As the uptake of electric vehicles (EV’s) really ramps up around the world, with most of the major manufacturers having EV’s on the market, a few companies have emerged like Tesla, who have no previous car manufacturing history and are now mass producing just EV’s.

Although Elon Musk and Tesla are well known to most people the new name on the block is the founder of American battery-powered trucks, vans and SUV’s manufacturer Rivian Robert ‘RJ’ Scaringe.

Scaringe, who graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in mechanical engineering founded Rivian in 2009 and originally began working exclusively on electric autonomous vehicles that were primarily aimed at the ride-sharing and driverless car markets. However, in 2011 they started focusing on producing mass market SUV’s and are expecting to release the Rivian R1T Ute and it’s R1S SUV anytime soon in the US.

Over the last ten years Scaringe has managed to raise over US$3billion in funding, get the support of Amazon who ordered 100,000 delivery vans as well as sign an agreement to co-manufacture with Ford. It’s a great story and this Fobes.com article gives you an insight into thirty-eight year old RJ Scaringe and his achievements to date.

Who is R.J. Scaringe – Forbes.com

And here’s a tweet he released of himself and his family testing an SUV in the snow in February this year:Rivian tweet – The Driven