Four years, four R1Ts. An adventure and a bitter-sweet cautionary tale.

[antimatter]

Thanks for all the detail. I've had mine for about a year, and other than one 12-volt battery it has been trouble-free (knock wood). I love driving it, and I even enjoy towing our RV on camping trips, but all the reported issues make me worry about the longevity of the truck. Heck, my previous truck (Honda Ridgeline) had brake issues that cost me a pretty penny to fix, and the modern versions of gas and diesel trucks that require pulling the cab to work on engine issues makes this seem like the whole industry is dealing with maintenance and reliability issues. Please note, I'm not making excuses for Rivian, just pointing out that the alternatives for a truck that does everything the R1T does aren't exactly trouble free. Like you, I really don't want to drive a full-sized truck, but I think I could live with a Silverado RST if I had to. I've got about a year and some change left on my original warranty, and I think I need to make some hard choices before that is gone. It's always something, isn't it?

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[Husky]

If you look back a few posts, I go into more detail about this. The most compelling theory I've heard is that the brakes don't get enoughairflow to clear themselves under wet driving conditions. This was floated by a field tech on our most recent pad/rotor replacement (our 5th such replacement, also just under 20k miles). I have personally tried my best to make sure my pads/rotors are cleared, though I can't say for certain that the other three trucks have had the same diligence since I'm not putting the miles on them. Mine just needed a second set of pads and rotors at a little over 40k miles (the last 20 of whichI was very consciously trying to use them enough, but not too much, and wash the calipers as best I could now and then).

There's no question that VT is hard on vehicles, I'm just shocked out how quickly we're going through brakes (and at $1800 per brake job, it really adds cost quickly).

Thank you for taking the time to organize and write this detailed, sincere, well written post. It's a shame you've had so many issues. I can relate to the time it takes to get them fixed, even if they may be covered by warranty. I appreciate it, as a prospective R2 buyer, although I'm really dismayed to hear how bad the reliability of your four trucks has been for you, and apparently others. I too am someone who wants to see Rivian succeed, and I'm impressed with many of their unique features and their overall mission.
You're right that testing for a few days (weeks?) in extreme environments, and living in them for a whole season are two different things. We have our share of steep hills, snow and salt here in NH but I think VT is worse. There's a reason why nearly every vehicle I see with VT plates is a Subaru or a Tacoma, haha.
Two questions that stand out in my mind:
1.) What was the actual failure/wearout mode for all these brakes? Were they just rusted really badly, or did the pads actually wear out? It's especially interesting to me since our KIA EV6, with 36k miles and 2.5 years under it's belt has brakes that still look new. It certainly lives an easier life than your truck's do, but we do live at the top of a 600' hill that gets copious amounts of salt dumped on it all winter long. This is our primary all-season vehicle, so it gets driven every day, all year long.
2.) Who the hell makes these dampers? The failure rate reported by you and many others seems insane. Are they just undersigned for a 7,000 lb vehicle? Of course, if they didn't even have a proper dust boot to keep dirt/sand etc... off the piston, that's a big issue and a real miss on the part of the manufacturer.
All this makes me want to hold off buying my R2 for 6-12 months and see how it goes, but I've really got my heart set on one and I tend to be impatient (rather than smart sometimes), haha.
Good luck to you and thanks for the information.

 

[Husky]

Thanks for this very thorough post and your thoughtful and detailed follow up replies. I'm sorry you've had so many issues, I feel very lucky after reading your post for the relatively pedestrian issues I've had with mine.

It seems like your tech's brake theory has gone up the food chain: I see that Rivian recently added a line item to the maintenance schedule to clean the brake calipers every 12,000 miles if driven on salted roads.

That's funny because my buddy used to tell me his Ford dealer wanted him to bring his Explorer in for a caliper cleaning and I told him it was just a money grab

 

[Husky]

Here's one photo showing very reduced regen in conditions I wouldn't expect. I have many more photos like this, as I was trying to convince the SC that my truck has some abnormal issue that limits regen more than it should, which may have caused premature brake wear. This deadened... they claimed it was within "normal" operating specs, and couldn't really explain why this regen limitation exists as often as it seems to with my truck—something I wouldn't notice if I didn't turn off brake blending. I also noticed similar behavior with my father's truck before brake blending was added as a feature in the software—but that was generally while descending longer hills. Regen seems to fairly quickly diminish while descending even fairly minor hills (by VT standards). Almost every day I descend roughly 500 feet to go into town at least once and by the bottom of our hill, I'm usually experiencing reduced regen.

