There’s been an ongoing trend in executive compensation that sets hugely ambitious targets for CEOs and ties them to the stock price. Rivian’s version of it involves giving its Founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, roughly 400x his salary in stock and option awards.
The news from Rivian yesterday was mixed, at best. The company is still reporting losses, even if those losses are narrowing. There are fewer, but faster loans. Journalists like the R2, but are people ordering them?
Nissan isn’t waiting to find out if its electric cars would be successful or not, and is instead going to build trucks. Hyundai and Kia saw a little uptick in EV sales and a huge increase in hybrid sales. Is this a gas-price effect or just the new normal?
It’s the weekend, and the weekend means racing. Porsche is back one more time with one of its greatest liveries and I like to end The Morning Dump with something fun on Friday.
Rivian Is Playing With Billions Of Dollars
I see my fair share of Rivians around town, so it’s clear that people are buying them. It’s a brand people seem to know. The company still only has two products built on one platform and, while it reached gross profitability last year, it’s still losing money as it continues to expand into a part of the market that has more volume.
This is an oversimplification, but if you think of the R1S/R1T as Rivian’s Model S, then the upcoming Rivian R2 is that company’s Model Y.
From a financial standpoint, Q1 saw an increase in revenue of about 11% and a net loss that dropped to $416 million, which is less than the $545 million the company lost in Q1 of 2025. On the R2 and R3, news was mixed as well. The Biden Administration gave a huge loan to Rivian on the way out of the door, and it sounds like that loan is being reduced, though delivered faster:
We are pleased to partner with the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) to grow our manufacturing footprint in Georgia. We made the strategic decision to increase the initial phase of production capacity by 50%, bringing it to 300,000 units for our mid-sized vehicle platform. This change is expected to boost cost efficiency, while still providing significant room for future expansion in later phases.The up to $4.5 billion DOE loan ($4,006 million principal and $494 million capitalized interest) to build our Georgia facility provides low cost financing that will enable Rivian to grow American jobs and establish stronger U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership while further scaling our customer base.
Instead of two loans totaling $6.6 billion to create capacity for 400,000 vehicles, it’s one loan for 300,000 vehicles. Is that a positive signal? A negative one? Rivian wouldn’t release R2 deposit information, so it’s unclear, although the Scaringe told everyone that journalists and the like really enjoy the R2.
What is clear is that Rivian wants Scaringe to be compensated in a way similar to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is usually the richest man alive and has a trillion-dollar payday ahead if he can make Tesla even more valuable. As Bloomberg reports, Scaringe’s salary has stayed low, but his options are way higher, even if that money isn’t a guarantee:
For Scaringe to collect his windfall, Rivian must hit certain performance targets over time on metrics including adjusted operating income, cash flow and share price targets ranging from $40 to $140. In connection with last year’s award, the company’s compensation committee canceled a 2021 plan for the CEO, saying it contained goals that were unlikely to be attained, according to a filing.
That package would have been worth more than $10 billion if shares reached the top target of $295. Instead, they peaked at $172 in November 2021 and have since fallen to around $16.
Scaringe was a billionaire in the wake of Rivian’s IPO, with his stake worth about $1.2 billion. Today, his stake is worth less than $200 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after he transferred stock and options now worth about $125 million as part of a divorce settlement last year.
Rivian’s share price was roughly $15.50 this morning after the stock opened down. To get to his full reward he’ll need to make the company so valuable that its stock price increases by more than 9x. If that happens, the shareholders of Rivian all get very rich. This model worked for Tesla, although I think of Tesla as an outlier in most ways.
And, hey, this $1.2 million base salary isn’t bad. I’m sure I could figure out how to live on just $1.2 million a year.
Nissan Kills Its EV Plan, Is Just Going To Build ICE-Powered Trucks
I already had the debate about whether or not Nissan’s move to build a bunch of trucks is about environmental law changes or just demand, and the conclusion is: All of the above. No one wants a Nissan Ariya, and whatever EV that Nissan was going to build in Canton, Mississippi probably wouldn’t have been a hit. If you want a Nissan EV you are still free to buy a Leaf.
