By Howard Packowitz

BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington-Normal will be hearing a lot more about Rivian Automotive over the next couple of years, according to the company’s CEO.

R.J. Scaringe spoke with local media outlets Friday acknowledging the emergent electric vehicle maker has been intentionally quiet until now.

“We wanted to focus on progess, and focus on our technology, focus on what we’re doing in terms of driving forward for our launch date of both the products and the services. So we said, we’ll start talking when it gets closer to production,” Scaringe said.

In recent weeks, the Unit 5 School Board, the McLean County Board, and the Normal Town Council all gave the go-ahead for previously agreed-to property tax breaks for Rivian.

Scaringe hopes his public comments might begin to reassure skeptics who believe Rivian won’t make good on its promises to start producing vehicles two years from now.

“We need to do a better job, frankly, of just letting the local community know all the great things that are happening. There’s so much progress at the company,” said Scaringe.

“We’ve been in self-mode and haven’t really talked about that publicly, but there’s an enormous amount of activity with our vehicle and technology development,” the Rivan CEO said.

Scaringe said Friday that the public will learn specifics in the coming year about the models initially produced at the former Mitsubishi Motors plant in west Normal.

He said the first vehicle will be a truck with room for five people. It will also have some self-driving capabilities, mainly on highways. The truck will have a steering wheel, the CEO said.

Howard Packowitz can be reached at [email protected].