Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud reveals Knight Rider and Back to the Future Halloween tie-ins

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Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud reveals Knight Rider and Back to the Future Halloween tie-ins

Rivian Owners will soon get to celebrate pop culture franchises Knight Rider And Back to the future With brand new car costumes, and Screen Rant Chat with Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud to learn more. The electric vehicle company launched its first car in 2021, and soon after began inviting drivers to celebrate spooky season with Halloween-themed updates that introduced new UI themes and lighting options. In 2023, Rivian’s Halloween update included vampiric organ music and a Dracula-themed outfit for Rivian’s Gear Guard character.

For Halloween 2024, Rivian will be treating owners with three different Halloween options. Thanks to Knight Rider And Back to the future Car costumes, Rivian vehicles will adopt characteristics of their iconic inspirations. Rivian vehicles will be able to emulate the unforgettable light bar from Knight Riders KITT vehicle, or have an internal UI adapted carefully from the interior of Doc Brown’s DeLorean. Both franchises are ripe for collaboration, as KITT and DeLorean are some of the most memorable aspects of each property (outside of Michael J. Fox’s “Johnny B. Goode” scene in Back to the future). A “Haunted Rivian” theme will also invite users to enjoy a more traditional Halloween experience.

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Screen Rant Interviewed Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud about bringing IP-bound-ins to Rivian cars for the first time with 2024’s Car Costumes. Hammoud talked about how the update fits into the brand’s balance of playfulness and functionality (for the latter, check out the article comparing Rivian’s dual-motor vs. quad-motor AWD systems) and how the collaboration with Knight Rider In particular, it has been a long time. Hammoud also detailed what drivers can expect from their updates, which Rivian generations can use certain features, and more.

Jeff Hammoud discusses why Halloween and Halloween go hand-in-hand

“There are really no other auto manufacturers that can do what we do”


Rivian Knight Rider exterior light

Screen Rant: How did Halloween become such a tradition for the brand? It seems like it has been a special part of this for a few years now.

Jeff Hammoud: It’s funny because it’s something we didn’t plan, which is actually why I love it so much. There was an idea around, “Okay, this is a fun holiday,” and it was something that we could play with our software -[to] Being able to sort of flex that our software is capable of, and [show] As it can not only change visuals inside the vehicle, but also interact with the vehicle in a physical space. We tried some things for the first time, and it was really fun, and every time we’ve done it since then, we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from customers and people sharing it. It was just the thing [where] We wanted to step up every year and be like, “We did this last year, so what can we do this year?”

There really aren’t any other auto manufacturers that can do what we’re doing here, but even if there were other manufacturers that could do it, I don’t know if they necessarily would. The playfulness of our brand and the fact that we can have fun things like this that also fit our brand is what makes it really fun. Using the Knight Rider one – which I’m personally super passionate about -[for example,] I don’t know what other brand could get away with this without going completely off the wall. If you have a brand that is very serious and you suddenly go in a very playful direction, it doesn’t fit. But it’s something we’ve always pushed for.

Hammoud details bringing Knight Rider and Back to the Future to Rivian

Hammoud Talks Fun features and more


Marty McFly and Doc in Doc's lab with devices attached to their heads.

How did you decide to lean into IP? Is it based on seeing what people are into, or just your own passion?

Jeff Hammoud: The designers are looking [at]”Okay, what can we do for Halloween fashion?” We thought about costumes. We said, “What if it was a car costume, and a car could have its own costume? What better decoration could you have in your house than your car? And, “Instead of going out and buying something, what if you did potion Or treating? How can we do this? “We started talking about costumes, and right from the car seat we started thinking about possibilities.

The Knight Rider one was something we wanted to put in for a while, since we put in RGB functionality – our lights under the headlights – when we updated with our Gen 2. We released it, but we didn’t talk much. About the functionality that it has. Our designers looked at some other use cases that we could do like Emergency Mode, and, “Are there some other things we could do in the future, like red for stock lighting?” Such things, which we will continue to build from. But one of the ideas we had, just as an excitement, was [that] This is a perfect place to do the Knight Rider animation.