That’s the conclusion Nissan seems to have come to, per Automotive News:
The automaker instead is pivoting to build a range of truck-based vehicles at the 4.7 million-square-foot assembly plant in Canton, Miss., starting with a revival of the outdoorsy Xterra as an affordable, electrified SUV.
Nissan, in a statement to Automotive News, confirmed it has canceled all programs involving U.S.-made EVs to “better align with market conditions, customer demand and Nissan’s updated strategic direction.”
The Canton plant, which builds the Frontier pickup and Altima sedan, was slated to be at the center of the automaker’s EV push.
A hybrid truck will be cool, probably.
Kia And Hyundai Both Dropped Year-Over-Year In April, But It’s Not A Big Deal
I think I have a new favorite way for a company to report a monthly drop in sales. Kia, which is still having its best year ever, saw a small decline in sales in April. Here’s how Kia wrote this up in a press release:
Continuing to attract a broad range of new customers with award-winning electrified and ICE powertrains, Kia America delivered 72,703 units in April, reflecting a 3 percent year-over-year variance due to elevated demand in April of 2025. The brand still set a new year-to-date total sales record of 279,718 vehicles sold through the first four months of the year, which marks a 2 percent increase over the first four months of 2025.
The Astros are experiencing a 5.5 game variance in the AL West standings due a lack of arms. The point Kia is making here, and it’s not untrue, is that the launching of tariffs last year contributed to an unexpected increase in sales from people trying to get a car before prices went up.
What’s more important here is that Kia saw hybrid sales rise by 97%. Kia has a strong mix of hybrids, ICE-powered cars and trucks, and EVs, so it can respond well to whatever the market is. Take whatever I said with Kia and you can apply it to Hyundai, which saw a small decrease in sales while still retaining its best first four months ever. It was also the best month for Hyundai hybrids ever.
Apple Livery Is So Weird But So Good
IMSA is at Laguna Seca this weekend, and Porsche is revisiting one of its greatest liveries for the race.
“We’ve enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Porsche, going back to 1980 when a Porsche race car first carried the Apple logo,” Oliver Schusser, Vice President Apple Music, Sports and Beats, said. “That moment marked the beginning of a shared passion for innovation and creativity that continues to define our collaboration today. As Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary, we’re proud to once again partner with Porsche on a design that pays tribute to that original 1980 livery.”
That’s so cool.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
You knew it was coming, right? Kacey Musgrave’s new album “Middle of Nowhere” debuted today, and I’ve already listened to it through a few times. The surprise favorite so far is “Horses and Divorces.” This is Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves, who had some sort of incomprehensible beef, hashing it out like a Waffle House. The best line?
I can’t believe we don’t share any exes
‘Cause we both love cowboys and we’re both from Texas
We both love Willie, but I mean really
What asshole doesn’t like Willie?
What asshole doesn’t like Willie, indeed.
The Big Question
What’s the best weird livery? Like, Gulf Oil is perfect, but the Apple design is a lot of things happening at once, which is why I love it.
Top photo: Rivian
I’ll just mention the Benson & Hedges F1 liveries from I think the early 2000s. They had a wasp, a snake and some more. Even more interesting, on races where cigarette ads were banned, they just changed the text to “Be on Edge”.
So he completely failed to meet the targets set in 2021, and instead of getting the axe, the company just moved the goalposts for him. How nice.
It’s nice that when the company fails, all the people who ACTUALLY did work get the shaft while these super important CEOs with their company destroying vision get a golden parachute.
I have an alternative executive pay suggestion:
Acknowledge that shit like this is destroying people’s faith in capitalism and undermining our entire economic system, and just throw people who suggest things like $400m in CEO pay into the ocean.
