So let me get this straight. Rivian, the electric adventure vehicle company that's burning through cash faster than a California wildfire, the company whose CEO is openly admitting he can’t figure out how to compete with China’s "no magic" formula of cheap labor and state-sponsored capital... their big move is a $4,500 e-bike.
A bicycle.
I had to read that twice to make sure I wasn't having a stroke. While the core business of building and selling electric trucks and SUVs faces a brutal market contraction and the looming shadow of Chinese manufacturing dominance, Rivian’s answer is to launch a hyper-expensive, over-engineered plaything for the Silicon Valley set. This isn’t just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; it's using the original blueprints to build a really, really nice shuffleboard set while the iceberg is scraping the hull.
The Wizard of Oz and the Empty Wallet
Rivian’s CEO, RJ Scaringe, just gave us the most honest and depressing assessment of the EV landscape I’ve heard from a C-suite executive. Rivian CEO says the company tore down a highly popular Chinese EV. Here's what he thought. His conclusion? "There's nothing we learned from the teardown."
Let’s translate that from PR-speak into English. What he’s saying is: "We looked inside, and there’s no secret sauce. They’re just beating us on fundamentals we can’t possibly replicate. Their labor is cheaper, and their government pays them to build factories. The game is rigged." He calls the mystique around Chinese manufacturing "Wizard of Oz," implying we should pull back the curtain. But when he did, he just found a system that's fundamentally more efficient at making things cheaply.
So, with that soul-crushing realization in hand, what’s the logical next step? You’d think it would be to double down on the core business, find efficiencies, or maybe even lobby for the kind of government support he’s so envious of.
Instead, they’re launching "Also," a new company to sell... sub-car form factors. This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of corporate distraction. At a time when every dollar and every engineer should be focused on making the R2 a home run and surviving the EV winter, they’re sinking resources into a pedal-by-wire bike with a "zonal architecture." What does that even mean for a bike? Does it get over-the-air updates that brick the pedals?
I have to ask: is this a serious business venture, or is it a vanity project? A high-tech toy to keep the founder’s original passion for "pedal-powered hybrid microcars" alive while the grown-up business of building actual cars flounders. It feels less like a strategic pivot and more like an incredibly expensive hobby.
A $4,500 Answer to a Question Nobody Asked
Let's talk about this bike, the TM-B. It has a modular top frame, a "Dream Ride" pedal-by-wire system, and a 5-inch touchscreen called the "Portal." It sounds less like a bicycle and more like a Peloton that got lost on its way to the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s packed with tech that seems designed to solve problems that don't exist, all while creating new ones. An electrically attached seat post? Great. Another point of failure.
And the price. My god, the price. The launch edition is $4,500. A base model, coming later, will be "under $4,000." Has anyone at Rivian looked at the e-bike market lately? It’s completely saturated. You can get a perfectly decent, functional e-bike for a grand. The most popular models are the cheap, foldable ones people use for the last mile of their commute.
Rivian is entering this bloody, low-margin space with a premium product, seemingly oblivious to the ghosts of companies like VanMoof and Cake that went bankrupt trying to sell beautiful, expensive e-bikes to a market that mostly wants cheap and functional. It’s a level of hubris that is truly breathtaking. Scaringe says he hopes people will try it and say, "I didn’t even know I wanted an e-bike and now I want to buy this e-bike." Offcourse he does. That's the same magical thinking that got them into this mess in the first place.
This reminds me of my smart fridge. The manufacturer was so obsessed with putting a tablet on the door that they forgot to design good shelving. It can tell me the weather, but it can't fit a gallon of milk properly. Rivian is building a smart fridge on two wheels. They’re so enamored with the "completeness of the experience" and the "zonal architecture" that they've missed the entire point. People who spend $4,500 on a bike are generally serious cyclists who want mechanical simplicity and reliability, not another screen to manage and another battery to charge.
And for everyone else, the price is a non-starter. The Venn diagram of people who can afford a Rivian truck and people who want to spend Porsche money on an e-bike is basically a single dot. This whole venture feels like it was conceived in a bubble, for people who live in that same bubble, and they expect the rest of us—the ones actually trying to get to work without going bankrupt—to applaud their innovation.
Fiddling While the Factory Burns
Let's be real. This isn't a "step change" in micromobility. This is a cry for help. It's what a company does when the main problem—competing in the global auto industry—is too big, too hard, and too terrifying to face directly. So you retreat to a smaller, more manageable problem you think you can solve with clever engineering and a cool brand. You build a beautiful bike. But a beautiful bike ain't going to save you when the wolves are at the factory door. This isn't a lifeline; it's an anchor.
