- The Volkswagen Group's electric revival of an iconic American truck brand, Scout Motors, has drawn many comparisons to a similar EV truck company: Rivian.
- The VW Group and Rivian have a joint venture to develop software and electrical architectures together.
- Despite this, and despite what you may see online, a Scout is not a Rivian.
What an age of miracles we find ourselves in. The internet is the greatest tool for disseminating information that humanity has ever created, but it also allows anybody to just instantly broadcast whatever is on their mind at any given moment, regardless of how true it is or not. That does lead to the occasional bit of misinformation that news outlets like InsideEVs must correct.
Since the recent debut of two new electric concepts from Scout Motors, the American truck and SUV brand revived by the Volkswagen Group, we have noticed more than a few comparisons drawn to another EV truck company: Rivian.
The comparisons are fair; Scout's two concept vehicles bear a strong resemblance to Rivian's first two vehicles, the R1T truck and R1S SUV. And the lines between the two brands are further blurred by the fact that the Volkswagen Group and Rivian have recently started working together.
But the latter situation, in particular, seems to be drawing a lot of confusion. Here are some emails, comments and social media posts we've seen lately:
"I can't shake the thought that the Scout isn't just like a Rivian, but it is a Rivian."
"Well, now we know why Volkswagen is teaming up with Rivian."
"Isn't the Scout a rebadged Rivian?"
"The Scout Motors EV is really just a Rivian with a gas generator, isn't it?"
"Reskinned Rivian? VW owns Scout, VW and Rivian announced a joint venture..."
"So how much is Rivian making per each Scout EV sold? It’s clear they’ll be using Rivian’s zonal architecture."
And so forth. But I'm here to hopefully clear this one up once and for all: While Scout and Rivian have similar designs and will probably compete for the same customer, and Scout will use the new electrical architecture that VW is co-developing with Rivian, the two vehicles and brands are not the same. They do not use the same platform, are built (or rather, will be built) in different places and should have considerably different price tags.
Does it feel like a kind of McDonald's-McDowell's situation for the electric vehicle world? Yes, which is probably unfortunate for both brands. But there's certainly room in the space for both, and whatever technological intersection exists between the two will probably benefit them both. Let's dig in.
Let's Start With Rivian
We'll begin with an extremely brief history of one of the more promising EV startups out there, California-based Rivian.
People forget this today, but Rivian actually launched way back in 2009 (and under a different name) with the goal of making a hybrid, mid-engine sports car. That idea was shelved, but by 2022, Rivian was making the R1S and R1T electric adventure trucks at a former Mitsubishi factory in Normal, Ill. Both vehicles boast excellent electric range, charming designs and legitimate off-road talents. The company also makes electric vans for fleet use, originally for Amazon alone but now available to any fleet customer.
Rivian's EVs have garnered considerable acclaim since then. While the company today has a sizable cash pile, it is still dealing with the instability and difficult path to long-term profitability that makes being a newcomer in the auto industry such a gargantuan task. Should it successfully fight through the "valley of death" that it's currently in, Rivian is due to launch a series of more affordable, mainstream EVs by the end of this decade: the smaller R2 crossover and more compact R3 and R3X.
But Rivian has the advantage of being able to do things with a clean sheet, vertically integrated approach, something that traditional automakers who depend on vast networks of outside parts suppliers struggle with. This in-house approach, once pioneered by Tesla, has made Rivian into a burgeoning software power player too. The world took notice of that when Rivian and the Volkswagen Group (which has struggled mightily on the technology front as it seeks a mostly electric future) inked a $5 billion deal to co-develop software and electrical architectures together. That deal is giving Rivian the cash it needs to continue R&D and scale up operations, while VW is getting the kind of software and tech expertise it needs to be competitive in the future.
What About Scout Motors?
Scout's history actually goes back many decades. The SUVs and trucks were made by the International Harvester Company, which was mostly known for agricultural and commercial vehicles, between 1960 and 1980. They were simple, capable machines that offered plenty of capability. The original Scouts are highly coveted by off-roading enthusiasts even today, as the company helped to pioneer that entire field of vehicles.
After a complicated series of sales and acquisitions, the VW Group ended up in possession of the Scout branding and trademarks (via the acquisition of International Harvester's successor company, Navistar, to supplement VW's other commercial truck brands) in 2020. As Scout Motors' CEO Scott Keogh told InsideEVs earlier this year, that led to some discussions within VW, which has long struggled to garner the kind of mainstream, volume success in America that it enjoys in the rest of the world. Moreover, these days, the VW Group is losing ground quickly in China, so it needs to win big in the U.S.
That yielded a bold plan to relaunch the Scout Motors brand, and not as some re-badged ID.4 or Audi Q8 E-Tron but with an entirely new platform and a new factory in South Carolina to take advantage of tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act.
But They're Both Boxy, Electric Trucks And SUVs Aimed At Off-Roaders. How Are They Different?
That's certainly an understandable question, and I think the Scout Terra truck in particular bears an uncanny and perhaps uncomfortable resemblance to the R1T. We always knew the Scout was going to be boxy and utilitarian looking, as that's how Scouts have always been. If you're going for a boxy look while maintaining the aerodynamic design you need to build a competitive EV, it's not surprising that the end result looks like an existing utilitarian, efficient electric truck. But the two vehicles from Scout and Rivian are different.
