? New Rivian email: production sequence adjustments to maximize production output in spite of supply challenge

[Dark-Fx]

For those who've signed the PBA with Ocean Coast...

Is there still a chance that they've produced a certain amount of vehicles with OC already? Or, that they have enough acceptable OC wood panels to produce the few OCs that have gotten the PBAs?

I'm holding out hope for those of you in this situation that there's still potential you'll get your vehicles before fall.

My guess is it's just in time producing. They probably got the parts in transit and filled PBAs. When the parts got to the plant they didn't pass QC.

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[Jac]

LE holder for the R1S, just signed my PBA. My car is locked to OC, now I have to talk with the guide and change to BM. How does Rivian not know OC is delayed until now? People are upset because we signed a PBA, locked an order in, and only 5 days later find out we won’t get the car until Fall. Rivian is proving itself a dishonest company. It’s not just lack of communication. Like how did this forum know last month OC is gonna be delayed and yet the CEO implies there is no delay and then a week later yup there is a delay. Likely more concerned about the stock price than all of us loyal fans.

Rivian is definitely and appropriately most concerned about proving to its shareholders it can ramp up production. Shareholders appreciate profit for Rivian is far in the future. Despite Rivian’s cash on hand and Amazon relationship, confidence in Rivian‘s future demands they meet or exceed their near term production ramp goals.

Everything frustrated LE and OC reservation holders are saying is understandable, but all of us buying R1Ss and R1Ts most of all want Rivian to succeed long term.

 

[AdamsFan1983]

A couple of thoughts:

- There's been a lot of complaining about Rivian not providing detailed communication. Now they provide one of the most detailed communications to date, and there's still plenting of complaining. I say "kudos to Rivian" for this transparent announcement. I hope we see more like this, even if it pisses the masses off.

- Is it unfair that Adventures are shipping before all LEs? Let's look at that another way. Would it be fair to thousands of employees and stock holders to layoff everyone, and shut down the factory for 6 months, and then go through a rehiring process, just so IN THE NAME OF FAIRNESS all LE orders with OC get fullfilled before the very first Adventure? Hypothetical Rivian announcement Jan 2023: "We regret that we are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy today due to low sales and cash flow, but dammit all, we upheld our commitment, come hell, high water or bankruptcy, to ship all LEs first."

- What did you expect when you placed your order with a startup company? The painful truth is there are some pretty naive people here that should not have placed orders. I have a high tolerance for what Rivian is going through right now because I have seen these problems time and time again in start up factories, and have "invested" in a number of Kickstarter campaigns. This risk of delay, failure and unfair delivery results goes with the territory when you place an order with a startup, like it or not.

+1

 

[Scoiatael]

I didn’t receive this email so I’m going to assume my Q4 delivery window is going to slip to 1H23 as folks change configurations to take advantage of batching. On the plus side I can stop obsessing over exterior color choices as that’s likely up to the timing my eventual guide provides.

I have July - Sept window and I'm fairly certain my truck will slip to 1H23. They cut their production in target in half this year, and the current estimate windows are from the full production estimate. On the bright side this will give me 6 months or more with the F150 Lightning so I can decide if I like it enough or decide to sell it and take delivery of an R1T (assuming my dealer doesn't add last minute ADM).

 

[AdamsFan1983]

My guess is it's just in time producing. They probably got the parts in transit and filled PBAs. When the parts got to the plant they didn't pass QC.

Gonna point out that I’ve seen Rivian utilizing third-party/independent qc inspectors on incoming components (don’t know for how many components or to why degree they’re inspecting).

 

[Jay565]

Rivian is definitely and appropriately most concerned about proving to its shareholders it can ramp up production. Shareholders appreciate profit for Rivian is far in the future. Despite Rivian’s cash on hand and Amazon relationship, confidence in Rivian‘s future demands they meet or exceed their near term production ramp goals.

Everything frustrated LE and OC reservation holders are saying is understandable, but all of us buying R1Ss and R1Ts most of all want Rivian to succeed long term.

The way yo success in business is to never focus on short term shareholder gain. Any real business will tell you that. Being honest and forthright bodes well for Rivian’s future. Not underhanded dishonest moves like changing the price for all preholders shortly after an IPO rather than before, all in the name of not spooking the IPO price. How has that gone for them? We are all here wanting Rivian to succeed, and the best way is be honest and pay attention to your customers. If they do that the share price will follow.

