As we’ve been teasing on social media and our podcast, Daily Detroit is branching out to your teevee set. Last night, our first segment aired on the Detroit Public Television program One Detroit.
It’s a visit to the Plymouth headquarters of electric vehicle upstart Rivian, which rocketed out of obscurity when it debuted its eye-catching, zero-emissions SUV and pickup truck at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. About 350 people work at the Plymouth location, which represents Rivian’s design, engineering and marketing teams. Another 350 or so are split between a battery lab in Irvine, Calif., an autonomous vehicle R&D center in San Jose, Calif. and a small engineering office in England.
Our segment is part of an episode focused entirely in the 2019 North American International Auto Show. But don’t look for Rivian if you go down to Cobo this year. The company’s founder and CEO, R.J. Scaringe, says Rivian is deploying its resources carefully and chose L.A. for its coming-out ball because California is a better market for EVs than Detroit.
We’ll have more on our visit to Rivian in an upcoming podcast episode, so stay tuned for that. Our thanks go out to the DPTV team for having us on.
You can watch our segment above, or catch the next airing of “One Detroit” at 9 a.m. Sunday on Detroit PBS.
