Hi, and welcome to the Automotive News Shift podcast, where we bring you the latest on

automotive technology, trends, and transformation. I'm Molly Boygan, tech and innovation reporter

at Automotive News. And I'm Lawrence Eiliff, also at tech and innovation reporter at Automotive News.

Today's guest is RJ Scaridge, the CEO of Rivian Automotive.

I spoke to RJ about how the R2 crossover is key to the brand's long-term success.

We're building a business that's designed at its core to be significantly bigger than we are today.

But first, let's talk about the week.

Molly, what are you working on this week?

It's been a very busy week for me.

I was covering the Trump administration proposal regarding the loosening of the NHTSA corporate

average fuel economy standards, the CAFE standards.

So basically, the Biden administration had set a standard for 50.4 miles per gallon across

2031 model year vehicles. And the Trump administration announced this week that it had shifted

those standards to be 34.5

miles per gallon across 2031 model year vehicles. So, you know, a pretty significant rollback of

those standards. And, you know, the automakers sort of cheered this move as as less regulatory

and financial pressure. And one other

thing worth noting is that while they did applaud this move, the Trump administration has

already eliminated the fines for noncompliance with CAFE. So it's sort of a legal compliance

issue more than something related to a potential financial

penalty. Yeah, one thing that really strikes me about this in particular is the whiplash

from just a few years ago, right? I mean, we had the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really a

...