Rivian’s Allocation; Complex or Out of Control?

[EVTrucking]

My pre order date is 3/21 for a Adventure/FG/Large/BM. Nearest SC is SLC 346 miles away. Current delivery window is July-September 2022. No contact yet.

Rivian’s stated allocation methodology is configuration/location/pre order date. I have no issue with that.

What bothers me is that folks with pre order dates in September and October 2021 are already driving their R1T. While folks with pre order dates in 2018, 2019, 2020 have not heard anything. I am specifically referring to folks that have the current available configurations.

I am and have been a strong supporter of Rivian but in this particular issue I think Rivian is out of control.

Whoever is doing the allocation at Rivian seems to not have customer satisfaction as part of there performance metric.

There can be no reasonable justification for someone with a pre order date in 2021 let alone 9/21 having a truck or an assigned guide at this point in time.

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[yorty]

My pre order date is 3/21 for a Adventure/FG/Large/BM. Nearest SC is SLC 346 miles away. Current delivery window is July-September 2022. No contact yet.

Rivian’s stated allocation methodology is configuration/location/pre order date. I have no issue with that.

What bothers me is that folks with pre order dates in September and October 2021 are already driving their R1T. While folks with pre order dates in 2018, 2019, 2020 have not heard anything. I am specifically referring to folks that have the current available configurations.

I am and have been a strong supporter of Rivian but in this particular issue I think Rivian is out of control.

Whoever is doing the allocation at Rivian seems to not have customer satisfaction as part of there performance metric.

There can be no reasonable justification for someone with a pre order date in 2021 let alone 9/21 having a truck or an assigned guide at this point in time.

Complete Agreement!

 

[Michaewh]

Yes, it sucks.

 

[DJG]

Well they are satisfying customers, just not a specific sub class of customer above all else. Which is their right to do.

I'm fairly certain that Rivian, with 90,000 preorders, is not looking at things on an individual customer level. They are standing back and looking at the big picture and saying, yeah, we're clearing our oldest orders first and reducing the average length of preorder across our entire customer base. They are far too busy and under far too much pressure to get involved at a micro level of ensuring vehicles aren't delivered to 2021 orders before 2019 orders.

 

[EVTrucking]

Well they are satisfying customers, just not a specific sub class of customer above all else. Which is their right to do.

I'm fairly certain that Rivian, with 90,000 preorders, is not looking at things on an individual customer level. They are standing back and looking at the big picture and saying, yeah, we're clearing our oldest orders first and reducing the average length of preorder across our entire customer base. They are far too busy and under far too much pressure to get involved at a micro level of ensuring vehicles aren't delivered to 2021 orders before 2019 orders.

They don’t have 90,000 customers to satisfy, in 2022 it’s more like 15-16k!

Yes they are busy and on a steep learning curve but come on ….

As I stated I am okay with their stated allocation methodology of config/location/pre order date. All Rivian needs to do is avoid jumping ahead of folks if at all possible. It should not be a free for all who gives a shit method.

 

[yizzung]

1. Nobody (outside Rivian) really knows how widespread this issue is. We live off of anecdotes here on the message boards because (in an information vacuum) what else are we going to do? But we're talking about dozens of reports of people jumping the line out of thousands of orders. This is also the internet where [checks notes] information can occasionally be unreliable at best. Take everything with a grain of salt.
2. Rivian has a responsible to shareholders first and foremost. Not to us keyboard worries on the message board. Their #1 priority is to fulfill orders and they are going to prioritize that over all else. We just don't know what goes into the algorithm. Maybe they contact somebody from 2019, that person cancels, and the computer says, "give it to this guy from 2021 because he lives in the same town and that truck is already off the assembly line"... We just don't know but I'm fairly confident that (a) they are not idiots and (b) they are trying to ship trucks to people and collect $.
3. Demand WAY outstrips supply. They have many many many more orders than they can fulfill. That puts them in the strong position and us in the weak position. It's not great but that's the facts. For every disgruntled message board order holder, there are five more willing people to take that truck. Why are they going to bend over backwards (at the sacrifice of sales and/or margin) to satisfy an early order holder? There's just little incentive, except for...
4. Public perception. They could piss off enough people and create some kind of backlash but there's very little evidence of that happening so far in spite of people (possibly) being skipped in line. I'm one of them! Ordered two years ago and have heard crickets. So maybe there's a backlash but (wild guess) they've done the calculus and it makes more business sense to optimize for shipping trucks versus staying true to order in line.