That definitely doesn't sound right. I've never experienced any reduced regen on our EV6 unless I've just charged to 100% (rarely).

 

[TollKeeper]

Your right about the TLDR! I read some thou. Great pics too!

I agree with you entirely, I will not own a Rivian that isnt in a factory warranty.

@30k miles I had 4 struts, 4 air bags, 4 half shafts, 3 wheel hubs replaced, and some other work. I cant even begin to imagine what that cost would have been... and I dont want to.

My out of pocket cost has been $1500, and that was for tires. Reading some of the stories on the forum here, I consider myself lucky!

I am considering cancelling my order for the R2, just undecided, and until I get the "you can order now" email, it will just fester in my brain.

 

[onesoil]

Thank you for taking the time to organize and write this detailed, sincere, well written post. It's a shame you've had so many issues. I can relate to the time it takes to get them fixed, even if they may be covered by warranty. I appreciate it, as a prospective R2 buyer, although I'm really dismayed to hear how bad the reliability of your four trucks has been for you, and apparently others. I too am someone who wants to see Rivian succeed, and I'm impressed with many of their unique features and their overall mission.
You're right that testing for a few days (weeks?) in extreme environments, and living in them for a whole season are two different things. We have our share of steep hills, snow and salt here in NH but I think VT is worse. There's a reason why nearly every vehicle I see with VT plates is a Subaru or a Tacoma, haha.
Two questions that stand out in my mind:
1.) What was the actual failure/wearout mode for all these brakes? Were they just rusted really badly, or did the pads actually wear out? It's especially interesting to me since our KIA EV6, with 36k miles and 2.5 years under it's belt has brakes that still look new. It certainly lives an easier life than your truck's do, but we do live at the top of a 600' hill that gets copious amounts of salt dumped on it all winter long. This is our primary all-season vehicle, so it gets driven every day, all year long.
2.) Who the hell makes these dampers? The failure rate reported by you and many others seems insane. Are they just undersigned for a 7,000 lb vehicle? Of course, if they didn't even have a proper dust boot to keep dirt/sand etc... off the piston, that's a big issue and a real miss on the part of the manufacturer.
All this makes me want to hold off buying my R2 for 6-12 months and see how it goes, but I've really got my heart set on one and I tend to be impatient (rather than smart sometimes), haha.
Good luck to you and thanks for the information.

You're welcome. It's been a long time coming, and honestly I've been putting it off because of the sheer exhaustion of rehashing and sorting out all the failures, trips to service centers, etc. It's literally hundreds of pages of documents at this point (thank you Claude!). If I wasn't such a fan of so many aspects of these vehicles, I surely wouldn't bother to take the time and energy to keep us in them, let alone posting a novel on a forum about it

I understand your excitement about R2—I think they've made a much better vehicle. I've seen one in person, and spoken with multiple technicians about them who had direct insight into the improved repairability, modularity, field repairability, simplifying measures (especially with the suspension), etc. I'm sure they will have teething pains, but I hope they really did learn from all we the early adopter ones and design a more durable, repairable, dependable vehicle. Time will tell. I have my R2 reservation on ice (I've been offered to get one of the early ones, but have declined so far—my partner is happy with her Volvo XC40 Recharge, and it has been very reliable... knock on wood ).

To your questions:

1. Brake wear has mostly been due to pads wearing down to minimums on the insides of the fronts. The rears have been due to rotor pitting or uneven wear as well, but not seemingly following a trend of it always being the insides. Also, my father's truck had a seized rear caliper that they totally missed on an appointment and then it lost all braking function a week later (we had reported a grinding sound among other things it was down there for, they "couldn't replicate," then it came back sounding worse, and they couldn't see it for weeks until it became undriveable). They did end up replacing the calipers and rear pads/rotors that time due to the failure.

2. I believe they are made by Monroe Solutions. They are awful—I basically expect them to be slowly leaking even months after being replaced. They really should have redesigned them ASAP to at least have proper debris exclusion from the main piston seals. The same mobile tech who explained his theory on the brakes also said these resemble road car dampers rather than off-road or many truck dampers that are more protected. It's concerning that they just keep spending the money to slap the same crappy ones on rather than eat the inventory of them, redesign, and solve the problem for people...

