A leap of faith that ends up with regret (Critical Battery).... by shipping R1T to Kuwait

[johstacy]

With all due respect iansriv, what does the per capita income of Kuwait have to do with Rivian making it crystal clear that support doesn't exist outside of North America?

The OP suggesting that they will make videos showing that Rivian support sucks if they don't help isn't productive either.

The best advice to the OP is to cut their losses. Even if Rivian provided some remote diagnostic service, the OP will INEVITABLY require service in the future that is non-existent in Kuwait.

This was a very bad decision by the OP. I sympathize that having a supercar fast EV truck, and maybe being the only one to have one in Kuwait, is an attractive proposition - but it was ill advised.
If Rivian is willing to provide some diagnostic service remotely to get the truck operational to get it shipped back to the US - I think that is the best outcome here.

To the OP: I would stress in your communication to Rivian that in order to even get it shipped back you need to get the thing started and loaded back into a shipping container to make the journey back.

That might be your only play for remote service - then please ship this back. Arrange to sell it while resale values are high enough that you might not take a huge loss.

Good luck.

You make the assumption that all Rivian R1T's are going to have an issue that requires an on site Tech. I simply don't believe this at all. yes they have recalls like re-torqueing bolts which can be done by a non-Rivian tech. But in general you hear about a lot of issues on these forums but that is not all Rivian owners. To have a level of expectation that you spend 100K on a truck that it will last for a period of time with manageable issues is not outside of reason. Also to have the expectation that Rivian would have the ability to remote diagnose the truck is also not outside of reason. To tell the OP basically that he is an idiot for doing what he did and that he should cut his losses is probably not the best look or advice. If the OP has the money to not only purchase a Rivian, ship it to the other side of the world, willing to pay for a tech to come to him to repair the Truck then again I don't believe he is unreasonable for doing what he did. Kuwait is a beautiful place and if I was a Rivian tech I would already have taken him up on his offer and be on a plane to fix his truck.

Also I do find it odd that you are pressing so hard for him to ship it back as if Rivian's are not allowed outside of the US... Also I get the impression that OP is not worried about losing money on this deal. I don't believe it is a driving factor for him

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[the long way downunder]

Speaking as a Rivian shareholder, the last thing I want Rivian to do is pull resources away from trying to get their R1 vehicles ramped up, a critical task for the future of their company, and redesigning elements of the R1T (power cover - which impacts me directly) to go chase down some random R1T that someone decided to ship to Kuwait knowing that they were basically on their own.

Even if Rivian sent a delegation to Kuwait to fix this dudes truck - what happens in a few weeks or months when it inevitably needs another service for something? They are going to keep diverting engineering, equipment, and, and bandwidth away from their already stretched thin resources in North America to placate someone who made a bonehead decision and doesn't want to own up to it?

No thank you.

No ill will towards the OP. I genuinely hope that Rivian helps him remotely and gets him to a point where the R1T is operational. If I were him, I would enjoy it for week - then put it on a cargo container back to the US to be sold while he can still get good resale value.

I think the OP is "owning up" to his predicament, even in the title of this thread, "leap of faith ends with regret."

Rivian is a multi-billion dollar operation on a steady cash burn till the end of '24 by which time, $RIVN might be $25 or $50 or $100 – nobody knows (except maybe Bezos and few insiders who have a plan they're not sharing, probably not sharing with the Rivian C-suite, either.) I'm guessing Bezos needs multiple EV last mile vehicle providers and Rivian is one of their first options … will they keep it or choose a fine print clause in their order and buy more from the other EV vendors they've already retained. Imagine how fiercely Ford, GM, RAM, VW and others will battle for large EV van and shuttle fleet contracts.

My napkin math puts this rescue flight at $18K in revenue, and 2 people who will benefit their work from this excursion in four days. 2 people out of 10,000. 4 days out of a quarter, call it 90 days … that's human resource utilization of (2x4) / (10,000x90) = 0.00000888888 or 0.0009% … : )
For a company burning $1.5B per quarter, the $20K revenue is equally trivial.
The execs at Rivian have made decisions that have cost literally billions of dollars. For them to decline to support their product in order to save costs or resources would be … implausible. : )

So this is not a resource or financial decision. This is not a critical path decision. It's a commitment to the product, it's support of the enthusiast owner, it's the business ethic and intent of Rivian to make decisions like people or to tap their finger on "policy" and refuse to help.

I'd like to think someone in support will run this up the chain of command and get this Rivian running.

 

[AxelR]

I'm offering advice to cut his losses and ship the R1T back instead of trying to fight a losing battle with Rivian to get a one-off remote service for a vehicle that will inevitably need service again in an area of the world where no service exists.

Unlike your comments on my comments, I'm actually trying to be helpful to the OP by giving him tough, but necessary advice.

I guess if repeating the same thing OP had stated in his first post is considered advice then sure you’re correct.