How about we just throw all of the commies in the ocean?
Gotta siphon off as much of those government “loan” billions as you can before the whole thing collapses.
Meanwhile, Tesla is the only company in the world making a profit on producing EVs in quantity.
SpaceX did place a large Cybertruck order
It is always Gulf and on a GT40. I will die on this hill…
how about… no
Man, I’ve always said it: if you can’t be bothered to do your job well when paid 1 million bucks, you won’t do it better if paid 200 million. It would just be a waste of 199 million.
That’s absurd. If you don’t think that $200M in incentive based pay promotes goal congruence a heck of a lot better than a $1M salary, then I really hope you don’t vote in corporate elections.
It’s called hyperbole: a willful exaggeration to make a point. I fully stand by my point, which in finer detail is that a half a trillion payday will NOT motivate someone better than say 100M. So far the corporate boardroom voting process where this goes down hasn’t brought anything good, from Boeing to Amazon to Tesla.
Your two comments are contradictory nonsense.
Hmm, looks like I wasn’t clear, so here’s another pass: goal congruence (nicely phrased corpo speak BTW for just “reward”) works up until a point, past which said C-suite individuals realize that their personal goals are distinct from the company that pays them. The recent black and white case was Tavares, who knowingly cut the legs from under the company paying his performance based compensation. The hook was “profitability” and once that goal congruence was achieved and he got his oversized pay, he left the premises and became someone else problem. He gamed the very primitive reward system they had in place and he won. This is admittedly a different situation than the Rivian compensation above, but I am using it to poke holes in your congruence theory. I would file this under “tax cuts lift the economy” and “let the private markets dictate long term industrial policy” discredited bullshit economic theories.
As for someone getting a half trillion dollars (what the hell even is that) to do great at their job, I remain convinced that it’s totally counterproductive. If a significant sum of money is not enough (see examples above, 100m, even 1b) then nothing will be, and it’s just a vast sum of money that someone will pay for, either shareholders or the consumers ultimately supporting the company.
I can draw a diagram if still not clear? Cheers.
Yeah, I get it. You’re a midwit narcissist who doesn’t understand the first thing about running a business, least of all the concept of goal congruence.
your a moran
Maybe replace the CEO with a AI, and build an affordable Rivian.
If the stock market was remotely rational, then tying compensation to its performance would make sense. But insteead it just seems to encourage pumping up and hyping crap. Tesla is going to be an AI and humanoid robot company? The fuck? All to goose the share price. I don’t expect Rivian to be quite that stupid but I also don’t have to like it.3
I don’t know if it’s weird or not but I enjoy Josef Newgarden’s PPG livery where it looks like the paint is streaking down the sides. You know, cuz he’s going so fast and maybe just drove through a paint store or something.
I’m sure
bribingpaying a CEO billions of dollars to inflate stock prices instead of actually improving the company or its products will benefit consumers.Who cares about consumers? It is not like they have any, so consumers aren’t even part of the equation. Let’s just treat the stock market as those NFTs, since the line only goes up, right?
When does Rivian come out w/ an R2-D2? Ha ha
$402 million?! WTF…no one should be paid anywhere near that much…get a life and go fuck yourself
Especially when the company is blowing through money like a woman who just divorced Jeff Bezos. I mean make a profit before you waste it all on the CEO. At this stage offering 50% of any profits seems down right logical and thrifty.
Has there ever been a CEO that said “I’m going to buckle down with our team and make our goals happen. Use the ridiculous payment you want to pay me to help get this venture off the ground. When this venture is successful, I will take a bonus.”
There has been some that gave up their pay to raise their employees pay. I think that should count.
Why then are they having Profitability issues?!? You’d think he could figure it out…
My favorite weird livery is the Porsche 917 Pink Pig (‘Die Sau’) from way back in the early 70s.
I love bacon. I love pork chops. I love pork ribs. And I love Porsche 917s.