 

[Zoidz]

This solution has been suggested repeatedly but would not be as easy as it sounds. Sure, you could install Ocean Coast seats with a different color dashboard trim. The problem is the door panels, center console, and steering wheel contain both the wood trim and color matched vegan leather. These pieces surely arrive at the factory pre-assembled and could not easily be swapped to have darker wood with the gray vegan leather.

And to extend this thought, it's possible that the OEM supplying the dash is different from the rest of the interior. Rivian stated that OC i's more difficult to produce. Part of the problem could be that dash wood is shipped directly to the dash manufacturer, and trim wood is shipped directly to the trim manufacturer, and when it all merges together at final assembly, the colors are noticebly off. I can't speak for Rivian, but I was on a factory tour of the Mini plant in England. That's how it comes together at Mini.

 

[Jac]

The way yo success in business is to never focus on short term shareholder gain. Any real business will tell you that. Being honest and forthright bodes well for Rivian’s future. Not underhanded dishonest moves like changing the price for all preholders shortly after an IPO rather than before, all in the name of not spooking the IPO price. How has that gone for them? We are all here wanting Rivian to succeed, and the best way is be honest and pay attention to your customers. If they do that the share price will follow.

Of course honest communication is important! My point is Rivian’s top priority is hitting or exceeding their production ramp goals. They need to do both. Yesterday’s email was an effort to communicate more transparently. I spent years in my career leading marketing and communications teams. Rivian would be well served to supplement these emails with more detailed and explanatory Q&As to address the FAQs of affected customers.

Clearly, there is also an opportunity to align the messaging customers are receiving from Guides and customer service reps. Customers should receive one consistent message on any given question from every point of contact. Following rivianforums, there are way too many examples of conflicting answers being received.

This is a culture/leadership issue.

 

[Sgt Beavis]

This solution has been suggested repeatedly but would not be as easy as it sounds. Sure, you could install Ocean Coast seats with a different color dashboard trim. The problem is the door panels, center console, and steering wheel contain both the wood trim and color matched vegan leather. These pieces surely arrive at the factory pre-assembled and could not easily be swapped to have darker wood with the gray vegan leather.

I'd have to disagree with you my friend. The only real concern is whether they have enough of the darker wood parts to use them on the OC colors. In your assertion, there are a few assumptions that may be off. For one, I'm not talking about swapping existing part I'm talking about making new parts with different colored veneers from the get go, at the vendor. There is no reason the vendor can't change the veneer in their production process. Every single interior component that has the OC interior can be made with darker wood veneers from the very start.

 

[EBEG]

You're not wrong, per se, but you are missing the last panel...

Research has been done on this phenomenon. When you pick the good line at the grocery store, you minimize the luck and forget about the benefit rather quickly. When you pick the line behind someone writing checks for an order being split into 3 transactions you get upset and remember the unlucky waste of time.

 

[HokieBird7980]

So as with every other OC preorder holder, i'm extremely disappointed that it's going to be another 6 months (if not more) before we see the OC interiors. It's been since Dec 2018 for me, so this would put it pretty close to 4 years. I was wondering though, how many of the OC interiors currently configured are actually tied with Launch Green, which is a color we'll never see again? Mine is that way and now i'm wondering if I'm one of a ton of OC preorders with LG, or if the OC interior preorders are evenly split across multiple exteriors? Could be that LG and OC will be a more rare configuration if many of those initially configured in that combo elect to change to FE or BM. Something to think through, as it may be that once OC is available, the Launch Edition, Launch Green's may be first to come down the line (at least I'm hoping they would be) but that may depend on how many of that combo are left to fill in the fall. Why is it that i feel like i'm "Falling" further down the list with my OC interior?

Waiting for guide to also confirm whether Camp Kitchen and RoofTop Tent are both also delayed (from what i hear they are until sometime in 2023). If that's the case, then the truck as i had imagined using it wouldn't be complete until sometime in 2023 and perhaps that means i should wait anyway. Got 111,000 miles on the Alpina now, what's another 10k miles on it by the fall.

 

[junkanoo]

A couple of thoughts:

- There's been a lot of complaining about Rivian not providing detailed communication. Now they provide one of the most detailed communications to date, and there's still plenting of complaining. I say "kudos to Rivian" for this transparent announcement. I hope we see more like this, even if it pisses the masses off.

