Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud Reveals Knight Rider & 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 chatted with Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud to learn more. The electric vehicle company launched its first car in 2021, and shortly 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 to three different Halloween options. Thanks to Knight Rider and Back to the Future Car Costumes, Rivian vehicles will adopt characteristics from their iconic inspirations. Rivian vehicles will be able to emulate the unforgettable light bar from Knight Rider’s KITT vehicle, or feature an internal UI adapted carefully from the interior of Doc Brown’s DeLorean. Both franchises are ripe for collaboration, as KITT and the 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.

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

Jeff Hammoud Discusses Why Halloween & Rivian Go Hand-In-Hand

“There Are Really No Other Auto Manufacturers That Can Do What We Do”

Screen Rant: How did Halloween become such a tradition for the brand? It seems like it’s 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. It was an idea around, “Okay, this is a fun holiday,” and it was something that we could play around with using our software—[to] be able to sort of flex what our software is capable of, and [show] how it can not only change visuals inside the vehicle, but also interact with the vehicle in a physical space. We tried some things out 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 just became this thing [where] we wanted to one-up ourselves every year and be like, “We did that last year, so what can we do this year?”

There are really no other auto manufacturers that can do what we do here, but even if there are 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 that without becoming completely off the wall. If you have a brand that’s very serious and then all of a sudden you go in a very playful direction, it doesn’t fit. But that is something that we’ve always pushed for.

Hammoud Details Bringing Knight Rider & Back To The Future To Rivian

Hammoud Talks Fun Features & More

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

Jeff Hammoud: The designers were looking [at], “Okay, what can we do for Halloween mode?” We thought about costumes. We said, “What if there was a Car Costume, and a car could have its own costume? What better decoration could you have at your house than your car?” and, “Instead of going and buying something, what if you’re doing Trunk or Treating? How could we do that?” We started talking about costumes, and immediately from an automotive space, we started thinking about opportunities.

The Knight Rider one was something that we wanted to put in for a while, ever since we put in RGB functionality—our lights below the headlights—when we updated with our Gen 2. We released it, but we didn’t talk a lot about the functionality that it has. Our designers were looking 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 camp lighting?” Things like that, which we’re going to continue to build off of. But one of the ideas we had, just as an excitement, was [that] this is a perfect spot to do the animation from Knight Rider.

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 into this Halloween mode. Then, we started to think, “What are some other things we could do?” and decided that another great one would be Back to the Future.

Even the models of those 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 those 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 was really fun to be able to take some of the UI that were in both of those vehicles and put them into our car. The digital display on the Knight Rider—a lot of it, we took straight from KITT, and we had those interactions. The digital display will show. The lighting and the interior, we also modified for that. The sounds the car makes, we pulled from those movies.

On the Back to the Future mode, our center information display has the dates they had. On the display on the back of the center console, we did a little flux capacitor. It was really just pulling from the movie cars, so the team looked at the UI that was in there 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 sort of glow and flicker because when the car went through time, that’s kind of what it did. We’re pulling from those interactions to really play off of the movies.

Do you have a personal favorite aspect of both the Knight Rider and Back to the Future updates?

Jeff Hammoud: One of the things I love about
Knight Rider,
aside from the display and the lights, is that the music and the actual noise KITT makes you’ll 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.

There’s a regulatory thing, AVAS (Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System), [with] all EVs—it’s a requirement to add noise to the vehicle at low speeds, so pedestrians can hear the vehicles. The thing that was really cool for Knight Rider is [we have that] external speaker, and we have that actually making the noise from Knight Rider. From outside the vehicle, you actually see the animation, and it’s also making the noise, which is just awesome.

Hammoud Talks The Customizable Haunted Rivian Theme

Complete With A Wilhelm Scream!

You also have a Haunted Rivian option as well. What went into that, and was that just to make sure this was accessible for everyone that 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’re still offering it for Gen 1 customers as well, 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 sort of Rivian. It’s a different approach. You can choose different interior color themes—whether you want green and purple, [et cetera]. The lights randomly sort of flicker on and off, so it looks like it is 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 showing up, or a spider going 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 this all 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 chirps. 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. While in 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’s Knight Rider and Back to the Future Car Costumes will be available October 18.