 

[Dark-Fx]

My truck has been in service for more than a month, Primarily for issues that cropped up in June. Some other issues happened since then that they are also dealing with, but there is another issue that service was asking about that they never fixed when I first got the truck in March. Earliest they can fit me in for that repair is in January. I told them not to bother since it hasn't stopped me from using the vehicle. Rivian service went from crap, to great, to crap for me.

I wouldn't expect them to have the resources to devote to a case like this, even if the person would be willing to 100% pay out of their pocket for it. There's some things money can't buy.

But realistically, OP's problem is a result of the hv battery pack voltage going far too low and the systems kicking in to protect it from becoming a conflagration. They probably aren't comfortable just doing a reset on the system and would rather a technician be able to run local diagnostics on it to make sure before re-enabling it. I hope for OP's sake they can just do a reset remotely, but I would understand why they wouldn't.

 

[SASSquatch]

I think the OP is "owning up" to his predicament, even in the title of this thread, "leap of faith ends with regret."

Rivian is a multi-billion dollar operation on a steady cash burn till the end of '24 by which time, $RIVN might be $25 or $50 or $100 – nobody knows (except maybe Bezos and few insiders who have a plan they're not sharing, probably not sharing with the Rivian C-suite, either.) I'm guessing Bezos needs multiple EV last mile vehicle providers and Rivian is one of their first options … will they keep it or choose a fine print clause in their order and buy more from the other EV vendors they've already retained. Imagine how fiercely Ford, GM, RAM, VW and others will battle for large EV van and shuttle fleet contracts.

My napkin math puts this rescue flight at $18K in revenue, and 2 people who will benefit their work from this excursion in four days. 2 people out of 10,000. 4 days out of a quarter, call it 90 days … that's human resource utilization of (2x4) / (10,000x90) = 0.00000888888 or 0.0009% … : )
For a company burning $1.5B per quarter, the $20K revenue is equally trivial.
The execs at Rivian have made decisions that have cost literally billions of dollars. For them to decline to support their product in order to save costs or resources would be … implausible. : )

So this is not a resource or financial decision. This is not a critical path decision. It's a commitment to the product, it's support of the enthusiast owner, it's the business ethic and intent of Rivian to make decisions like people or to tap their finger on "policy" and refuse to help.

I'd like to think someone in support will run this up the chain of command and get this Rivian running.

Why should Rivian stop at this R1T? Let's just start selling R1Ts on the secondary market to all kinds of countries across the world where Rivian doesn't currently sell or operate.

Where do you draw the line?

 

[SASSquatch]

You make the assumption that all Rivian R1T's are going to have an issue that requires an on site Tech. I simply don't believe this at all. yes they have recalls like re-torqueing bolts which can be done by a non-Rivian tech. But in general you hear about a lot of issues on these forums but that is not all Rivian owners. To have a level of expectation that you spend 100K on a truck that it will last for a period of time with manageable issues is not outside of reason. Also to have the expectation that Rivian would have the ability to remote diagnose the truck is also not outside of reason. To tell the OP basically that he is an idiot for doing what he did and that he should cut his losses is probably not the best look or advice. If the OP has the money to not only purchase a Rivian, ship it to the other side of the world, willing to pay for a tech to come to him to repair the Truck then again I don't believe he is unreasonable for doing what he did. Kuwait is a beautiful place and if I was a Rivian tech I would already have taken him up on his offer and be on a plane to fix his truck.

Also I do find it odd that you are pressing so hard for him to ship it back as if Rivian's are not allowed outside of the US... Also I get the impression that OP is not worried about losing money on this deal. I don't believe it is a driving factor for him

When you get to the stage of technological sophistication that you have in an R1T, much like Tesla, who lock down their vehicles so that they can only be serviced in-house (right to repair is another issue I'm not going to get into here) you are nearly 100% certain to require that the vehicle will need to be serviced by Rivian in the future and some local EV shop either won't have the right tools or access to service the truck.

 

[johstacy]

Why should Rivian stop at this R1T? Let's just start selling R1Ts on the secondary market to all kinds of countries across the world where Rivian doesn't currently sell or operate.

Where do you draw the line?

That is exactly what is going to happen and Rivian can't stop it. You can right now buy Rivian R1T battery packs on the secondary market. Actually you can buy wreaked R1T's they are current rare but they are out there. This doesn't get smaller the more Rivian's out there the more things like this will happen.

 

[Dark-Fx]

That is exactly what is going to happen and Rivian can't stop it. You can right now buy Rivian R1T battery packs on the secondary market. Actually you can buy wreaked R1T's they are current rare but they are out there. This doesn't get smaller the more Rivian's out there the more things like this will happen.

Post a link or contact info for these battery packs please. "Buy another entire vehicle" doesn't count.

