Rivian CEO says the company tore down a highly popular Chinese EV. Here’s what he thought.
-
Rivian is not involved in the Chinese market, but it still attaches importance to electric vehicles abroad.
-
CEO RJ Scaringe told BI that the company took apart the Xiaomi SU7 to find out what was inside.
-
The CEO said the SU7 was “well done” but there was nothing new to learn from it.
Rivian doesn’t have a foothold in China’s highly competitive EV market, where companies like BYD and Xiaomi dominate.
That doesn’t mean the California-based EV maker isn’t paying enough attention to the world abroad.
In an interview with Business Insider, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe Said the company destroyed a company Xiaomi SU7It’s a hugely popular EV sedan in China, as part of an industry-standard practice of comparing other vehicles on the market.
SU7 is the overwhelming success story of the Chinese smartphone industry. It was released in early 2024 with a starting price of $30,000, helping Xiaomi surpass its record. annual delivery expectations until November of the same year.
The car was praised Ford CEO Jim Farley. Business Insider previously wrote: Delivered with SU7 performance. After taking a look at Rivian, Scaringe agrees.
“I would say it’s a really well-executed, vertically integrated technology platform,” Scaringe said, referring to how the company developed the car’s technology stack in-house. “Nice ending.”
The CEO said that if he lived in China (since Rivian isn’t there, of course), the SU7 would be one of the cars he would consider buying.
But Scaringe said there was no secret sauce inside the car that made the SU7 inexpensive and an instant success in the country.
“The cost — we figured out how they got there,” Scaringe said, adding that “there was nothing we learned from the devastation.”
The CEO points to macroeconomic factors such as the low cost of labor and the Chinese government’s support for electric vehicles.
“The cost of capital is zero or negative for Chinese companies, which means they get paid to build factories,” Scaringe said. “This is a very different opportunity.”
Scaringe added that although the United States provides loans, the idea of supporting a manufacturing facility through a government grant “is not something that exists in the United States.”
The Department of Energy announced in January a $6.6 billion loan to support Rivian’s new manufacturing facility in Georgia.
A mix of looser regulatory barriers, lower labor costs and more government subsidies is allowing China to move away from mass production more affordable electric carsTravis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, previously told Business Insider.
