So Rivian’s CEO, RJ Scaringe, finally did what every car company on the planet does: he bought a competitor’s car and took it apart. The subject of this grand experiment? The Xiaomi SU7, a Chinese EV that’s selling like crazy because it’s sleek, performs well, and starts at a price that doesn’t require a second mortgage—a measly $30,000.
And what profound, earth-shattering discovery did Scaringe make after his team tore it down bolt by bolt?
Nothing. Literally nothing.
"There's nothing we learned from the teardown," he told Business Insider. His big takeaway was that the car is… cheap because of low labor costs and Chinese government support. Give me a break. This is like spending a million dollars to study a fish just to conclude that it can breathe underwater. It's the most expensive, most obvious conclusion imaginable.
The Wizard Behind the Curtain is Just a Spreadsheet
Scaringe talks about this whole thing like he’s pulling back the curtain on some great mystery. He even uses a Wizard of Oz analogy, saying people think there’s some magic to China's success when there isn't. "Everything could be analyzed and calculated," he says.
Well, yeah, no kidding. That’s the entire point. But what’s revealing here isn’t what he found in the car, but what he’s saying about it. He praises the SU7, calling it "a really well executed, heavily vertically-integrated technology platform." He even admits he’d consider buying one if he lived in China. It's a smart PR move. No, 'smart' isn't the right word—it's calculated. A pre-emptive strike against the inevitable question every American EV CEO is going to face for the next decade: "Why the hell are your cars so expensive?"
By framing the SU7’s success as purely a function of macroeconomic factors—"the cost of capital is zero or negative," "the cost of labor that's very low"—he’s building a narrative. The narrative is that American companies simply can't compete on price, and it’s not their fault. It’s the system. It’s China’s "unfair" advantage.
But what does that really mean? Is he admitting that, on a level playing field of pure engineering and design, American companies can't build a compelling $30,000 EV? Because that’s what it sounds like. He’s basically admitting that without the same handouts, his company is at a massive disadvantage, and honestly... it just sounds like an excuse. It’s a way of telling his investors and customers, "Don't blame us for our $80,000 trucks; blame Chinese industrial policy."
This whole teardown theater feels less like an engineering exercise and more like a carefully staged press event to manage expectations. You don't need to disassemble a car to understand global economics. You just need to read a newspaper. So why the performance? Why the big reveal that there is no secret sauce? Because it deflects from the harder questions. Questions like, why did news break about Rivian laying off more than 600 workers while a phone company is eating its lunch in the world's biggest car market?
The Convenient Hypocrisy of "Support"
Here’s the part that really gets me. Scaringe laments that a production plant being supported by a government grant is "just not something that exists in the US." He says this with a straight face while his company is the beneficiary of a $6.6 billion loan from the Department of Energy to build its new plant in Georgia.
Now, a loan isn't a grant, I get it. You have to pay it back. Offcourse, assuming your company, you know, survives and thrives. But let's not pretend Rivian is some scrappy startup building trucks in a garage with nothing but grit and private capital. It is a direct beneficiary of massive US goverment support aimed at boosting domestic EV production. It’s a different flavor of subsidy, but it’s still a subsidy. Complaining that someone else’s government support is bigger or better is just sour grapes. It ain't a moral high ground.
This is the kind of corporate doublespeak that drives people insane. It's positioning your competitor's advantages as nefarious while downplaying your own. It's like a marathon runner who gets driven the first 20 miles complaining that another runner got a better pair of shoes for free.
And let’s be real for a second. The obsession with in-car tech and giant touchscreens is half the problem. My car has a screen that’s bigger than the TV I had in college, and all I use it for is to see that my phone is, in fact, still connected via Bluetooth. Maybe, just maybe, the "secret sauce" isn't a subsidy. Maybe it's a ruthless focus on delivering what people actually want—a good car at a fair price—without all the over-engineered nonsense that bloats the sticker price. Did Scaringe's teardown analyze how much of the SU7's cost was saved by not including features nobody asked for? I doubt it.
The real story here isn’t about what’s inside a Xiaomi SU7. It’s about an American auto industry, both legacy and startup, that is terrified. They see a tidal wave of efficient, affordable, and frankly, good electric cars coming, and they don't have an answer beyond lobbying for tariffs and crafting narratives about an unlevel playing field. The teardown didn't reveal any magic, but it sure revealed a whole lot of fear.
So, He Found a Good Excuse
Let's call this what it is: a preemptive surrender. Scaringe didn't tear down a car to learn about its engineering; he tore it down to get his talking points in order. He’s not telling us about Xiaomi; he’s telling us why Rivian will never be able to build a $30,000 truck. It's not an analysis. It's an alibi. And frankly, it's a weak one.