 

[johstacy]

When you get to the stage of technological sophistication that you have in an R1T, much like Tesla, who lock down their vehicles so that they can only be serviced in-house (right to repair is another issue I'm not going to get into here) you are nearly 100% certain to require that the vehicle will need to be serviced by Rivian in the future and some local EV shop either won't have the right tools or access to service the truck.

Your technological sophistication is currently software if you need new computers (which I have seen with Tesla's) the he can decide to stay on old tech or ship it back to get the new tech. There are a lot of problems that can be solved with $$.

My concern is more with Rivian's refusal to help... that being said there are two sides of the story and we are only getting one side. Maybe I will bring this up to my Guide

 

[johstacy]

Post a link or contact info for these battery packs please. "Buy another entire vehicle" doesn't count.

Sure let me see if I can dig that up for you

 

[crashmtb]

"Gray market" is a government regulators concept for import into the USA and not something the vehicle manufacturers care about – vendors care about paying customers. Rivian has a paying customer in Kuwait, all they need to do is send a quote for analysis, conduct the analysis (remote diagnostics) then quote for the out-of-warranty service area.

I'd guess 2 people, 4 days, two round trip tickets, three nights accomm, stipends, that's 8 working days (4 x 2 people) at 8 hours' day, 64 hours at a shop rate of say $200 = $12,800, 2 tickets, say $1500 round trip = $3000, hotel 3 nights at $200, 3 x $400 = $1200, out of pocket for taxis, tips, incidentals, food, say $100 each per day, $800. Sum $17,800 estimate +/- 30% margin of error. Then use this experience to write up a general policy so anyone else with a Rivian anywhere in the world can call and get a quote same day and have a team headed to them within say 72hrs.

I imagine this business model would be 2x to 5x more profitable that regular field service revenue per tech while gathering valuable field service data and experience.

I'd be cautious about various regulatory issues with moving technology in and out of various countries, trade agreements or other government red tape.

I'd also look at this as an opportunity to keep that R1 on the road instead of it appearing as another auction listing of "bricked R1T, 100% perfect, software locked" asking $50K to get rid of it … that's when a competitor would snap it up and reverse-engineer it down to the component level and identify critical component suppliers, etc. I'd say there are many corporations in the auto industry that would save themselves real R&D money to have an R1T to tear down. From miscellaneous hundreds (literally) of competitors in China, to all the big names like VW and Toyota … Toyota certainly knows from its failure with the BZ4X it doesn't know how to build an EV and could well want a Rivian to vivisect (no doubt they've already done at least one of each Tesla model.)

Grey market isn’t a term invented by the US government specifically for vehicle imports.…


Rivian won’t even support a vehicle in parts of the US or all of canada right now.… because they have limited or no service infrastructure there.

why would they bend over backwards for one guy on a different continent?

 

[johstacy]

Post a link or contact info for these battery packs please. "Buy another entire vehicle" doesn't count.

So it does look like you either need to know a yard that has a wreaked Rivian to get a pack or you do have to purchase the whole wreaked Rivian to get the pack. If you want I can link the wreaked Rivian's up for auction

 

[myboodai]

With all due respect iansriv, what does the per capita income of Kuwait have to do with Rivian making it crystal clear that support doesn't exist outside of North America?

The OP suggesting that they will make videos showing that Rivian support sucks if they don't help isn't productive either.

The best advice to the OP is to cut their losses. Even if Rivian provided some remote diagnostic service, the OP will INEVITABLY require service in the future that is non-existent in Kuwait.

This was a very bad decision by the OP. I sympathize that having a supercar fast EV truck, and maybe being the only one to have one in Kuwait, is an attractive proposition - but it was ill advised.
If Rivian is willing to provide some diagnostic service remotely to get the truck operational to get it shipped back to the US - I think that is the best outcome here.

To the OP: I would stress in your communication to Rivian that in order to even get it shipped back you need to get the thing started and loaded back into a shipping container to make the journey back.

That might be your only play for remote service - then please ship this back. Arrange to sell it while resale values are high enough that you might not take a huge loss.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice but i still have hope that its going to get fixed within a month max, people here are so kind to offer helpful advice and some of them reached out to me via video calls to guide me on what to do, whenever I exhaust my options im going to send it to a garage in Dubai that worked on Rivian that i just came to know about. Please have a look at the attached picture, I haven’t thought that some of the members might guide me to right direction as if it was their personal problem.

im greatful and I believe i will get it running very soon.

 

[Ralph]

When is the right time for Rivian to provide a comprehensive maintenance/service manual? Willl owners ever have the right to repair?

 

[myboodai]

@myboodai - you might try reading this thread for info on how a Rivian Tech connected the 12v batteries. I think I read in your thread that you replaced yours? If so, might be worth noting the process used by the tech to see if you did the same thing. Not sure this will help you any, but wanted to point it out. Hope you get it figured out.

Thanks that might be helpful

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