Continued from Part 1…

EVwire Brief: Rivian held its Q1 2026 earnings call, and we have put together the full transcript of the whole Q&A for you. 

Here’s the Table of Contents so you can jump to the topic that interests you. Do take note that this is just Part 2 of the call. Part 1 can be accessed here.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Mark Delaney: Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking the questions. Starting on autonomy, I'm hoping you can provide more details on the monetization of Autonomy Plus so far and any data points you can share on that and what that might mean for growth in the software and services business more generally, including if you still think you can grow that segment revenue by about 60% this year.

R.J. Scaringe: We’re encouraged by what we're seeing. As you noted at the start of having paid Autonomy Plus, it's exceeding our own models on this. So the take rate is higher than what we expected and that bodes really well for us as we're going to be growing the feature set quite significantly over the course of this year. And the introduction of point-to-point we think is a major value driver for customers. You know, to be clear, this is—as I said—you can put the address for the location you're going to into the car and the car will fully drive you there. 

And then following that, allowing you to go eyes-off in highway conditions and ultimately everywhere—that means you get your time back. And so, we're very bullish on the long-term trajectory to monetize our autonomy on the consumer side. And that's for both hands-off/eyes-on, hands-off/eyes-off, and then ultimately Level 4 for personal consumption—we see as a really key driver of value in the long term. Now, in terms of what that does for our software and services growth, that is going to start to be something we'll see, but it's not something that we're going to be breaking out separately.

Mark Delaney: Thanks for that, RJ. And then my other question was on demand for the R1. I'm curious if Rivian has seen any improvement in order rates for R1, maybe in response to the recent increase in gasoline prices and what that might all mean for R1 volumes this year. I think the company had assumed R1 would decline. Is that still your expectation? Thanks.

R.J. Scaringe: We’re encouraged by the continued enthusiasm for R1. It continues to be one of the market share leaders in the premium category and in a number of states it's not just one of the best-selling premium electric cars but one of the best-selling premium SUVs, electric or non-electric. We've talked about that in the past. Uh, I think it's hard to say ultimately what's going to happen around demand with the impact of gas prices going up. Of course, it's a consideration and we do see that manifest in what people are trading in. We're seeing more trades of gasoline vehicles or vehicles that are less efficient than what we're building. And so we do see that on the rise, but I think a lot of folks are wondering how long fuel prices are going to stay high like this.

Mark Delaney: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Andres Sheppard: Hey everyone. Uh good afternoon and thank you for taking our questions and congratulations on the quarter and all the great progress. Um, I think a lot of our questions have been asked but, R.J., I want to go back to a topic I know you're very passionate about which is autonomy. And so I guess with R2 beginning customer deliveries over the coming weeks and with the Autonomy Plus now having started this month, just curious on kind of your vision and how you are thinking about that autonomy customer adoption. You know, what type of autonomy penetration rate do you expect for your customer-owned vehicles? Do you expect customers will prefer the monthly subscription or the one-time purchase? Just any color here on your overall vision and customer penetration/adoption that you might be expecting. Thank you.

R.J. Scaringe: Yeah, Andres, we're extremely bullish on the importance of autonomy for customers over the next, call it, five years, and the rate at which we see customers adopting and selecting Autonomy Plus—and then ultimately as the feature set grows and the capability grows, that adoption rate growing with it. But I think that there's an even bigger question of just from a society point of view. We've been on a journey where Level 2 is where your eyes are still on the road but you're still responsible for driving the vehicle. That's like a small appetizer for what you can actually achieve when you get to higher levels of autonomy where you can take your eyes off the road and truly get your time back. Get your time back without the car digging you to say, "Hey, look back at the road or pay attention or put your hands on the wheel."

And so as that starts to occur and as people start to experience what it's like to truly have your time back—take a 40-minute commute and the idea of getting those 40 minutes back in both directions—we think it's going to be a very sticky experience and it's going to be something that once you experience it, even if it's indirect, let's say in a friend's car, it's going to become a very important purchase criteria. 

And the reason I call this out is we really believe over the next five years the rate of progress of what we're going to achieve with autonomy will look very, very different. And I'm talking here at an industry level versus what we've achieved over the last five years. It means that the topology of customer expectations—and therefore the way that vehicle purchases are made and the criteria that are being used to make those vehicles—is going to look very, very different in 2030, 2031 than it does today. Where autonomy will be a very critical criterion where customers are willing to pay for it because they want their time back. They want to not have to be paying attention. They want to be able to be on their phone, reading a book, taking a nap—truly getting time back while you're in the car. And so, as a result, as you've heard a few times throughout this call, this is an enormous focus area for us as a business. We're very much deploying a lot of our R&D dollars towards this category and we've made long-term investments in the hardware and in the vehicles to support that.

