Jeff Hammoud — Rivian's chief design officer and a longtime pillar of automotive design who, before joining the company, created the visual identity of brands like Jeep — is more adept at creating visually stunning vehicles than to most people on the planet, but he wanted to talk about sneakers.
“I have a lot of friends who started out in sneaker design before moving into the automotive industry, and we have a lot of footwear in our design studio that we use as inspiration for colors,” he says. Hammoud also mentioned that, apart from their aesthetic parallels (Michael Jordan's personal Ferrari 550M served as inspiration for the Air Jordan 14, while adidas looked to the Audi TT while designing the Kobe 2, and many other examples ), recent innovations in footwear materials have influenced some of Rivian's sustainable practices. "We have five different shoes in our office that show how you can approach sustainability, from Allbird and adidas collaborations to Nike's Space Hippie line," he said. “They show different aspects of sustainability, and from a design perspective, the form, shape, and graphics of a vehicle have to work together, just like with sneakers.”
Hammoud and the Rivian have just finished a major success: a few days before his talk with Hypebeast, the Rivian R3 was named the best car design of 2024 by Top Gear. Inspired by Group B rally cars and with the combination of power, finesse, and function Rivian's SUVs and pickups are known for, the R3 and R3X mark a bold new era for the brand with its smaller footprint and hatchback. rally style.
And as the new chapter begins, Hammoud is ready for it. All subsequent chapters. "We're not done," he said. “We want to make sure we continue to challenge ourselves and improve.”
That's really exciting for a few reasons. First of all, on a personal level, I grew up watching Top Gear, so to have an award from them is a full-circle moment. But from a professional point of view, to explain why we were so pleased with that award, I have to go back to the time when we launched R2. It's what many have been hoping for, and that's what we're aiming for — something that can take the features that make the R1 great and present it in a smaller, more affordable package so that more people can get into our cars. . But many thought the R3 would be a smaller truck, and we knew that, so we saw this as a great opportunity to show how our brand can stretch. That we can do something smaller, something for an urban environment that remains distinctly Rivian.
Talagang kapana-panabik iyon para sa ilang mga dahilan. Una sa lahat, sa personal na aspeto, lumaki ako na nanonood ng Top Gear, kaya't ang pagkakaroon ng isang award mula sa kanila ay isang full-circle na sandali. Ngunit mula sa propesyonal na pananaw, upang ipaliwanag kung bakit kami sobrang nasiyahan sa award na iyon, kailangan kong balikan ang panahon nang inilunsad namin ang R2. Ito ay kung ano ang inaasahan ng marami, at iyon ang layunin namin — isang bagay na maaaring kunin ang mga feature na maganda sa R1 at ipakita ito sa isang mas maliit, mas abot-kayang pakete upang mas maraming tao ang makapasok sa aming mga sasakyan. Ngunit ang akala ng marami ay ang R3 ay magiging mas maliit na truck, at alam namin iyon, kaya't nakita namin ito bilang isang mahusay na pagkakataon upang ipakita kung paano maaaring mag-stretch ang aming brand. Na maaari kaming gumawa ng isang bagay na mas maliit, isang bagay para sa isang urban na kapaligiran na nananatiling distinctly Rivian.
Where did the inspiration for R3 come from?
The brand has two personalities: its ability to go off-road and on-road. Of course, I'm biased, but if you drive the R1 off-road and on-road and see what it can do in both settings, I don't think any other vehicle can produce the same level of performance in both tasks. Usually, there is a big trade-off between one and the other. So we thought, how do we make a solo rally car? We envisioned Group B rally cars, an era in rallying dominated by European manufacturers, and combined this with the knowledge that the R2 would be our first truly global product while the R3 would be a big step into the European market. So, to go back to your earlier question, having an award from a European publication for a car that we haven't released yet lets us know that we did something right on both sides of the ocean [laughs] .
Does winning an award enter your mind while designing, or do you just aim to express a certain aesthetic or ethos and hope others like it?
I try to go in and create something from a point of passion, and hopefully people will like that passion. When you design products without passion, they often lack a point of view. If you try to make something that everyone will like, you'll just end up with something that no one will hate, and that's not motivating. But I can say that, when we were working on the R3, and more importantly, the R3X, everyone in our studio was really excited about it. I've been designing in the automotive industry for a long time, and I said, "Man, this is the thing I'm most proud of out of everything I've done." But at the same time, I understand that you won't know how your work will be received until you show it, and of course, your timing has to be right. The reception it got was really good, both in the context of the award and what people thought in general.
You've been at Rivian for almost a decade. What can you say about how the brand's design language has evolved — do you feel like you're getting close to the “ultimate expression” of Rivian?
When I started at Rivian in 2017, the company was very small and RJ [Scaringe, the founder and CEO of Rivian] wanted to make electric SUVs and trucks. That's all I knew at the time, and I was coming from a decade of working at Jeep, a huge company. We didn't have a design team or a design process at Rivian back then, so from my first day in May 2017 until we showed our first cars in November 2018 at the LA Auto Show, it was a quick sprint to build the team and the design process. design. If I look back and know what I know now, I probably wouldn't have chosen to join such a big and difficult company [laughs]. But the beauty of it then, and the beauty of my innocence at the time, was that there was optimism ingrained in everything we did, and that's still part of the company today.
Look at modern trucks. They all have big, hard grilles. They all look aggressive. We want our cars to be durable and capable, but we also want them to be inviting. They don't have angry faces or dystopian designs. They are warm and optimistic. One thing that I think is very important in design — and this applies to all types of design — is that if the design is something that's easy to draw, you're probably doing it right. Regarding the "ultimate expression," I don't think there is such an ultimate expression. We are not done. We want to make sure that we continue to challenge ourselves and improve.
“Good design is problem solving” is an oft-cited saying. How does this apply to automotive design? I think it's a matter of balance in our particular case. The biggest balance we have to strike is the satisfaction of the customer who wants to use the full slate of technologies and capabilities of our vehicles, giving them the space to geek out as much as they want with gauges, drive settings , and so on, while also catering to people who just want to ride and drive without a steep learning curve.
What's one thing people don't know about Rivian that you think they should know?
I think the whole scope of our software. Many people in the industry, and also customers in general, do not fully understand what a software-defined vehicle means. For example, everyone says they can update over-the-air, but in fact, only us and Tesla have been able to do that before. The vehicle features, the functionality, and the UI can be updated. If something goes wrong with the car, you don't have to take it in for repair. Usually, this can be fixed through an over-the-air software update. There are many things you can do with just your phone, though. It's hard to explain that unless you've owned a Rivian and driven it for a long time, and you've seen it keep getting better — and the car you owned this year isn't the car you owned anymore. next year.
Last question: what are your three favorite automotive designs of all time other than your own?
Oh, seriously... the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing is definitely on that list. That was my dream car. Definitely a Porsche 911 — if I had to choose, I'd like the 930 Turbo. And then of course the Range Rover Classic that first came out in the 70s. Maybe it's not something most people should see, but I think it's one of the most cult cars in the world.