Which brings me to another point I didn't even bring up in the post, but have some speculative theories about: I think that Rivian as a new manufacturer trying to release a vehicle in the supply-chain shit-show that was 2020-'21 likely got a fair share of shoddy components. I also wonder if they had to make massive commitments to specific components to have suppliers agree to make them when they were already struggling to meet demand (remember how hard it was to get new vehicles around then?). I suspect a lot of corners were cut due to the larger macro factors, likely by Rivian directly but more importantly their network of newly established supplier relationships. I have no specific data/proof on this, but it seems like a sound theory that could explain some of these things. What I don't understand is how these trucks could fail like this for me, but then there are people on the total other end of the spectrum with the "I've got 100k on my early Launch Quad in a rural wintery state and all I've done is rotate my tires!"

It's genuinely confusing how both realities can exist simultaniously.

Good luck. I could understand you going either way—I was very eager to get one as soon as I could, personally, and in spite of all of this I don't even know if I regret doing so. It was fun to be on the early wave of them, though I do think my dad should have sold his for the $140k or so they were going for when his was first delivered

 

[EV-by-the-Sea]

Sigh. Mirrors our dual Rivian experience (repeated suspension/axle/HVAC issues, inconsistent but nice service centers, and return SC visits due to incomplete work or other damage done during service, and lots of days out of service).

Like you, I don't plan on owning either of these outside of warranty, but in the case of our R1S, there's not really another good replacement option on the market right now either.

 

[TollKeeper]

but in the case of our R1S, there's not really another good replacement option on the market right now either.

I agree with this totally.. I really think Ford and GM both missed the mark with the F150 Lightning/GM EV Trucks. I mean, how hard would have it been to change the chassis over to a SUV, and call it a day. The Ford Expedition is already built on the F150 chassis, so not much work would have had to be done.

Although, knowing GM and Ford, they would have screwed it up somehow. They are good for that.

 

[Husky]

Sigh. Mirrors our dual Rivian experience (repeated suspension/axle/HVAC issues, inconsistent but nice service centers, and return SC visits due to incomplete work or other damage done during service, and lots of days out of service).

Like you, I don't plan on owning either of these outside of warranty, but in the case of our R1S, there's not really another good replacement option on the market right now either.

How about the EV9 and Ioniq 9 three tire SUVs? They're not for off-roading but great road cars (our daughter has an EV9 and loves it).

 

[Husky]

Sigh. Mirrors our dual Rivian experience (repeated suspension/axle/HVAC issues, inconsistent but nice service centers, and return SC visits due to incomplete work or other damage done during service, and lots of days out of service).

Like you, I don't plan on owning either of these outside of warranty, but in the case of our R1S, there's not really another good replacement option on the market right now either.

Ugh. I had heard that Rivian was lowest on Consumer Reports reliability scale (and highest on customer satisfaction!).
I had thought/hoped these were mostly minor things and software updates, etc... Then I joined this forum due to my R2 reservation and started reading posts like this. Very discouraging. But it's been pointed out that others have had very good experiences.
I'm still leaving towards filling my R2 reservation when my window comes up in a couple of months, but can't help but wonder if I'm being stupid.

 

[TollKeeper]

How about the EV9 and Ioniq 9 three tire SUVs? They're not for off-roading but great road cars (our daughter has an EV9 and loves it).

And the best warranty B2B on the market, 5yr/60k

 

[EV-by-the-Sea]

How about the EV9 and Ioniq 9 three tire SUVs? They're not for off-roading but great road cars (our daughter has an EV9 and loves it).

I wouldn't consider those comparable replacements. Maybe the GV90 though?
Also, they don't seem to be exempt from ICCU issues like the other Hyundai/Kia EVs.

 

[EV-by-the-Sea]

Ugh. I had heard that Rivian was lowest on Consumer Reports reliability scale (and highest on customer satisfaction!).
I had thought/hoped these were mostly minor things and software updates, etc... Then I joined this forum due to my R2 reservation and started reading posts like this. Very discouraging. But it's been pointed out that others have had very good experiences.
I'm still leaving towards filling my R2 reservation when my window comes up in a couple of months, but can't help but wonder if I'm being stupid.

I have higher hopes for the R2 as some of the most common failure points on R1 don't exist on R2.

 

[Husky]

I wouldn't consider those comparable replacements. Maybe the GV90 though?
Also, they don't seem to be exempt from ICCU issues like the other Hyundai/Kia EVs.

I don't think they are, but Hyundai Motor Group is not being transparent at all about the ICCU issue, and whether the newer (2026?) models have a new design that's been fixed. We have a '24 EV6 and just love it (our first and only EV at this point), but I do worry about our ICCU failing.

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