- Is it unfair that Adventures are shipping before all LEs? Let's look at that another way. Would it be fair to thousands of employees and stock holders to layoff everyone, and shut down the factory for 6 months, and then go through a rehiring process, just so IN THE NAME OF FAIRNESS all LE orders with OC get fullfilled before the very first Adventure? Hypothetical Rivian announcement Jan 2023: "We regret that we are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy today due to low sales and cash flow, but dammit all, we upheld our commitment, come hell, high water or bankruptcy, to ship all LEs first."

- What did you expect when you placed your order with a startup company? The painful truth is there are some pretty naive people here that should not have placed orders. I have a high tolerance for what Rivian is going through right now because I have seen these problems time and time again in start up factories, and have "invested" in a number of Kickstarter campaigns. This risk of delay, failure and unfair delivery results goes with the territory when you place an order with a startup, like it or not.

Rather than deal in "people are saying nonsense" this is what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting that EVERYONE gets their LE order first. What I am suggesting is that somebody that puts in a 2022 order doesn't get a fricken white truck with 20" wheels just because he lives near a service center while a guy in Upstate NY who order years earlier, isn't even getting any honest communication (or communication at all). Start-up, smart-up ... those kinds of lessons one should have learned in kindergarten.

You make it sound like this "start up" is like three freshmen that left school to mine bitcoin. What happened to the narrative of ... battle-tough vets from Tesla, Ford and Lotus coming over to Rivian? Who is in place at Rivian at a senior level who hasn't done their role elsewhere ... OOPS ... except for the CEO ... see what I did there?

No one forced Rivian to offer priority delivery to Launch Edition customers. That's on them.
No one forced Rivian to pretend they were ready for a National Launch. That's on them.
No one forced Rivian to continue to pretend a customer in the Northeast has the same chance at a truck as a customer on the West Coast. That's on them.
No one forced them to tell customers baloney five days ago, they know is wrong. That's on them.

Sure things go wrong, but that doesn't give Rivian carte blanche into bad business practices.

 

[R_1_T]

You make it sound like this "start up" is like three freshmen that left school to mine bitcoin. What happened to the narrative of ... battle-tough vets from Tesla, Ford and Lotus coming over to Rivian? Who is in place at Rivian at a senior level who hasn't done their role elsewhere ... OOPS ... except for the CEO ... see what I did there?

No one forced Rivian to offer priority delivery to Launch Edition customers. That's on them.
No one forced Rivian to pretend they were ready for a National Launch. That's on them.
No one forced Rivian to continue to pretend a customer in the Northeast has the same chance at a truck as a customer on the West Coast. That's on them.
No one forced them to tell customers baloney five days ago, they know is wrong. That's on them.

Sure things go wrong, but that doesn't give Rivian carte blanche into bad business practices.

While I won't disagree that there's been significant self-inflicted damage done by Rivian themselves, how many of these "battle-tough vets" were (a) involved in the launch of a new company, and (b) had to deal with the type of supply chain issues we've seen in the last couple of years?

This is basically uncharted territory. Essentially the worst possible time to start a new company reliant upon a global supply chain, short of a full on world war - which may yet happen.

 

[Zoidz]

Rather than deal in "people are saying nonsense" this is what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting that EVERYONE gets their LE order first. What I am suggesting is that somebody that puts in a 2022 order doesn't get a fricken white truck with 20" wheels just because he lives near a service center while a guy in Upstate NY who order years earlier, isn't even getting any honest communication (or communication at all). Start-up, smart-up ... those kinds of lessons one should have learned in kindergarten.

Let's walk through your example from a real world "get it done" business perspective.

White R1T is shipped to So Cal delivery center for a 2018 reservation holder. At the last minute, financing falls through, buyer backs out, whatever. Now Rivian has an orphaned white truck with 20" wheels. Rivian wants to sell that vehicle as fast as possible so they search for reservations matches and find one in So Cal from 2019 where there is a delivery center, and one from 2018 in upstate NY where there is no delivery center. Customer order specs are identical.

From a business efficiency and customer service viewpoint (knowing that you have X% post delivery service calls), where should the vehicle be delivered?

 

[junkanoo]

While I won't disagree that there's been significant self-inflicted damage done by Rivian themselves, how many of these "battle-tough vets" were (a) involved in the launch of a new company, and (b) had to deal with the type of supply chain issues we've seen in the last couple of years?

This is basically uncharted territory. Essentially the worst possible time to start a new company reliant upon a global supply chain, short of a full on world war - which may yet happen.

Agreed. It's the customer relationship part of the business that I'm addressing. No need to treat a LE customer (which I'm not) like they will grow better with manure dumped on them.

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