In May 2026, Rivan’s CEO, RJ Scaringe, watched R2s being built at the company’s manufacturing facility in Normal, Illinois.

I’m sitting in a Rivian R1S SUV as it drives itself down the leafy streets of Palo Alto, Calif. , through areas crowded with touchstones of tech history. We cruise near the landmark HP Garage , the one-car workshop where Hewlett-Packard, and, arguably, Silicon Valley , was founded in 1939. I skirt Stanford University, where a team led by computer science professor Sebastian Thrun won a US $2 million DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. The team’s Volkswagen SUV, named Stanley, became the world’s first vehicle to navigate a grueling 212-kilometer Mojave Desert course with no human intervention.

This Rivian might look like any other electric SUV in this affluent town, with its concentration of tech bros, venture capital, and startups.…