Where's the bottleneck?

[SeaGeo]

Throwing out a crazy idea. Are the service centers and/or guides potentially the delivery bottleneck?

Guides: we've head about a good number if unresponsive or slow to respond guides. And wr haven't heard of a large number I'd guides making new introductions lately. But we also know that there are a lot of vehicles to be delivered that have been produced. I think this is less likely, but it seems odd that we aren't hearing of more guide intros recently.


Service centers:
The Bellevue service center seems to be pretty consistently full of trucks. Yet there seems (to me) to be relatively few recent deliveries other than a handful to eastern Washington over the last week or two. Are the service centers having to do enough finishing touches on the trucks that they aren't assigning then for delivery? Are they holding them for a part? Keys? Lol.



Just guessing at things. Both of these things could be totally off.

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[lostpacket]

Feels like service techs (depending on level) would need more experience and training than guides.

Someone motioned in another thread their mobile service visit was with a master technician (or some title like that) who was training other techs and was just recently working at the production factory in Normal.

 

[Guy]

It is a good point. Home delivery, especially hours from a center means they can only deliver one or two per day per flatbed. This does limit them. They should have regularly factory pick up dates (say every other Friday) as well as the option to pick up from the center itself. I live near Philadelphia and vehicles need to be delivered hours from NYC or Rockville. This is inefficient given the number of centers currently open.

 

[r1vlife]

Service Center
From my experience, it seems that they don't have enough adequately trained personnel that are able to identify and correct issues found at the service center final inspection while they are preparing for delivery. As you can see from my posts, they missed quite a few things on my vehicle and others.

When the senior service technician came to service my vehicle, he said it wasn't uncommon for them to receive trucks missing door handle trim pieces but I was potentially the first to be delivered a vehicle with the door handle trim piece missing.

Guide
I had a conversation with my guide about delivery pickup instead of home drop-off. I figured I could put those additional miles on my vehicle. He mentioned that it's much easier on the service center and there's more time available when you do a pickup at a service center. With that, I'm assuming their system assumes everyone wants the truck delivered to their home and therefore the delays we are seeing with people receiving their trucks. Not the mention, the 8th step automatically sets you up for a home delivery.

Additionally, I was going to hold off on the purchase of my R1T since I wasn't getting good information on what the off road package, now rebranded underbody shield was provided. The guides aren't given information that they can provide to us future owners to make an informed decision on our purchases. The questions I asked are what am I really getting with this? Weight? How much more impact can it take? And all my guide was able to give was what was listen on the Rivian site. He wasn't able to extract any more from their internal teams. Given how others have received R1Ts without the underbody shield, I'm not sure if adding it was a good option or not and only time will tell what we really got out of it.

I'm thinking at this point they roll with what you ordered/signed PBA on, and hold the truck until you sign the actual purchase agreement. If you renege they shift the vin to someone else. And maybe there are others just holding out for information, hence why the service center is full of R1Ts.

 

[Matt D.]

I definitely think Rivian is paying a price for slow walking their infrastructure roll out.

 

[Mygrain]

Are they holding them for a part?

I've wondered about this. I've read several articles in Automotive News about shortages at legacy automakers that would support this scenario. If a new vehicle is sitting at a service center waiting for a part, does is count as "built?"

 

[Max]

Curious how many R1Ts fail the inspection at service centers before delivery and how many of the one’s that fail could be repaired at service centers. That could add to delay.

P.S. Wife spotted a white R1T yesterday in northern Maryland. She kept telling me don’t hover over it. I said anyone driving one of these is asking for it and used to it. It was the first unexpected sighting in the wild. And mighty cool to see. So they are delivering them here.

 

[COdogman]

I can’t remember who around here said it, but they had just visited the Denver service center which had like 40 trucks at the time. An employee told him all of those trucks were actually there for service, not immediate delivery. Some were heading to NM And surrounding states but needed to go through there first. So it seems like Rivian is catching at least *some* of the issues before they get to customers… That may explain part of the bottleneck issue If it’s happening in other locations too, which I would assume it is since all the trucks came from the same factory.