I grew up with Knight Rider. It was my own little thing that I was super passionate about. We showed it to RJ (Scaringe, Rivian founder), [it was] So cool, and we never ended up putting it anywhere, but we knew we wanted to do it. So, it led very naturally in the Halloween mode. Then, we started thinking, “What are some other things we could do?” And decided that another big one would be back to the future.

Even the models of the cars are iconic, from the DeLorean to the Trans Am. Did that factor into how you wanted to make this work?

Jeff Hammoud: We didn’t need to really look at the design of the vehicles. It was more about the movie. It’s more about UI interactions. Especially since Halloween mode for us is such a software moment, it’s really fun to be able to take some of the UI that was in both of these vehicles and put them in our car. The digital display on the Knight Rider – a lot of it, we took directly from KITT, and we have the interactions. The digital display will be displayed. The lighting and the interior, we also modified for that. The sounds that the car makes, we pulled from the movies.

In the back to the future mode, our center information display has the dates they have. On the display on the back of the center console, we have a small flux capacitor. It was really just pulling from the movie Cars, so the team looked at the UI that was in it and pulled from that to provide inspiration. Even the lighting themes were [inspired by the movies.] For Knight Rider, it’s red, and for Back to the Future, the lights in the interior kind of glow and flicker because when the car went through time, that’s exactly what it did. We draw from the interactions to really play off of the movies.

Do you have a personal favorite aspect of both of these Knight Rider And Back to the future updates?

Jeff Hammoud: One of the things I love about knight rider, Apart from the display and the lights, is that the music and the real noise KITT makes you will hear coming from the speakers inside the vehicle. If you want to play the Knight Rider or back to the future themes, you can play them through the sound system.

It’s a regulatory thing, AVAS (Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System), [with] All EVs – There is a requirement to add noise to the vehicle at low speeds, so pedestrians can hear the vehicles. The thing that was really cool about Knight Rider is [we have that] External speakers, and we have that actually make the noise of Knight Rider. From outside the vehicle, you actually see the animation, and it also makes the noise, which is just awesome.

Hammoud speaks the customizable Haunted Rivian theme

Complete with a Wilhelm scream!


Rivian haunted Rivian

You also have a Haunted Rivian option. What went into that, and was it just to make sure it was accessible to everyone who wasn’t necessarily a fan of either film?

Jeff Hammoud: We also have the difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2 vehicles. Gen 2 vehicles have the lights, so for the Knight Rider one, it’s a big key part of the animation. We still offer it for Gen 1 customers, but they won’t get the light sequence in the front. But we also wanted one that worked really well for both [generations]. And yes, even for the Haunted Rivian, the Gen 2 will have additional light animations on the exterior.

We also wanted one [option] To be the more spooky brand of Rivian. There is another approach. You can choose different interior color themes – do you want green and purple, [et cetera]. The lights randomly sort of flicker on and off, so it looks like it’s haunted. We also made the screens look all poltergeist-like and they’re all digital. Then you’ll see little animations of our Gear Guard character, or a spider walking across the screen. And we have different sounds you can play – ones that are more upbeat or ones that are more spooky.

The coolest part is [that] You can control all of this through your app, and you can change it on the fly. We also changed a lot of the noises that the vehicle can make for lock chips. Gen 2 gets more than Gen 1, but one of them, I think, is hilarious – the Wilhelm Scream.

About Rivian’s Car Costumes

For the first time, Rivian introduces car costumes, which are inspired by iconic and classic vehicles from entertainment and pop culture. At the park, owners will see their vehicle transform with classic lighting, sound and design references to NBCUniversal’s Knight Rider TV series and Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment’s Back to the Future, plus a spooky Haunted Rivian option.

Rivian Knight Rider And Back to the future Car costumes will be available October 18th.

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