Rivian CEO Slams Tesla’s ’Unhealthy’ 50% Stranglehold on US EV Market

One electric vehicle maker is calling out the elephant in the room—and it's shaped like a Cybertruck.

The Monopoly Problem

Rivian's chief executive just dropped a truth bomb on the industry. He argues that a single company controlling half of any market isn't just dominant—it's a sign of a broken ecosystem. When one player holds a 50% share, innovation risks taking a backseat to complacency.

Why Competition Matters

True progress needs multiple horses in the race. A crowded field forces faster tech development, sharper pricing, and better choices for consumers. Without it, you get stagnation dressed up as innovation—a classic move in the corporate playbook, right up there with calling layoffs a 'strategic realignment'.

The Road Ahead

The call isn't for Tesla to fail, but for others to truly compete. The goal? A market where 50% dominance is impossible because too many compelling alternatives exist. It's the difference between a monopoly and a vibrant marketplace.

The industry's future depends on this shift. After all, the only thing worse than a market with one winner is a market where everyone else has stopped trying to win. Just ask any Wall Street analyst watching their tenth 'EV revolution' stock pitch this quarter.

Rivian builds the next autonomy systems using its own hardware and software

RJ said the autonomy effort started right after Rivian launched its first generation of vehicles in late 2021. In early 2022, the team realized they needed a full reset.

“We wanted to do a clean-sheet approach,” he said. So the company rebuilt the camera system, redesigned the compute hardware, and shaped the entire stack around an AI-first design.

Those choices powered Rivian’s Gen 2 vehicles, which rolled out in mid-2024 with nearly 10 times more compute than the first generation, 55 megapixels of cameras and multiple radars, creating a massive data stream that trains Rivian’s model.

The Gen 3 platform uses an in-house chip that processes 5 billion pixels per second, about five times faster than the best chips on the market today.“This lets us build the model more efficiently and more quickly,” RJ said.

Rivian already offers Universal Hands-Free driving, similar to GM’s Supercruise, and plans to expand it across more roads. In 2026, Rivian will add a “point-to-point” mode for full supervised trips. After that comes “eyes-off,” where the driver becomes a passenger.

The final step is personal Level 4, which lets the vehicle run entirely on its own, even with no one inside. RJ said the goal is to cover things like school pick-ups, airport drop-offs, and grocery runs.

He also explained why Rivian builds its own silicon instead of using chips from Nvidia. “We made the decision years and years ago to build our entire vertical software platform in-house,” he said.

The company invested hundreds of millions and hired thousands of people to build its internal systems. Rivian partnered with TSMC to manufacture the chips.

RJ said the setup gives Rivian better performance for vision-based robotics and supports a training loop that needs huge GPU power.

Rivian sets its own path while comparing its approach to Tesla

Yahoo Finance asked whether Rivian could catch Tesla’s FSD program.RJ said the goal is to be world-class and agreed that Tesla’s approach uses the right tools.

He said both companies use neural networks, end-to-end training, live reinforcement learning, and huge data streams from customer vehicles.Rivian still believes in a mix of sensors instead of only cameras.

“By including radar and lidar, it lets us turn the entire fleet into a ground-truth fleet,” he said. Every Rivian on the road sends data to help train the system.

On the industry, RJ said the loss of the EV tax credit in Q4 made things tougher. Many automakers are pulling back, which he said reduces customer choice and hurts the market. That drop in competition lets Tesla hold around 50% of the US EV segment for vehicles under $50,000. “That’s not a reflection of a healthy industry,” he said.

RJ argued that the US can’t MOVE from 8% EV adoption to 25%, 30%, or even 100% without more than one strong option. He said Rivian’s R2 will be one of those options, but he hopes other companies step in too.

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