Andres Sheppard: Got it. That's super helpful. I really appreciate all that color. Um, maybe just as a quick follow-up, one for Claire. So just regarding your delivery guidance for this year which is unchanged. I know in the past you've given us some cadence for deliveries in Q2. I think you reaffirmed that on the call just now. Can you just remind us what kind of unit mix we should be expecting for the year across R2, R1, and EDVs? I think in the past you might have mentioned R1 and EDVs relatively flat. So the delta should be the R2, but I guess with the R2 the $45,000 price range, right? That's on track for next year. Just curious if you could maybe remind us how we should think about unit mix for the rest of this year. Thank you.

Claire McDonough: Sure. As you reiterated, as you think about the composition of the 62,000 to 67,000 deliveries, we anticipate R1 combined with the commercial vans to be roughly flat relative to our 2025 delivery results and then the remainder being comprised of the introduction and ramp of R2—which as implied by the 9,000 to 11,000 of Q2 deliveries suggests more of a back-half weighted ramp associated with R2 which is implied within our outlook and guidance.

Andres Sheppard: Wonderful. Thank you so much and congrats again. We'll pass it off.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Edison Yu from Deutsche Bank. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Edison Yu: Hey, thanks for taking our questions. Wanted to come back on robotaxi. Are there any sort of KPIs that you're tracking or that you need to hit for some of the milestones with Uber? And I think in the past, the industry has kind of turned to disengagements or miles between interventions. Any flavor on that would be great.

R.J. Scaringe: Yeah. On the path to deploying in 2028, there are a number of milestones and some of those tie to the investment unlocks with Uber. The first of those is later this year we'll be deploying vehicles in both San Francisco and Miami with a safety driver. So the vehicles will be running but with the benefit of a safety driver in the vehicle with them. And there's a handful of additional milestones ramping up to ultimately having the vehicles operate fully on their own as part of a service in 2028. But as we get closer and closer to that date there will be lots of proof points, if you will, of the progress that's being made that'll manifest on the road—you'll actually see them not only being tested, but you'll see them as part of some of these deployed fleets.

Edison Yu: Understood. And just a separate question on autonomy more broadly. I think there were some reports that you guys were looking to potentially license some tech to other OEMs. Just wondering anything you can say about that. Is that something that we could potentially expect this year? Anything would be great. Thanks.

R.J. Scaringe: Yeah, I think there's two broad categories of technology we think that will be very, very important for growing or maintaining market share in the next several years. And so the first of those is shifting away from a domain-based network architecture where you have a very large number of supplier-sourced ECUs that are—think of them as little islands of code on little small computers—where you might, depending on the car, have anywhere from 50 to 150 of those little ECUs, those little computers, that are in aggregate providing the software for the vehicle. But that architecture is incredibly hard to do updates on. It's very, very difficult to do cross-platform or cross-domain integrations and makes the idea of integrating in a deep way AI into the vehicle and vehicle experience very difficult—borderline impossible—to do it well.

And so our view is every vehicle on the road will need to shift to much more centralized compute where you have more of a zonal architecture. So essentially think of it as a large consolidation of all those little computers into a single or a very small number of large computers that runs a common operating system and for which the code base that’s running on the vehicle can be very easily updated without coordinating among, say, 50 to 150 suppliers. 

And so that architecture I just described is of course what's in a Rivian vehicle today. It's also the basis of our relationship that we've forged with Volkswagen Group to deploy that technology and the first application of that technology being deployed outside of Rivian as part of our partnership with Volkswagen Group is going to be in the ID.1 which is an EV that'll be launched in Europe with a price point of just over $20,000. And I can't wait for people to buy this car—and I'm sure lots of people will buy it—and take it apart and tear it down. I'm certain they'll be blown away with the elegance of how we've executed the network architecture and the compute stack topology.

So that's one technology category or area that we think has a lot of opportunity to be deployed in other manufacturers. And of course the proof point that we're successfully deploying this into a very large established manufacturer within Volkswagen Group—across multiple brands, multiple price points, different form factors, different geographies—is the existence proof that the technology is scalable and that we're capable of supporting these types of complex deployments. 

With that said, the other large category of technology that we see opportunities to have licensing deals in is the autonomy realm. And here it's in a similar way: it's not just hardware and not just software, it's the two of them together. So it's the combination of our compute platform that we’ve developed—this RAP 1 in-house inference platform I talked about—and the associated computing platform we've designed around that along with our perception platform—the cameras, radar, LiDAR that exist—and then very importantly the large driving model—this foundation model, this neural net that we've created that defines how to drive a vehicle. And that is a much more flexible architecture to deploy into different vehicle embodiments. So we're doing that already within Rivian.Wwe'll be deploying that across R1T, R1S, R2, ultimately our commercial vans and robotaxi applications. But we do see this as a very scalable technology that can be deployed in many ways.

Edison Yu: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Perry from Bank of America. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Alex Perry: Hi, thanks for taking my question here. Um, just one I guess a little bit further on the robotaxi strategy. So you had the Uber deal announcement—I guess is the plan to pursue a partnership model for now? Does the deal with Uber have any exclusivity and how else will we look to tap into this important market?

