Rivian Automotive, Inc. Class A Common Stock Morgan Stanley's 14th Annual Laguna Conference

Well, first, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. For us, this is like an inflection point year. We launched our R1 product, this is in 2021, now almost five years ago, and that was intended to be the handshake with the world. It was our first vehicle. It was the first exposure to the brand. It helped establish who we were. Off the back of that, built incredible brand loyalty, a lot of enthusiasm around the company. But ultimately, the price point of R1 meant that it was not a mass market product. Over the last few years, we've been working towards, and I've certainly been talking about it, R2 is really the mass market vehicle and the vehicle that takes this positive brand sentiment, positive enthusiasm for what we're creating, and puts it to scale.

That inflection point is starting as we speak. We launched R2 just a couple of months ago. The feedback around the vehicle has been just outstanding. That's everything from journalists and influencers all the way through customers and just the level of engagement and I'd say the product market fit is exactly what we'd hoped for. Now as we think about what the rest of this year looks like and then into next year, of course, our focus is on ramping up production. That's not just our production plan, but making sure our suppliers are capable of supporting the ramp up and delivering a lot of vehicles to excited customers. Alongside of that, we've been really focused on our technology. Within that, you see the technology that underpins our software and electronics.

We did a deal in late 2024 with Volkswagen for a $5.8 billion licensing arrangement around our software and electronics to support a host of brands under the Volkswagen portfolio. Recently we did a deal around our autonomy platform, with Uber to create a robotaxi version of R2. Ultimately, all those technologies also manifest into the consumer products and create an even more differentiated experience. A huge amount of effort and focus is continuing to go into that area of the business as well. But yeah, as you said, this is an important time, really exciting time. I'm loving seeing more and more R2s on the road.

Yeah. I guess just as a reference for everyone here, the way we launched R1 is we launched out of the gate with a lot of different build combinations. Essentially everything you could buy was available on day one. We learned a lot from that. It was a very complex way to launch. We introduced massive complexity into the build process and our supply chains from the beginning. With that as a reference, in contrast, in R2, we launched with a very narrow set of build combinations and in fact, one trim, which we called our Launch Edition. That Launch Edition is our most expensive trim on R1. It's a $57,000 starting price vehicle. Very limited paint and color options. The whole objective was to simplify the initial ramp-up.

But of course, alongside of that, we had to make assumptions around how many people would convert to go to the most expensive version of R2. That conversion has been higher for this early batch than what we expected, which is a really good sign. Folks that maybe thought they were going to buy a $50,000 version of R2 said, "Fine, I'll take the $57,000 or $58,000 version." I think it's just reflective of the excitement around the product that people are willing to be more flexible in the version that they were taking, far more than we expected. Now, as we look at the next 12 months, we'll introduce additional trims, so we have a premium trim that takes price down into the mid $50s. We have some base, we call standard trims that are in the $40s.

But ultimately, within the next year, we'll have a starting price of $45,000 all the way up to the maximum price, which is just over $57,000. That portfolio will support an ASP that probably sits somewhere in the middle. But the excitement around all the different trims, we've had a chance to expose media to the different trims and allow them to drive that. I'd say we've done a really good job, of course I'm biased, but we've done a really good job of creating a strong value proposition across each trim configuration and each version of the vehicle that you're getting a lot of value for money.

It's a good question. There's obviously tweaks to exactly when the different variants come in that we're making, but broadly speaking, it's about the same.