New to Rivian and wondering how current owners find the repair experience?

[RivianDD]

I live over an hour from the closest Rivian shop. Hoping the new R2 will be reliable and mostly 'fixable' over the air, but wondered what actual owners think about the repair experience. I've had a Tesla Model Y for three years, and while I haven't had many problems my Tesla shop (Norfolk, VA) is a disaster to deal with and it's a long drive (hour plus) from home. I've heard a few snippets about Rivian mobile service but would love to have a better idea of what to expect.

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[sparked]

I would expect growing pains and it being a little bumpy. We can obviously hope for the best that that they scale up service centers and mobile service smoothly, but it's probably unrealistic. I have the same concerns of not being a current Rivian owner and being over an hour away, but I think I will just deal with it.

 

[VandalSibs]

Rivian is in a similar place as Tesla was when it launched Model 3, in that there were not as many service centers and repairs were tougher to schedule (if they weren't critical).

They are planning on expanding the number of service centers by quite a bit in the next two years (I think the goal is 150 by the end of 2027, and more in 2028), which is going to help quite a bit.

And also like Tesla, Rivian is staffing up quite a large mobile service fleet to cover areas further away from service centers, and the experiences I've had with them have been very good.

By the by, being an only an hour away from a SC is quite nice - I'm four to five hours away from the nearest one!

 

[iamnid]

I've had my R1S for almost 2 years. I've had a few small things fixed -- a few done by the mobile service where they came to my office to make small repairs. I also had two recalls which required taking the vehicle in to a service center (luckily about 10 miles away for me) and leaving the vehicle there for the day while I was provided a rental.

I'm not sure if I'd get one if I lived hundreds of miles away from a service center.

 

[mkg3]

I would expect growing pains and it being a little bumpy. We can obviously hope for the best that that they scale up service centers and mobile service smoothly, but it's probably unrealistic. I have the same concerns of not being a current Rivian owner and being over an hour away, but I think I will just deal with it.

It's this ^^^^^.

I am a 3 year Rivian owner and live in the area that has 3 service centers nearby in SoCal.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

An hour away is probably right around the limit of being iffy. I was three hours away, and that was too far.

 

[Noplacelikeloam]

Hit and miss. Im lucky in the PNW area, the SC here are really good IMO. BUT and its a big BUT, they wont give you a loaner for something that might take a day or two. Thats fine in theory but in reality your vehicle isnt always done in time and you end up with no car and uber credits that run out fast. Ive had push to push back a repair 4 times because of this. The system is the let down, not the SC IMO.

 

[CharonPDX]

#1 - People with negative experiences are *FAR* more likely to report it than people with positive experiences. It's around 10-to-1 IIRC. So if you see 10 negative posts, and 1 positive post, that probably means it's actually 50/50 positive-negative experiences.

Just to set the expectation - you'll probably see a lot of people posting about bad service experiences, that doesn't mean bad actually outnumber good by that much.

I am one of the "mostly positive". The city I'm in has two service centers, both "close enough" for me. (~9 miles and ~12 miles.) I've had positive actual-service-experiences with both. One tends to have a much longer wait time for non-urgent issues, but both are pretty long (usually 6-10 weeks out.) But both have taken care of the few urgent issues I've had quickly. Including when I had a "weeks away" non-urgent appointment already on the books for one of the recall checks, and got my 12V warning, they sent a mobile tech out to my house to do the 12V swap within a couple days. (Sadly, that recall check couldn't be done by mobile, or they would have combined them.)

 

[Christopher1000]

I had an R1T for 3.5 years, received mine shortly after launch, sold because their service was so bad and about once per year or would brick and have to be towed in. I live in the DC area. I would not buy another Rivian for that reason

 

[jrmbadger]

I think each service center is a bit different. I know in Minneapolis, mine has been really good. Others have had much worse luck. You may want to post a thread asking about experiences with your particular service center.

 

[Zorg]

Biggest issues with R1 seems to be: suspension, clutch disconnect and front axles.

The suspension is much much simpler on the R2 and the vehicle weighs less so axles and clutch should not be an issue.

Still, new carmaker and new vehicle, so it won't be perfect day 1. I would expect less issues than with R1 though.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

My service center appointments have been generally good so far. But maybe more like 7.5 or 8 out of 10.

 

[Dark-Fx]

R2 appointments are currently next day at my SC.

I had the rear disconnect blow up on my R1T on July 3rd, when Rivian was closed. Had it towed down to the SC. They determined it needed a new drive unit and did the repair. I picked the truck back up on the 9th. Apparently some other stuff got damaged too, 20+ hours of labor later I owed nothing, all warranty. Rivian is still very quick for any issues where the vehicle is undrivable.

 

[Doggman]

Will chime in with another positive review. I'm not miles and miles from a SC but a good 45 minute drive with traffic. I've had a couple of visits for "adjustments" (alignment, body panel stuff). Both were easily scheduled on the app for within a business week and both times I was offered an earlier slot within 24 hours of my initial request. Colorado is well covered with three service centers in Denver Metro and one in Colo Springs but there are also a lot of Rivians on the road here so more demand, presumably. They must be doing something right.

I also just had my 9000k tire rotation which I booked for next week on the app, then they called within a couple of hours and said they could send the mobile guy out to me yesterday. Definitely worth the $50 bucks it cost vs throwing my back out lugging 90 pound wheels around my garage. He was also kind enough to make some tweaks to the headliner and close up some gaps in the way back that I pointed out at the last minute.

Keep in mind that owners with negative SC experiences are just a subset of all the owners who have had Rivian service center interactions and those are but a subset of all Rivian owners. Most of us are not experiencing catastrophic failures or terrible interactions with service, we're just not motivated enough to post about it.

Only Rivian knows the actual numbers but if this were not the case it would defy logic that Rivian would still be in business after 5+ years of shipping vehicles and in the middle of launching their new model (looking at you Fisker). This is not to say that Rivian's failure rate isn't higher than that of legacy manufacturers, as a start up it almost certainly is. But by mostly reading the posts of owners who are (rightly) frustrated and pissed off because they've been left high and dry by their bricked $100k baby and feel they were screwed over by their mechanic you are going to be biased in favor of overstating the risk that the same will happen to you. It's definitely not zero but it's also not a foregone outcome.

 

[sas6]

I have owned over 30 cars in my life and I would say my Rivian service experience is the best car dealer experience I have ever had by far. I’ve owned BMWs, Mercedes, Porsche, Lexus, Teslas. The service reps are the most communicative and accommodating I have ever had. I had a bad experience with my brand new R1S where the HV battery failed in the 3 rd week. My SC is an hour away and I was able to drive the car in. They immediately gave me a loaner - an R1T and I didn’t love it. They sent out a swap the next day to my house (a second generation R1S which was great). Everyday they communicated with me twice a day what was happening. Two weeks later when the new battery was installed I picked up the car but I had to get a new iPhone while the battery was disconnected and I couldn’t gat a digital key because the old phone was in the cache but I needed to take the car to LA that day. When I got here I called roadside service and they got me into the Burbank SC the same morning and they fixed the issue in 15 minutes. Two great service center experiences and two great roadside service call experiences - compared to my Tesla days this was unbeatable. I agree more people complain than compliment. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Rivian.

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