All above is pure wild speculation on my part, based on being a cold hearted businessperson for the last three decades... YMMV.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

I think that there is a process that they are using to allocate vehicles, but I think they need to look at some of the recent outliers and try to understand and rectify why it is happening. It's obvious that some logic in their system is resulting in a random element that is not by design.

I do think that everyone needs to have the mindset that people with preorder dates after them will get a truck before them. The biggest issue to me is still communication and the lack of expectation setting that is being done to address this by Rivian. If they had released the updated delivery timeline functionality on the website "in early 2022" as originally promised, I don't think you'd have as much of an issue for most people. At this point, the delivery estimates that we all received at the end of 2021 are essentially worthless and the fact that we are all still waiting for the updated timeline is extremely disappointing.

Personally, I emailed Tony this morning explaining how disappointing it is that they keep making these unforced errors and recommend everyone in this situation do the same. He probably doesn't care about 5-10 emails, but he may care about 100+ reiterating the same point.

 

[yizzung]

I think that there is a process that they are using to allocate vehicles, but I think they need to look at some of the recent outliers and try to understand and rectify why it is happening. It's obvious that some logic in their system is resulting in a random element that is not by design.

I do think that everyone needs to have the mindset that people with preorder dates after them will get a truck before them. The biggest issue to me is still communication and the lack of expectation setting that is being done to address this by Rivian. If they had released the updated delivery timeline functionality on the website "in early 2022" as originally promised, I don't think you'd have as much of an issue for most people. At this point, the delivery estimates that we all received at the end of 2021 are essentially worthless and the fact that we are all still waiting for the updated timeline is extremely disappointing.

Personally, I emailed Tony this morning explaining how disappointing it is that they keep making these unforced errors and recommend everyone in this situation do the same. He probably doesn't care about 5-10 emails, but he may care about 100+ reiterating the same point.

I’m a July/October window. They have five months to deliver. Curious as to why that guidance is now “worthless”?

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

I’m a July/October window. They have five months to deliver. Curious as to why that guidance is now “worthless”?

Because plenty of people with Apr/May Estimates are yet to receive their vehicle and quite a few October-December estimates have already received their vehicle. We now know that if you have OC interior you aren't getting a vehicle before October even if you have a April or July delivery estimate and I think you can be confident that if you don't have the powered tonneau configured that you won't get your vehicle before 2023 even if you have a 2022 estimate.

Essentially, the logic that they used to provide those estimates is obsolete and has been for several months.

 

[IRun]

I would assume your location from a service center is much more heavily weighted. I'm pretty close to two of them and jumped the line significantly. It's much cheaper for Rivian if i'm the guinea pig opposed to someone who is 350 miles away. Especially when they need to come pick up Aunt Viv on a flatbed and then deliver back to me on a flatbed.

Regardless, I can't blame anyone for being pissed, especially the guy that said his neighbor ordered after, same config and got it before. That just isn't making sense to me unless we aren't hearing the entire story.

 

[yizzung]

Because plenty of people with Apr/May Estimates are yet to receive their vehicle and quite a few October-December estimates have already received their vehicle. We now know that if you have OC interior you aren't getting a vehicle before October even if you have a April or July delivery estimate and I think you can be confident that if you don't have the powered tonneau configured that you won't get your vehicle before 2023 even if you have a 2022 estimate.

