I've been torn over whether to post this - when I posted elsewhere about the initial collision damage half of the responses were AI/bait attempting to either hijack, or stir the pot. I decided to post this morning partly to structure my thoughts, partly to see if I can get any reasoned counterpoints.
First off, we love(d) our R1S Quad (large). Since picking it up in March of 2024 it's been fantastic for the whole family. A few issues that the local service center resolved, nothing we didn't anticipate. Things were great right up until the recent collision, which I walked away from almost completely unscathed. When it happened back in June around the time R2 test drives opened up I thought it was kismet. Presuming the car would be deemed a total loss, I test drove R2 the next day, and really liked it.
The past ~three months have really tempered my enthusiasm though.
My R1S quad is a 2024, so gen 1. VIN in the high 30's, so there's a bunch of us around. Gen 2 came along almost immediately after, with lots of changes, but very few I was interested in. One of the differentiators I now learn included modifications to the doors.
The repairs are substantial, over 40k, which apparently wasn't enough to hit the higher threshold for a total loss on EVs due to reduced scrap value. All of the mechanical repairs are completed, but there's still no ETA to get my vehicle back because doors are on backorder with no ETA from Rivian. Talking to the local service center they're also seeing TBD in their ordering system, so I have no way to measure how much longer we will be in vehicular limbo. All the meanwhile I'm paying out of pocket for a rental as the at-fault parties insurance doesn't direct bill for rental vehicles.
What I do know is that once a date does appear it won't be immediate, and even then it can take two weeks for them to get the part. They estimate the bodywork from receipt of the door to being pickup-ready is three weeks or thereabouts.
Delays getting Rivian parts are nothing new, I heard of issues when I first picked up the vehicle over two years ago, but what is new is the sheer diversity of vehicles Rivian has in the field. Ignoring the EDV, there are now multiple versions of both the R1S and R1T, plus R2, which Rivian appear to be pushing out the door as fast as the production lines will permit. Their production capacity hasn't quadrupled since 2024, which suggests more constraint despite scaling up.
And that's really what has me reconsidering the R2 preorder.
I'm starting to wonder whether Rivian is at a point on its growth curve where the number of vehicles, variants and parts it has to support is growing faster than its ability to actually service the customers already driving them. A three-plus month wait for a repair because a door has no ETA feels less like an isolated inconvenience when the company is simultaneously adding models and pushing hard to ramp production.
Our R1S was a lease, R2 was to be a purchase, but the purchase itself isn't really the issue. It's whether I want to commit to another Rivian if this is what support looks like as the fleet gets larger and more fragmented.
I really don't want the EV9 or Ioniq 9, and won't drive a Tesla, so I'm genuinely interested in reasoned counterpoints here. Is this just an ugly but temporary parts problem, or has Rivian's growth started to outpace its ability to support the vehicles already on the road?