The pink pig was awesome indeed.
I’ll preface this by saying I like Rivian and I hope they succeed (so I can buy an R3X), but…
NO ONE should be paid $402M for anything. No one works that hard or is worth that much. And certainly no one should be paid that much while their company is still struggling to find their footing and turn a profit.
If you invent cold fusion, teleportation or a warp drive I think your pay should be at least an order of magnitude more than $402M.
My favorite oddball livery is the one on Team Aseptogyl’s pink Alpines.
Let’s welcome the Astros to Fenway. The Red Sox also are experiencing a variance in games!
CEO pay needs to be reigned in but RJ is sort of a founder so maybe there is a little more room then mba brought in to monkey around. Still that seems high for a company that isn’t all that profitable. It’s the tech sector philosophy I suppose all the investors think it’s the next Google or Amazon and don’t want to miss out.
R2 is a big deal I guess but I don’t think it’s as big of deal as the R3 and after. Many bev people yell about how r2 is bigger deal because they bought a model y and it cost $50k or more. But Toyota the company selling alot of $50k SUVs. Has a $35k MSRP (real world $32k) Bev suv that selling well. Rivian was smart to bring the r1t out first then then r1s. R2 is logical next step but R3 is really where they volume and money is.
They are lucky Subaru has screwed up so bad. But how long before your average buyer realize that the Subaru is actually the Toyota sort of at a discount. Subaru also realized rivian was gunning for them. With their design language, urban spaces, likeability, they can build a cult stronger then Subaru. R3 is the key to that. If rivian can steal Subaru cult members make them part of a yet to exist rivian cult then they are set.
Their announcement about doubling expected volume at their yet to be completed Georgia plant. I think means they understand R3 is make or break. R2 is just another stage to pass through. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a R3 based truck design come out shortly. 3 models on a single platform for mass market.
Rivian “We won’t stop spending money until we make a profit”
I am really hoping Rivian succeeds, if only because they seem to be the only manufacturer with products that are both sane and exciting.
However.
‘Toyota with a discount and without Toyota dealers’ would be extremely compelling for a lot of people.
I hope so too. R3 looks very promising. Their van isn’t terribly priced for what it is. With the dwindling supply of brightdrop , etransit, esprinter they might be the cheapest bev van available until the Kia arrives. There are some smaller imported Chinese vans but I would think most fleets would shy away from them for the time being.
The money and ops people in many fleets are running numbers almost all the time to figure out if they should go toward bev. Rivan could be a benefactor of that.
I would imagine Amazon will start selling older units soon so van life people getting ahold of them. Or if they have the cash buying new from rivian could be good for Rivian and their image. And help them further break in to that Subaru buyer cult.
The Toyota bev and thus Subarus have just gotten good with decent pricing. It’s alot for rivian to fight. Plus Subaru dealers are all being redone to better fight what Rivian is doing. Not that you should really have to be at the dealership for a bev much but if you did it looks like it will be a nicer place to be then most.
Dear Automakers,
Stop trying to be Tesla. You are not Tesla. You don’t want to be Tesla. Tesla is a meme stock masquerading as an automaker.
Sincerely,
Everyone who wants to buy an EV that is just An Car instead of a rolling Apple Store
Seriously, just build something that looks and acts like a RAV4, but electric, and print money. This shouldn’t be that hard.
That would be the BZ4X. Can’t say it is flying off dealer lots
I don’t mean just something the size of a RAV4. I mean like literally take the body, the interior, just about everything you’d expect in a RAV4, and apply it to the BZ.
Even with the tone down, the BZ4X is still a weird blob of a thing. I guess it’s now just called the bZ? Still a stupid name, which doesn’t help anything either.
Yeah it still has a massively sloped rear windscreen and other little oddities. It might have more appeal in the RAV4 form factor. Just make a RAV4e, no dumb names, just something highly familiar to everyone on the planet
The RAV4 was a weird and some said stupid name when that vehicle was new. Then Toyota stuck with it for a few decades and now it is the best selling vehicle in the world – stupidity name and all.
