{"id":34576,"date":"2025-10-08T17:21:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/rivian-ceo-says-evs-have-become-political-but-they-shouldnt-be\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T17:21:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:21:34","slug":"rivian-ceo-says-evs-have-become-political-but-they-shouldnt-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/rivian-ceo-says-evs-have-become-political-but-they-shouldnt-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Rivian CEO says EVs have &#8216;become political&#8217; but they shouldn&#8217;t be"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68e671bc1c1f80efbec529d3?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe is pictured.\"\/><figcaption>Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said that the company tries &quot;not to make what we&#039;re doing political.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Amy E. Price\/SXSW Conference &amp; Festivals via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said that both Republicans and Democrats were interested in the company&#039;s EVs.<\/li>\n<li>&quot;We try very hard not to make what we&#039;re doing political,&quot; Scaringe said on the &quot;Decoder&quot; podcast.<\/li>\n<li>Donald Trump&#039;s administration has rolled back EV subsidies and signed a resolution to block a new gas-powered car sales ban.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Should a vehicle be associated with a certain political party? Rivian&#039;s CEO doesn&#039;t think so.<\/p>\n<p>Electric vehicles have been caught in the crosshairs of Donald Trump&#039;s administration. The Trump administration removed the electric vehicle tax credit and signed a resolution to block California&#039;s plan to phase out new gas-powered car sales. Several automakers rolled back their EV plans, and analysts expect an industry-wide slowdown.<\/p>\n<p>Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe wants to &quot;depoliticize electric vehicles,&quot; he said on the &quot;Decoder&quot; podcast on Monday. Scaringe said that EVs had &quot;become political.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They shouldn&#039;t be,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Scaringe said Rivian employs almost 16,000 people domestically and has one of the &quot;strongest technology teams, I think, in the United States.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We spend a lot of time with the administration on that, and there&#039;s a lot of support and enthusiasm for what we&#039;re creating and building in that regard,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The national emphasis on domestic manufacturing and reshoring the auto industry has bolstered gas-powered vehicles. In June, General Motors announced a $4 billion investment into US manufacturing plants, which included producing gas-powered vehicles to &quot;meet continued strong demand.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Compare that to just a few years ago, when several large automotive companies were pledging to phase out the combustion engine.<\/p>\n<p>In August, Scaringe said that he saw a &quot;reprioritization of capital towards internal combustion,&quot; one that was &quot;very bad for my kids and their kids, and very bad for the US auto industry.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>While Trump&#039;s policies are evenly applied to the EV industry, he has publicly supported a select few companies. For much of his presidency, Trump has lauded Tesla \u2014 one of Rivian&#039;s competitors \u2014 and even purchased one of the company&#039;s EVs.<\/p>\n<p>On the podcast, Scaringe referenced a classic Michael Jordan quote from his partnership with Nike: &quot;Republicans buy sneakers, too.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We have a lot of Republicans who buy our vehicles and love them,&quot; Scaringe said. &quot;We have a lot of Democrats who buy our vehicles and love them. We have people who are in the middle, and we have Independents.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Scaringe said that he wanted Rivian to be &quot;as broad as possible,&quot; creating a &quot;welcome mat&quot; that is agnostic to political beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We try very hard not to make what we&#039;re doing political,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said that the company tries &quot;not to make what we&#039;re doing political.&quot; Amy E. Price\/SXSW Conference &amp; Festivals via Getty Images Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said that both Republicans and Democrats were interested in the company&#039;s EVs. &quot;We try very hard not to make what we&#039;re doing political,&quot; Scaringe said on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}