Rivian pulled off a Steve Jobs moment with its surprise announcements
- Rivian's CEO, RJ Scaringe, surprised his audience with the unexpected reveal of the smaller R3 SUV.
- Rivian's "one more thing" was a nod to Steve Jobs' habit of teasing a last product reveal at events.
After Rivian unveiled its long-awaited R2 electric SUV on Thursday, RJ Scaringe, the CEO of Rivian, took a cue from Apple's playbook.
Scaringe stunned his audience with the reveal of the R3 midsize crossover, catching the audience by surprise.
"And I'm really, really excited to talk about R2's sibling, which we call R3," he said as audible gasps can be heard in the room.
You can watch the reveal in the video below, Scaringe makes the announcement at the 24:45-minute mark.
After the applause and cheers died down and the surprise EV was driven onto the stage, Scaringe made a comment poking fun at the reaction.
"You didn't expect that 'one more thing' here," he said.
That comment — and perhaps the whole surprise reveal — was a thinly veiled reference to Apple cofounder Steve Jobs' habit of making last-minute product announcements, introducing "one more thing" after seemingly finishing his keynote speech.
The catchphrase has become so closely associated with Jobs that Apple has leaned into it even after his death. In 2014, the Apple CEO Tim Cook's "one more thing" was revealed, in an emotional speech, to be the first-generation Apple Watch.
More recently, Apple used the phrase for the title of an event invitation in 2020 that would reveal the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini.
But the R3 wasn't the only surprise that Scaringe had up his sleeve, who added that "there's one more thing."
"Looking at R3, we wanted to take everything that's embodied and put it into an even higher-performance package," he said as a sizzle reel for the R3's off-road, performance variant appeared on-screen. "This is something we call R3X."
With his double-surprise reveal, Scaringe seems to have taken Jobs' penchant for theatricality to heart.