Besides predating the Scout vehicles by years (they won't even go on sale until 2027 at the earliest) the Rivian R1S and R1T use a platform, motors and software all made in-house. The upcoming Rivian R3, R3X and R2 will use a new Rivian "midsize" platform as well that incorporates the lessons and cost-savings from the R1 vehicles. A Rivian spokesperson confirmed to InsideEVs that the R2 and R3 platform is "unrelated" to the upcoming Scout project.
As I mentioned earlier, Scout's platform is a different animal. The automaker wanted a truly off-road capable EV, so it's crafting a body-on-frame platform from the ground up with a solid rear axle and front and rear mechanical lockers—just like an old-school rock-crawling truck would have. Rivian's vehicles do not use locking differentials. They also don't offer solid axles.
The differences go even deeper. Perhaps most notably, the Scout models will offer a range extender option called the "Harvester," which is simply a gasoline engine designed to solely recharge the electric battery. While it does not power the wheels at all, the engine is expected to boost the Scout EV's range from 350 miles to 500 miles. Rivian has not announced any plans for a gas range extender, and given that it's always been an all-electric automaker, that seems rather unlikely. Scout, however, has the advantage of potentially pulling a gas engine from the VW Group's expansive family.
On the battery front, Rivian's vehicles use cells from Samsung SDI in South Korea. CNBC reports that Scout's batteries are expected to come from VW’s joint venture battery cell manufacturer in Canada.
That's not all. Besides being in different price classes—Rivian's current vehicles start around $75,000 and reach into the $100,000 range, while the Scout EVs are aiming to start around $60,000—there are two very different approaches to the user experience at work here. Rivian's interfaces famously (perhaps infamously, based on our reviews) eschew traditional buttons for touchscreen controls, voice commands and soon, a clickwheel system mounted on the steering wheel to operate various functions.
Scout, on the other hand, purposely went big on buttons. The Scout concepts revealed last week have some nice display units, sure, but also a row of physical buttons, volume knobs and steering wheel controls. Oh, and the Terra and Traveler will offer an optional bench seat as well, another old-school throwback.
Finally, the vehicles are different sizes. The Scout Traveler SUV is shorter than a Rivian R1S by about 10 inches, while Scout's Terra truck is about a foot longer than an R1T.
So Where Do Rivian And Scout Intersect?
An excellent question, and one that's come up recently. And this actually does speak to that Volkswagen-Rivian tie-up that's in the works.
At the Scout concept debut, Keogh told InsideEVs that the cars could use the new zonal architecture being developed by that partnership—but only that one, not anything currently in use by Rivian. "It's important to separate Rivian, the car company, from the joint venture," Keogh said. "Those are two very different things. Rivian the car company, we have zero interaction with, absolutely nothing. But the joint venture company could potentially [provide] the architecture that is in this vehicle."
That was confirmed on the other side of things by Rivian Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid at TechCrunch's Disrupt 2024 conference this week. Here's what Bensaid had to say:
[Scout] said at the time that the vehicles would use a zonal architecture — meaning it would rely on just a handful of computers that control the functions of a few “zones” of the electrical architecture. And the software in Scout’s press images looked awfully similar to what you can find in Rivian’s current vehicles, so Bensaid’s confirmation is not all that surprising. Bensaid stressed on the Disrupt stage that each brand that uses the joint venture’s software will “continue to have their own identity,” as well as “their own features.”
“We’re enabling competition,” he said. Bensaid also noted how much the Scout vehicles resemble Rivian’s overall design sensibility, even outside of the software. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s great validation of the Rivian product.”
And TechCrunch is correct that the software shown in the Scout concepts does look very Rivian-ish. (Rivish?) However, those vehicles are still just concepts with production models at least three years away. Even if these vehicles share commonalities on the back end that allow Scout to do things Rivians can do, like over-the-air updates, it's extremely likely both brands will work to carve out their own identities and unique interfaces when they actually hit the market.
So What Did We Learn Today, Class?
In the end, while Scout and Rivian are both coming to market with similar products, designs, overall vibes and probably audiences, they are not the same brand or car.
I think that what this ended up being is two different EV-oriented companies both coming to the same conclusion about what American buyers love: big trucks and SUVs. In their own ways, they took advantage of the kind of retro-truck charm that's extremely in vogue right now. Things got somewhat complicated by the software and tech team-up behind the scenes, but given what we've reported on Scout Motors' development timeline, that certainly didn't seem to be the plan all along.
Moreover, Scout's target debut date of 2027 can feel like 500 years from now in the fast-moving world of modern EVs. We're basing all of this on initial impressions, early official plans from both automakers and what we know about where both brands are at in late 2024. It's entirely possible that the final production versions of the Scout vehicles could differ from these concepts in some way (though InsideEVs was told they are extremely close to the final designs) and we can't rule out some kind of deepened tie-up between VW, Rivian and Scout in the future. For now, that's just speculation.
But if you think these two adventure-ready EVs are the same thing, look a little deeper.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
