high-profile manner a few days after the Los Angeles Auto Show that Tesla will launch electric pickups.
Any fuss musk has been used by the media to make a big fuss and describe it as a manifestation of a "sense of threat." The two companies have also been in dispute in the past two years, before Rivian dug up several Tesla employees and executives, and then Tesla sued Rivian for stealing its trade secrets, reprimanding the behavior of "digging the wall", and in October this year, another complaint against Rivian for stealing Tesla's battery technology patents.
But you have to ask Scarlinger what he thinks of Musk and Tesla, he does not have the arrogance of the "back wave", but is sleek and watertight. He affirmed Tesla's jianghu status, praised Musk's contribution to the electric vehicle market, said that he also opened Tesla before the company's products landed, and at the same time, he used "diversification" to leave room for his own development. Scarlinger used the analogy of ice cream: if the goal is to electrify all the vehicles on the planet, it will require many different flavors, and if the world only sells vanilla ice cream, then sales will be much less, so different flavors are needed, Rivian has a specific flavor, Cybertruck has a specific flavor.
Scalinger's quietness, steadiness and high emotional intelligence are exactly what investors are looking for. His ten years of exploration in the field of electric vehicles have given Rivian a place, and he has also jumped to the rich list.
Discreet workaholic
Before rivian went public, it broke the news that it was valued at $80 billion. Musk immediately questioned: Perhaps they should be required to deliver at least one car per $1 billion valuation before the IPO. This did not affect Rivian. Rivian, which only began to deliver vehicles and lost billions of dollars on its books, immediately surpassed its investor, Ford Motors, after going public.
Scarlinger has come to this day and can see some personal characteristics from working with Ford.
Before Ford, GM approached Scalinger and negotiated with him for some time, but never finalized the investment. Because GM requires more control over the project and wants the collaboration to be exclusive. This makes it difficult for Scarlinger to accept, he hopes that his electric "skateboard" chassis can cooperate with more car manufacturers in the future, Rivian is still his place to exert influence and dream. As a result, Ford's more lenient terms of cooperation impressed Scalinger.
After the negotiations, Scalinger prepared to leave Seattle, and Ford offered to let him return in the company's Gulfstream jet. When I got off the plane, there was a general-purpose plane parked outside the hangar, and next to the plane were two luxury cars that picked up the plane.
"Don't let them see." Scalinger didn't want to reveal his whereabouts just after negotiating with Ford, especially by GM executives. He asked Ford to arrange a Lincoln pilot and drive to the plane. As soon as the hatch opened, he hurried into the Lincoln car, deliberately lowering himself to avoid the sight of GM executives, even when loading his luggage.
Scalinger's caution is also reflected in his protection of privacy.
Since stepping from behind the scenes to the front in 2018, Scarlinger, like Musk, has skillfully used the propaganda functions of social media. In November 2018, he uploaded his first image on social platform Instagram and later appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine.
But this post-80s chat on social platforms is all Rivian, about their private life, revealing very little. As the outside world knows, only he chased his wife at a marathon and now has three sons, one 5 years old, one 3 years old, and one 2 years old.
The children were still young, but Scarlinger didn't have much time left for the family, and he was an uncompromising workaholic who had been up all night for four consecutive days. He was always on the move between headquarters, offices, and factories. Fortunately, his wife also works at Rivian, and the family's party time often turns into a company party. Like Musk, Scalinger lives and breathes at work.
Scallinger likes to have a sense of control over life, which can be seen in small details, such as he is a vegetarian, carries his knife and fork with him, and rides his bike to class in the winter. These traits make him very competitive, and once he is committed, he unconsciously becomes ambitious. His teacher said, "He's a really good guy unless you play basketball with him." ”
In the entrepreneurial field, there are too many factors that affect success or failure. How far Scalinger can take Rivian needs to be tested by the market. However, as he said, Rivian is not in conflict with Tesla, and he is not Elon Musk.