Rivian has hired Doug Field, the veteran engineer behind the Tesla Model 3 and Ford's Universal EV platform, as president of Mind Robotics, the robotics and AI venture it launched last year.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe confirmed the appointment at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 conference on Tuesday, saying the two found deep alignment on the mission and how they build teams. Field takes over day-to-day leadership of the venture, though Scaringe remains involved.
A résumé built across Tesla, Apple and Ford
Field's automotive credentials span the industry's biggest electrification projects. He was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, where he helped get the Model 3 into production, and earlier worked at Apple on Project Titan, the car program the company later cancelled.
Most recently he spent five years at Ford, where he assembled the skunkworks team that created the Universal Electric Vehicle platform. He left the company this April amid a reshuffling of Ford's EV business.
In a statement, Field called integrating AI and robotics one of the most important and difficult engineering challenges of our time, and pointed to Mind's ability to deploy and learn inside a real, high-volume factory from day one.
Semi-humanoid robots for the factory floor
Mind Robotics is not chasing a general-purpose humanoid in the mould of Tesla's Optimus. Its machines will be kind of humanoid, built solely for manufacturing assistance.
Rivian will be the venture's first customer, deploying the robots in its own high-volume factories once they are ready for prime time. That gives Mind a captive proving ground for its technology, and it is the advantage Field singled out in his statement.
The smarter move here is the captive-customer model: rather than selling robots into a crowded market, Mind can iterate inside Rivian's plants before facing outside buyers. The catch is that Rivian has not said when the robots will actually be ready, and no timeline has been announced.
What it means for Rivian's car business
For drivers and buyers, nothing changes at Rivian's EV operation on the back of this appointment. Field's role sits at Mind Robotics, not the vehicle line-up, and the sources point to no change in how Rivian builds or sells its cars.
If anything, the hire is a signal about where Rivian thinks its manufacturing edge will come from. Scaringe's comments about deploying robotics into the economy, paired with Field's record of scaling production at Tesla and Ford, suggest the venture exists to harden Rivian's own factories first. Whether that translates into cheaper or better-built Rivians is a question the companies have not addressed.
