EV startup Rivian has poached dozens from Ford, McLaren, Tesla, and Faraday Future

And longtime Apple VP Mike Bell has become Rivian’s first CTO.

Photos by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Since coming out of stealth mode last year, Michigan-based EV startup Rivian has announced big investments from Amazon and Ford. At the same time, the startup has more than doubled in size since last spring, and now employs 750 people. The startup has hired dozens of employees from Ford, McLaren, and Tesla, according to hundreds of LinkedIn profiles viewed by The Verge, though the biggest contributor is a fizzling would-be rival, Faraday Future. Rivian has hired about 50 former Faraday Future employees, including at least 34 since the struggling startup put workers on furlough late last year.

In addition, The Verge has learned Rivian recently appointed its first chief technology officer: Mike Bell, a longtime Apple VP who helped bring the iPhone into the world.

The hirings show that the race to bring the first long-range electric pickup truck to market is heating up. Rivian appears to be making a concerted effort to beat companies like Ford, Tesla, and GM to market. Part of that, of course, means hiring away their experts.

Michael McHale, Rivian’s director of corporate communications, confirmed Bell’s hiring to The Verge. As for the rest of the hires, McHale said Rivian is going through the “natural hiring process and is always looking for people with the right skills.”

RIVIAN IS RACING TESLA, FORD, AND GM TO RELEASE THE FIRST LONG-RANGE ELECTRIC PICKUP

Founded in 2009, Rivian spent nearly a decade in radio silence until last spring. It was only then that Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe started laying out his goals for the startup. He wants to create electric vehicles with vast range and performance that make them capable of handling tough off-road situations, while infusing them with high-end design and technology.

The slow drip of information continued until November, when Rivian debuted its luxury electric pickup truck and SUV at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The vehicles, which start around $70,000, were warmly received. Then, in February, Rivian announced Amazon was leading a $700 million investment in the startup. Two months later, Ford announced it was also investing $500 million, and that Rivian would provide the technological platform for a future Ford vehicle.

As all this was happening, Rivian more than doubled its workforce at its Michigan, Illinois, and California facilities. The startup even opened up another office in the UK.

RIVIAN HAS A DEAL WITH FORD, BUT IT’S ALSO HIRED AWAY SOME LONGTIME EMPLOYEES

In that time, Rivian added at least 20 employees from Ford to its roster, including a number of longtime employees. Randy Frank, who spent 27 years with Ford and most recently led the automaker’s global engineering services division, became Rivian’s vice president of body and interior engineering in April. R. Barry Caldwell, who spent 32 years with Ford, left his post in June as the chief engineer for Ford’s design technical operations division (where he worked on trucks and SUVs) to become Rivian’s CAD director. Rivian’s new assistant general counsel, who joined in May, spent the last five years as in-house counsel at Ford.

Just before Rivian revealed its vehicles in November, Tesla blog Teslarati revealed the startup had hired away a handful of executives from McLaren. But Rivian didn’t stop there. A scan of LinkedIn profiles shows at least 24 of Rivian’s employees have come directly from McLaren in the last year, with many of them joining after November. McLaren’s chief designer for new projects, Barry Lett, became Rivian’s director of advanced concepts in February. The British automaker’s chief engineer, Andy Jones, joined Rivian in May. Graham Meeks, who spent 17 years with McLaren and was most recently the automaker’s head of body engineering, came to Rivian in January. Rivian’s new lead concept engineer, Yann Pissonnier, also came over in January after heading McLaren’s design engineering team.

Even Christian Prenzler, who wrote that Teslarati post, now works at Rivian as a marketing intern.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe speaking at a New York International Auto Show event in April.

Rivian also seized on the misfortune of the sputtering Faraday Future, hiring at least 34 employees after the EV startup furloughed and laid off hundreds of workers in late 2018. Most of them come from Faraday Future’s battery and electric drivetrain teams, including a team of employees who worked on General Motors’ first mass-produced electric car, the EV-1, as was previously reported by The Verge.

That is on top of another 16 former Faraday Future employees who have joined Rivian, but left before last year’s layoffs — a batch that includes James Chen, Rivian’s vice president of public policy, and Nicolas Lingenfelter, the company’s new global manager of financial planning and analysis. Rivian has also hired away at least 12 employees from Chinese EV startup Byton over the last year.

RIVIAN HAS BENEFITTED FROM TROUBLE AT SOME RIVAL STARTUPS

Another 12 employees have come to Rivian from Tesla since last summer, including Jared Clark, a vehicle integration lead who also spent 18 years at Ford. Six Apple employees have defected to Rivian, too, including at least two from its secretive “Special Projects” team.

Speaking with The Verge last year, Scaringe said “putting the right team of people together” is the “absolute core to our success.”

“As an organization, I spent a huge amount of my time thinking about the way we operate, the way we make decisions, the culture in which the company behaves, and how we work together and make an environment that is fun to be in,” he said.

With the backing of Amazon and Ford, plus some 400-odd new hires, Rivian is targeting a launch of its electric pickup truck and SUV in 2020. It will enter a market that, as of right now, is devoid of fully electric pickup trucks but quickly filling with electric SUVs. Tesla, Ford, and GM have all promised to release electric pickups in the next few years, though none of them have revealed an actual vehicle yet. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Jaguar, and Tesla all currently sell luxury electric SUVs, with other automakers like Hyundai and Kia offering more affordable options.

Source: Sean O'Kane|@sokane1 (The Verge).
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