Rivian founder and chief executive RJ Scaringe is taking on a new role at his company as part of a restructuring ahead of next year’s launch of the R2 SUV, which includes layoffs of more than 600 employees.
Scaringe told employees in an email Thursday that he will act as Rivian’s chief marketing officer on an interim basis as the company searches for someone to fill that position for the first time. The head of Rivian’s “marketing experiences” team and the head of the company’s creative studio will now report directly to Scaringe, according to a copy of the email obtained by TechCrunch.
It’s unclear how many direct reports Scaringe already has — a spokesman declined to comment — though he told Podcast decoder last year that it was a “large number”.
The cuts announced Thursday are Rivian’s third round of layoffs this year. The company laid off about 140 employees on its manufacturing team in June, as TechCrunch first reported at the time. Rivian made a similar sized cut to this one sales and service operation in September. These layoffs follow a more dramatic 10% reduction in Rivian’s workforce in early 2024.
“I’m writing to share a difficult update,” Scaringe said in Thursday’s email to Rivian employees. “With the launch of R2 ahead of us and the need to profitably scale our business, we have made the very difficult decision to make a number of structural adjustments to our teams. These changes result in a reduction in our team size of approximately 4.5%.
Scaringe said the “changing operating landscape” — a nod to the loss of the federal tax credit for electric vehicles, increased tariffs from the Trump administration and general headwinds against clean energy projects in the U.S. — forced the company to “reexamine how we scale our operations in the marketplace.”
In addition to Scaringe taking over Rivian’s marketing and creative departments, the company is also “streamlining” the customer experience, according to the email. Scaringe said Rivian is moving its “vehicle management” team and integrating it with the company’s service department. Meanwhile, Rivian’s delivery and “mobile operations” will now be housed within the sales department.
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These structural changes are being made to “ensure the buying experience is as seamless as possible with a single point of contact throughout the sales process and delivery,” he wrote.
