Carmakers that focus on selling fossil fuel engines are at risk of being “woefully behind” on technology by the end of the decade, according to the boss of Rivian, an Amazon-backed US electric carmaker.

RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s founder and chief executive, said the car industry has reached a “fork in the road” in the choice between short-term profits and the heavy investments, particularly in software, that will be required to survive.

In an interview this month in London, he said many have chosen profits, ramping up the production of petrol or hybrid pickup trucks and SUVs in the US and Europe.

Much of the automotive industry in the US and Europe has lobbied to slow the transition to electric vehicles, favouring instead polluting but profitable cars with internal combustion engines.

The retreat has been particularly striking in the US, where Donald Trump’s administration has gutted incentives to produce and buy EVs. Ford, General Motors, Honda, Stellantis and Volkswagen, all of which have large US operations, have collectively written off more than $70bn (£53bn) from their previous EV investments, according to Reuters.

Scaringe said the decisions to focus on profitable petrol cars could come back to haunt manufacturers.

He said: “That looks really good financially for 2026, 2027, maybe even 2028. But as you get to the end of the 2020s and into the 2030s, I think we’re going to find a lot of companies are unfortunately woefully behind in terms of their technology.”

The turn against EVs has led to uncertainty over demand for Rivian, which has just started deliveries of its R2 SUV in the US. The car is “make or break” for the company as it tries to turn a profit for the first time, Scaringe said.

Rivian was founded in 2009, and delivered its first electric vehicle in 2021, the same year as it floated on the stock market.

Rivian lost $3.6bn in 2025 amid heavy investment in the R2 and in autonomous driving abilities. After its market value soared above $100bn at its initial public offering, the carmaker has dropped back to $21bn – although Scaringe could be in line for share awards worth as much as $5bn if he can push the share price to targets well above its all-time high.

Scaringe said the “the more damaging and more dangerous aspect” of the turn against EVs was not the delayed transition from petrol engines to batteries but rather the failure to develop the software that increasingly controls every aspect of the vehicle.

He said petrol cars were stuck with a design that scatters computer chips throughout the car – from the engine to the seats and wing mirrors – rather than a centralised architecture that can be easily modified. Relying instead on a single computer reduces production costs by “thousands of dollars”, Scaringe said.

Rivian’s heavy investment in digital technology and software has at least partly paid off. Alongside the Amazon investment, which includes a deal for up to 100,000 delivery vans, Rivian and Germany’s Volkswagen agreed a $5.8bn electric tech and software joint venture in 2024, and Uber invested $1.25bn in a deal that could also lead to the sale of 50,000 robotaxis.

Scaringe said Rivian could help to increase the take-up of EVs in the US despite the White House backlash. Electric cars made up 7.8% of all US car sales in 2025, and Scaringe said the R2 alone could eventually increase the market share by three or four percentage points.

“The objective is to be a very large company” with annual sales in the millions, Scaringe said.

Scaringe said he was sceptical of carmakers’ claims that buyers do not want EVs, but rather that the dominance of Tesla’s Model 3 saloon car and Model Y SUV in the US was a “sign of a market starved for great choices”. Chinese carmakers dominate the global EV industry but are locked out of the US by prohibitive tariffs.

Rivian is also aiming to sell the R2 in the UK and mainland Europe, although that will not happen for at least a year.