Regarding service center pick vs delivery, it’s probably different in each state, but they would need a dealer’s license to allow sales and pickup at their location. I know that is one reason the Denver center is not open to the public yet - they are waiting on approval of that application. So they may be stuck doing all deliveries until they are in the clear with that.

 

[nc10]

Just guessing at things. Both of these things could be totally off.

Other guesses (literally complete guesses)

- In January Rivian tells us they shut down production to revamp something on their lines, seems like they said a couple weeks? Maybe they are similarly revamping the delivery process now that they have some "real world" experience.

- Rivian had 1300 undelivered vehicles at the end of the quarter. Maybe they are doing software updates or implementing some other fix before delivering. Seems like someone mentioned here that this came up in a discussion at a SC? (I vote for a rumor that Rivian is fixing phantom power drain....)

- A few hundred vehicles have been produced with OC or FE interiors, but Rivian has found some defects with OC or FE that needs to be fixed before resuming deliveries.

- Rivian has found some problem with R1S production or an R1S design problem that needs to be fixed before resuming production/delivieres

 

[Scoiatael]

I've wondered about this. I've read several articles in Automotive News about shortages at legacy automakers that would support this scenario. If a new vehicle is sitting at a service center waiting for a part, does is count as "built?"

Yep. Ford and GM have some factory lots full of trucks waiting for a couple parts. Same thing if something breaks. Some people have their truck sitting at the dealer for weeks waiting for parts to fix something that would only take a few hours of labor.

 

[moosehead]

Feels like bottlenecks at every point of the critical path, from Normal to transport to service centers. In an effort to at least keep things progressing, assembled rigs that pass QC 1 get put on transports as soon as possible even if missing parts or needing next level software and QC. Rivian Service Centers then have QC 2, missing parts, and software updates, and final pre-delivery inspection to execute.

As @COdogman noted, Denver Service Center has consistently had 25-45 R1T's on the outside lot for the past 5 weeks or so, with many of the interior service bays looking full. Another exterior surface lot is being paved for what looks to be intended for additional new vehicle staging and preparation pre-delivery.

EDIT: Based on forum posts, SC’s are also likely seeing greater than normal customer service return issues in early production adding to the bottleneck, ie: parts, software, audio bugs, paint, etc.

To the contrary, most legacy car dealers in Denver have little to no vehicles in their showrooms or lots.

 

[zipzag]

Yep. Ford and GM have some factory lots full of trucks waiting for a couple parts. Same thing if something breaks. Some people have their truck sitting at the dealer for weeks waiting for parts to fix something that would only take a few hours of labor.

I don't believe that Rivian can claim production on incomplete vehicles that they are not willing to deliver.

Feels like bottlenecks at every point of the critical path, from Normal to transport to service centers. In an effort to at least keep things progressing, assembled rigs that pass QC 1 get put on transports as soon as possible even if missing parts or needing next level software and QC. Rivian Service Centers then have QC 2, missing parts, and software updates, and final pre-delivery inspection to execute.

As @COdogman noted, Denver Service Center has consistently had 25-45 R1T's on the outside lot for the past 5 weeks or so, with many of the interior service bays looking full. Another exterior surface lot is being paved for what looks to be intended for additional new vehicle staging and preparation pre-delivery.

To the contrary, most legacy car dealers in Denver have little to no vehicles in their showrooms or lots.

I agree. There is almost certainly friction through the whole processes of getting the vehicle into customers possession. Plus production may have surged in March

 

[Forager]

I think there’s a strong possibility the service center and service technicians are a, if not the, bottleneck.

At a production rate of 50k/yr, and an average of 4 weeks between guide contact and delivery, there would be 4K people in contact with guides at any time. Assuming one guide can handle workload for 50 customers, that’s “only” 80 guides. The Guide role seems easily scalable since it is essentially an admin/customer service role and can be done remotely.

