Rivian's Also: A Billion-Dollar Bet on Small Electric Vehicles

AI-imagined Also electric-assist off-road bike in the spirit of the Rivian R1S

By EV World Si Editorial Team

When Rivian announced it was spinning a secret micromobility lab out into its own company, Also, it read like a strategic pivot and a provocation at once: the maker of beefy electric trucks was quietly chasing the opposite of what made it famous. The new company, incubated as "Project Inder" inside Rivian, is focused on small, lightweight vehicles - machines that look and behave more like bicycles and scooters than the hulking SUVs the automaker is known for. That pivot is real, deliberate and backed by serious venture capital.

From skunkworks to spin-out

The Also story begins not on a factory floor but in an R&D studio where Rivian engineers and designers explored how to scale their battery, software and systems expertise down to something much lighter. Over the past year that work matured, attracting outside design collaborators—among them LoveFrom, the studio founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive—helping shape the aesthetic and user experience that Rivian wanted to carry into smaller categories. Public statements and reporting describe the company’s first vehicle as “bike-like,” but the finished product remains under wraps until an official reveal.

What Also actually builds (so far)

For now, Also’s output is mostly design work, prototypes and the scaffolding of a business: engineering mockups, chassis prototypes and software concepts intended for a range of light EVs. There are no confirmed mass-market sales or deliveries yet—what exists in public is runway funding and product teasers rather than a retail catalogue. The company has said it expects to bring a flagship product to production in the U.S. and Europe by 2026, with additional, region-specific variants to follow.

Why investors wrote a big check

The most startling line in the Also story is the valuation. In July, Greenoaks Capital invested roughly $200 million in Also, and the round has been widely reported as valuing the spin-out at about $1 billion. That figure is a private, post-money valuation: it reflects investor conviction about the founders, the teams and the potential market more than it does proven sales. Still, the logic the investors are buying into is straightforward. Micromobility is a vast, under-penetrated category in cities around the world. Add Rivian’s software and battery know-how, a premium design signal, and the promise of vertical integration, and you get a case for rapid scaling—if the company can execute.

How Also plans to sell

Also’s commercial playbook, as pieced together from company statements and trade coverage, reads like a hybrid of startup and automaker instincts. It will lean on Rivian’s brand and retail footprint—Rivian keeps a minority stake and its CEO chairs Also’s board—while pursuing a design-first premium positioning that aims to command higher margins than the commodity e-bike market. Also will also position itself for both consumers and commercial fleets, a dual-target approach intended to broaden revenue paths beyond one-off retail sales. The company has said it intends to pair hardware with software and connected services, bringing over-the-air updates and a digital ownership experience more familiar to passenger EV buyers than to bike shoppers.

What to watch next

There are obvious guardrails to this optimism. Also has not named manufacturing partners, pricing, warranty strategies or a dealer and service plan—each of which will determine whether an elegantly designed prototype can become a durable product. Regulators are still figuring out how to classify the vehicles Also intends to sell, and the last-mile micromobility business has had its share of boom-and-bust stories. For readers tracking Rivian, the spin-out is also a signal: the company wants to be more than a truckmaker. It wants to host a small-vehicle ecosystem that might one day sit next to R1T pickups on a showroom floor.

What is certain is that the headline—Also at a $1 billion valuation—says less about inventory than it does about imagination. Investors have placed a large, public bet on design, software and the belief that the smallest vehicles will one day matter as much as the largest ones. Whether that bet pays off will depend on engineering fundamentals just as much as on a slick reveal. For now, EV World readers should regard Also as a well-funded experiment with the potential to reshape how urban trips are made—or as a cautionary tale in the hazards of unproven markets.