Essentially, the logic that they used to provide those estimates is obsolete and has been for several months.

Yeah... but... the guidance about the OC has been communicated after the fact. (I have since changed my config accordingly.) I do not want the powered tonneau but have kept in my config anyway with the smug confidence that it's going to be recalled and I probably won't open it until they issue a real fix. But I digress.

That guidance was worthless to the people who didn't receive delivery within their assigned window but it was also not worthless to the people who did. What is that ratio? You don't know and neither do I. We can only guess based on internet chatter among anonymous avatars. Maybe it's 1% and maybe it's 90% but that's not enough evidence to declare all delivery window communication worthless, IMHO.

 

[EVTrucking]

Because plenty of people with Apr/May Estimates are yet to receive their vehicle and quite a few October-December estimates have already received their vehicle. We now know that if you have OC interior you aren't getting a vehicle before October even if you have a April or July delivery estimate and I think you can be confident that if you don't have the powered tonneau configured that you won't get your vehicle before 2023 even if you have a 2022 estimate.

Essentially, the logic that they used to provide those estimates is obsolete and has been for several months.

I agree that Rivian's logic is obsolete/dysfunctional and to my thinking does not help them or their customers.

I don't think the current allocation lottery is intentional but is a result lack of internal cross functional communication. Allocation thinks the #1 priority is to get trucks moved out asap regardless of customer expectations or consequences. All that matters are the numbers for Wall street. Other departments march to different priorities.

What is disappointing is Rivian's slow response to correcting the situation. Maybe that is the reason for the new head of manufacturing. Either way, it is still happening!

There are only going to be 15-16k R1s this year so please get it right!!!!!

BTW I do not see how Tonneau cover selection would make any difference. That is an add on during the production process and not a parts supply issue.

It is getting long in the tooth for the promised delivery window updates.

 

[AdamUCF]

I would assume your location from a service center is much more heavily weighted. I'm pretty close to two of them and jumped the line significantly. It's much cheaper for Rivian if i'm the guinea pig opposed to someone who is 350 miles away. Especially when they need to come pick up Aunt Viv on a flatbed and then deliver back to me on a flatbed.

Regardless, I can't blame anyone for being pissed, especially the guy that said his neighbor ordered after, same config and got it before. That just isn't making sense to me unless we aren't hearing the entire story.

I'm less than 5 miles from a service center and I keep hoping you're right but I feel like it really is a lottery. There doesn't seem to be any method to the madness.

 

[IRun]

I'm less than 5 miles from a service center and I keep hoping you're right but I feel like it really is a lottery. There doesn't seem to be any method to the madness.

I'd love to get the zip codes of everyone who has received theirs and map them. I would bet they are trying to spread them out around all service centers to prevent overloading a few of them.

 

[SoCal Rob]

I wonder if there is another factor involved: proximity to other open reservations. I haven’t seen this discussed before but I may have missed something. I only mention this because of the problem created by the reallocation of a vehicle if the original reservation-holder doesn’t complete delivery of the vehicle for any reason. I don’t know how often this happens, but I suspect that it is easier and a lot cheaper for Rivian to contact another reservation holder in close proximity should the first match not work out for any reason. These aren’t widgets boxed up in protective packaging which UPS can pickup and return to the manufacturer easily, quickly, and at relatively low cost. When I see reports of damage from transportation I have to think that Rivian doesn’t want to risk another move if they can avoid it.

As an example, if they get an R1T to the Bay Area and the deal falls apart there is a near-certainty that they can find another customer to accept delivery no matter what the configuration is. On the other hand, if the same vehicle is in Billings, Montana then what are the odds that they’ll find a match there? No match means they have to arrange and pay for transportation to another physical location.

With that in mind, it probably makes sense for them from a business perspective to deliver the most vehicles to the areas with the most demand by reservation holders first, especially while their processes are being refined. I think this probably correlates to SC locations, but I’m not sure that’s always the case.

edit: typo

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