Service center techs however are much more difficult. First, it’s a technical position that requires significant training and experience. Even if Rivian can poach techs from competitors (JLR, Tesla, Ford, Toyota), very few will have BEV experience and none will have Rivian experience. Until Q1 this year, Rivian had very few trucks available to train techs —just a few mules sparsely located in IL, MI, and CA. This means every tech would need to get housed in one of those areas for at least a few weeks for training. Then consider that techs must be based near a service center, so now your talent pool is shrunk because you need to find a niche skill in a particular location. While considered a tech company, I would be surprised if Rivian is offering relocation packages and equity that would entice someone to move from North Carolina to Florida (for example).

The next tech problem comes from actually servicing the trucks. A factory producing 300 trucks per week could overwhelm a modest fleet of service techs with field repairs. If each truck leaves the factory with 3 repairs, those are 900 known flaws per week. Assuming a mobile tech can make the 3 repairs in 2 hours, and a service call is 1.5 hours in transit time —they could maybe service 3 vehicles a day remotely. So now, for every week of factory output, it takes one tech 100 days to complete service calls.

I realized these are a lot of hypotheticals, but it’s to illustrate how minor issues culminate at scale. We’ve already seen people needing to schedule service and being told the next appointment is 1-2 weeks out just to run diagnostics.

Then there’s the issue of service centers themselves. I haven’t kept up with the service center buildout, but I work in building design and construction and big companies new to large buildouts are often surprised at the difficulty in scaling building infrastructure. Companies used to mass producing widgets really get thrown off track when you start talking about differences in jurisdictional permit processes, permit timelines, code requirements, and construction practices. There is no one-size fits all with buildings.

At this point, even if a factory is producing 300 trucks a week, are there 300 new orders being placed each week in the metro areas they are ready to deliver? For now, probably, but for how long?

I suspect the immediate bottle neck are minor known production flaws and lack of service techs to repair them, and the next bottleneck will be service centers capable of delivering trucks.

 

[Zoidz]

Feels like bottlenecks at every point of the critical path, from Normal to transport to service centers. In an effort to at least keep things progressing, assembled rigs that pass QC 1 get put on transports as soon as possible even if missing parts or needing next level software and QC. Rivian Service Centers then have QC 2, missing parts, and software updates, and final pre-delivery inspection to execute.

As @COdogman noted, Denver Service Center has consistently had 25-45 R1T's on the outside lot for the past 5 weeks or so, with many of the interior service bays looking full. Another exterior surface lot is being paved for what looks to be intended for additional new vehicle staging and preparation pre-delivery.

To the contrary, most legacy car dealers in Denver have little to no vehicles in their showrooms or lots.

When I visited Denver this week, there were 25-27 vehicles on the lot. Most of them had quite a bit of dust and rain washed dust streaks on them. The tonneau covers had plenty of "dust puddles" on them where water had pooled and evaporated. That made me think that they had been sitting there for a lot more than a day or two. Where I live that would be a week or more accumulation, but I'm not familiar with Denver's situation. I should have asked the tech I talked to what was going on with them, I didn't. It did/does seem odd that they have so many sitting there. Labor or parts shortage? Maybe both.

 

[OverZealous]

I suspect the immediate bottle neck are minor known production flaws and lack of service techs to repair them, and the next bottleneck will be service centers capable of delivering trucks.

This also adds another reason why so many people are getting vehicles in the same region. Beyond the obvious about having a service center nearby, it makes sense to have a cluster of vehicles with an active group of trained techs so they can accumulate data to improve production quality all at once.

As production issues are mopped up, and vehicles (hopefully) start coming off the line with fewer issues, the risk of delivering a bunch of vehicles with the same issues drops, and it's easier to deliver them further from up-and-running service centers.

Looking at the forum, it definitely feels like 2/3 of serious issues (not panel gaps) fall into the same few categories, and hopefully these can all be fixed with software and/or production line improvements.

(At least, I can hope this is the case, since I'm in the Rivian corridor of sadness.)

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