How Many Customers Can Rivian Steal From Tesla? – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 27th February 2025, 02:27 am

I was at a Tesla Supercharger today, and as I was about to leave, I saw a Rivian R1S connected to one of the Supercharger stalls. This is a V2 Supercharger station, and my understanding is that no non-Teslas can Supercharger on V2 Superchargers, but I also saw a Mercedes-Maybach EQS trying to Supercharge at this station last week (seemingly unsuccessfully, but I left before final confirmation) and routinely have people with EV rental cars coming by and asking about charging there. So, I walked up to the Rivian R1S to see how things were going and to ask if she was able to charge. It turned out it wasn’t working, but she had charged there with her Rivian a long time back. What she and I both figured is there was a short period of time when the stations were open to any EVs to charge, but now that things have been locked down with NACS and the software has been advanced to accommodate non-Teslas at Superchargers and track them, non-Teslas can no longer charge at this (or any V2) Superchargers.

However, that’s a long intro to get to another topic. Talking with her for a few minutes, I found out that she and her husband had owned three Teslas previously, but now she has the Rivian R1S and her husband has the Rivian R1T. A friend of hers had switched to Rivian before them.

The main reason for making the switch seemed to be a very common one — Rivians are just much nicer and more refined, particularly the interior, but according to this lady, also the drive quality. When I drove and rode in a Rivian R1T about a year and a half ago, the much nicer interior — including infotainment screens — struck me immediately. When mentioning it to the owner, who was also a Rivian employee, he said that was a very common response from Tesla owners.

Additionally, this lady (sorry, I didn’t get her name), noted with enthusiasm that the R1S also cost less than her previous Tesla Model X! That seemed to be another major selling point for her. Lastly, she lives in Tampa, and Rivian had just opened a service center in Tampa before they decided to make the switch. That was a clincher for her, as she didn’t want to have to go to Orlando for service if needed, and that would have been the case before the Tampa service center opened.

She didn’t mention anything about politics or Elon Musk, and, unfortunately, I didn’t ask when she and her husband made the switch. However, given their experience with the vehicles and her faith in Rivian executives/management, she was optimistic the company would eventually become profitable. Of course, that all relies on the R2 and perhaps even R3. It’s a hot topic of discussion because no one really knows what the future holds for Rivian.

Considering all of the Rivian pros above, I just got to thinking, how many customers could Rivian take away from Tesla? Under my article yesterday about Rivian’s stock price, recent shareholder conference call, and pros & cons, one reader (“Solar Guy“) commented, “Well, Rivian may be able to steal Tesla buyers who are boycotting the company due to Musk. I contacted Rivian myself just last week about buying an R1S, but told them I didn’t want to buy a car without an autopilot that worked on all roads like my 10 yr old Tesla can. So … I agree they need to get theirs working better. I disagree it needs to be as good as Teslas FSD system though. I’m going to buy nothing until a non Tesla option with a good autopilot is on the market.”

We have seen countless comments from longtime Tesla fans, owners, and shareholders who have sworn off buying a/another Tesla unless Elon Musk leaves the company. I’ve met others in “real life.” Tesla saw its sales decline in 2024 compared to 2023, and 2025 seems to be starting out even worse. As Elon Musk gets more and more extreme politically (and, seemingly, spends almost all of his time working on non-Tesla matters), many of us expect Tesla will lose a lot of sales. If that is the case, how many customers could Rivian take from Tesla?…

How many people will look at a Rivian now and then discover, “Oh, wow, this is really nice!” How many will now happily switch because of Supercharger access? (While the Rivian couldn’t charge at this V2 Supercharger, there’s another newer Supercharger a half an hour away where I routinely see other EVs, including Rivians, charging.) How many will switch as Rivian improves its ADAS (a key talking point on Rivian’s conference call)? Of course, the big dog is the R2 (and R3). How many Tesla customers will jump ship, or how many potential Tesla buyers will skip Tesla, once the R2 and R3 are available? Also, how much further is Elon Musk going to go taking a chainsaw to the US federal government, busting down Constitutional doors and democratic norms, and siding with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine and the rest of the democratic West? How much more is he going to push people away from the brand? (I almost asked, “And will the Tesla board do anything to rein him in?” But I am certain the answer is “no.”) The there’s also the appeal of the new Model Y, the cheaper Model Q that is supposedly coming, and even the Cybercab. How much will Tesla’s sales dominance continue in the US EV market simply due to the appeal of its products, and also so much of the population not following political matters for even 5 minutes a week or being apathetic to it all when it comes to shopping for a car?

As you can see, there are a lot of unknown factors. I want you to try to synthesize all of those perfectly and come up with an estimate of how many customers Rivian will steal from Tesla. For my part, there are too many big unknowns and I can’t even come up with a range of options you could choose from in a poll. Also, since we can never really check the results, something about running a poll on this rubs me the wrong way. But I’d love to read what you informed, thoughtful readers have to say on this topic and how many customers you estimate Rivian will take from Tesla.