Those acronym marketing names that often began in the 90’s-00’s may have been stupid, but they were at least pronounceable. RAV-4 is pretty easy to say. bZ4X? Not so much. It also commits the sin of throwing a random lower case letter in the name for reasons unknown.
The rule of thumb to me, is if your alphabet soup naming convention makes Infiniti blush, you may want to reconsider.
Call me crazy but I like alpha-numeric naming conventions that actually means something vs random names – many of which are made up words.
The irony here being that one of Tesla’s first products was literally electric RAV4s.
Good point!
This here! While an EV currently wouldn’t fit me, I have no problem with the tech, my problem is with THE TECH. Just because the drivetrain is electric, it doesn’t mean everything else needs to be, especially things that are perfected and simple mechanical systems with largely predictable failures and that are user serviceable.
If you want to stop burning fossil fuels on your commute you WILL ACCEPT electronically retracted door handles that might malfunction and cause you to die in a fiery crash! Also the wipers are adjustable only via a menu 5 levels deep from the home page!
Problem is THE TECH isn’t just relegated to EVs. It’s everywhere now, and slowly approaching complete market domination. There seems to be enough pushback from buyers that it might reverse, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
This is just the digital version of Malaise decontenting, except it’s all about stock price manipulations rather than lowering purchase prices.
Mostly, yes, but it started with f’n Tesla and people took that as a vision of the future while car companies realized that people bought into it and how much it saved to include that junk. I bought a fairly impractical car largely because it didn’t have most of that BS–none of the active “safety” nannies (and stability can be fully turned off) and it has dials and switches with minimal need to use a touchscreen—almost never when driving—and even the touchscreen has hard buttons on the side to change screens.
Modern tech is why my newest vehicle is a 2008, and it will stay that way for my forseable future. ABS is nice, but I don’t really need it. Only 3/5 cars I own have it, and it actually works on 2. TCS/STAB never really activate so they’re largely non-issue, but also is only present on 1/5 vehicles.
The only touchscreen I want in a car is my phone, unless I wire in a full car pc setup.
If said EV has that Apple livery then I might consider it.
Tesla is way past meme stock, by now it is a cult.
God I wish we in the US would pivot away from big dumb trucks and SUV’s. A hatchback can do 99% of what a small SUV can do for most buyers and a wagon can match the big 3-row SUV’s, but I know that’s toothpaste we’re never getting back in the tube and we’re doomed to these boxes for the rest of time.
“And the people hated him because he spoke the truth.”
I ended up with the Q3 years ago because VW said hey this fantastic Passat wagon with 4Motion AWD and 3.6 VR6, guess what, its no longer for the US. I would have gotten another again in a heartbeat. They said the US can have the dumbed down Chattanooga Passat in sedan flavor only.
So it worked then. VW dropped their wagon as they grew their crossover lineup and you bought a new crossover from them and even stepped up from VW to an Audi.
True. Though it was a step down technically if we are talking value/size for money. Step down, while giving the appearance of stepping up I guess.
Likely a higher profit margin for VW though
Don’t be so sure. My dad wore black socks with sandals and shorts. Truly embarrassed by him at the time. Me being classy rayon button down shirt and bell bottoms. My sisters kid and his buddies black socks with sandals. Now his kids think rayon and bell bottoms are cool. If that can happen so can a return of cars as people get sick of homogeneous SUVs
What’s the line about how dumb the average person is, and then remember 50% are dumber than that? That’s basically who every single market is catering to. Unfortunately they don’t care about what their real needs are, their vehicle is mostly a status symbol. They don’t know or care about the over complicated, over integrated infotainment, because it’s 20 FREAKING INCHES MAAN or some novel shape.
Probably 95% of the autopian userbase is an extreme edge case buyer from an automaker/dealer POV.