R.J. Scaringe: You know, when you think about the robotaxi space as a business, so putting aside the technology for a moment and recognizing that the technology for Level 4 in a robotaxi or in a personally owned vehicle is the same—meaning a personally owned Level 4 vehicle shouldn't drive worse than a robotaxi Level 4 vehicle. They're both very capable of managing the same levels of complexity and the same types of driving situations. So it's the same tech stack. 

But when you think of it through the lens of a business model, the benefit of working to deploy this first with Uber is you have very large density of choice. And so if you're deploying entirely on your own, you have to build enough vehicles to have in the fleet or in the car park such that if you're a user, when you say, "I want to have a vehicle available," it's immediately available or it's available in a matter of minutes. And so the scale of Uber's platform and the success they've had in creating a really healthy marketplace really makes them an ideal partner for us as we think about launching this technology in an R2 to deploy into providing robotaxi services. And as you've heard me say a couple times, that technology is going to also underpin a consumer personally owned variant as well.

And I think we have to recognize that there's going to be lots of innovation around business models that start to emerge as we have Level 4. If you think of it in a very simple sense, the two bookends in terms of business model are pure ownership where the vehicle is dedicated entirely to your household, and the other end of the spectrum is purely mobility-as-a-service where you don't own the vehicle—you're not using the same vehicle every time—but you ask for a vehicle on a purely variable basis and it shows up there. 

There will be things that emerge in the middle. Not to be exhaustive here in the types of things, but you can imagine different forms of sharing vehicles amongst families or within neighborhoods or within apartment buildings. But there's going to be a very exciting time of innovation in terms of how we think about consuming mobility or consuming transportation. And with all that said, just recognizing the trillions of miles that are driven today, the vast majority of those are driven in personally owned vehicles. And so robotaxi represents a portion of those. But we think there will be lots of new models that start to make up the topology of those trillions of miles that are driven.

Alex Perry: Perfect. That's incredibly helpful. Best of luck going forward.

Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from James Picariello from BNP Paribas. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Operator: James, to unmute your line, please press star six. 

James Picariello: Hi, can you hear me?

Claire McDonough: Yes, we can.

James Picariello: Sorry about that. Great. Um, so I want to ask about the Uber partnership. Can you share any color on the milestones that are associated with the four tranches of funding regarding the $950 million in additional additive liquidity? And it does appear that one of the tranches is already expected to hit this year—$250 million?

Claire McDonough: Yes. As R.J. just mentioned, there are a handful of milestones. And the milestone that we specifically expect to be in a position to unlock the initial $250 million this year will be the operation of some Rivian vehicles in San Francisco and Miami with safety drivers later this year. And then as you think about the subsequent years, you can think about the ongoing trajectory towards full deployment in a couple of cities in 2028 and then 25 cities by 2031. That would fully unlock the remaining $700 million of capital from Uber.

James Picariello: Excellent. That's great color. Thank you. And then just to maybe level-set expectations on automotive gross margins for the second and third quarters—this quarter was yet again another strong showcasing of the company's momentum toward positive auto gross profit. And this is the last quarter before the R2. Is there anything you could share for these next two quarters regarding the temporary order-of-magnitude impact we can expect to auto profitability? Thanks.

Claire McDonough: Sure. As we think about the subsequent quarters of Q2 and Q3, we'll see the introduction and turn-on of both all of the depreciation expense and the new manufacturing team that is established that will be producing the vehicles. But as they're in the process of ramping up the first shift of operation, we'll see some of the complexity associated with lower volumes on the new R2 line. 

And so as a result of those attributes, we do anticipate seeing an impact to our automotive gross profit over Q2 and Q3 before we start to see the overall benefits of the ramp—not just on the R2's unit economic profile, but also importantly the fixed cost leverage that we'll see across the R1 program and EDV program overall. So in total, we still anticipate that we'll exit 2026 with a trajectory of positive automotive gross profit—with that being both R2 as well as total Rivian automotive gross profit being positive—which is important for us as we go into 27 and really fully ramp up the R2 capacity in Normal.

James Picariello: Perfect. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes the Q&A section of the call. I would now like to turn the call back to RJ Scaringe for closing remarks.

R.J. Scaringe: Thanks everybody for joining us today. Hopefully, you can tell we're really looking forward to getting R2s into customer hands. We're very pleased and excited with the product that we've developed and proud of the team for all the great work that went into creating such a special vehicle. Along with that, we are very much focused on the development of our autonomy platform and with that we'll be starting to see some of the fruit of that significant effort—first with our point-to-point capabilities later this year and then adding more functionality and more capabilities over the course of 2027 and 28. And again, thank you for everybody for joining this call. We're excited for all of you to hopefully experience an R2 and see them on the roads here very soon.

Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us.

Remember, you can check out what was discussed in Part 1 here.

Source: Rivian Investor Relations

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