Rivian's Body on Frame Architecture overview - on Sandy Munro

[Max]

I am glad they overbuilt it. It was interesting to see a lot of welds were manual. They are basically saying ramp up may be an issue.

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[Rivian_Hugh_III]

I really enjoy these! Thanks for posting

 

[iansriv]

fascinating!

 

[MNLightning]

Guys that don’t build anything but excel at

 

[mini2nut]

I watched the video this morning.

I found it extremely fascinating. For example, the R1T body is bolted down to the chassis using over 100 fasteners with no rubber isolation mounts. The chassis sections need to be welded together with extreme precision for all of the mounting holes to align.

Another great point was made during the video. The slowest part limits the maximum number of vehicles that can be assembled. For example, if Rivian can only assemble a maximum of 60 chassis per day then production will be limited to that amount.

 

[R1Tom]

I find the part where they say you can only build as fast as the slowest part. No kidding.... but if you have a bottle neck you can break the task into smaller tasks and have multiple operators or even parallel multiple chassis. Seems like a meaningless point.

 

[R_1_T]

I watched the video this morning.

I found it extremely fascinating. For example, the R1T body is bolted down to the chassis using over 100 fasteners with no rubber isolation mounts. The chassis sections need to be welded together with extreme precision for all of the mounting holes to align.

Another great point was made during the video. The slowest part limits the maximum number of vehicles that can be assembled. For example, if Rivian can only assemble a maximum of 60 chassis per day then production will be limited to that amount.

You can tell the difference between the F-150 Lightning and the R1T because of this difference. There's good and bad points to it, now having driven both vehicles within the last week.
R1T - More responsive and sporty feeling, though the suspension tuning certainly plays a role here.
F-150 Lightning - Much better isolated, quieter. Virtually nonexistent powertrain, road, and suspension noise.

The R1T I drove had the 21" wheels/tires.
The Lightning was a Pro.

 

[CommodoreAmiga]

I found it extremely fascinating. For example, the R1T body is bolted down to the chassis using over 100 fasteners with no rubber isolation mounts. The chassis sections need to be welded together with extreme precision for all of the mounting holes to align.

I don't understand why they made a big deal about this. I would hope any frame manufacturer would be using jigs and should be able to get accuracy to be quite good, anyway.

Another great point was made during the video. The slowest part limits the maximum number of vehicles that can be assembled. For example, if Rivian can only assemble a maximum of 60 chassis per day then production will be limited to that amount.

Yes, but you can scale out. It doesn't matter if a single frame takes a relatively long time to build, individually. You have multiple teams building frames, simultaneously. You size the number of teams and stagger their work such that you've got a frame when you need one.

 

[mini2nut]

After watching every Monroe & Associates to date it’s clear that Rivian hired a mix of legacy and Tesla automotive engineers to design and engineer the R1T.

 

[Dark-Fx]

I find the part where they say you can only build as fast as the slowest part. No kidding.... but if you have a bottle neck you can break the task into smaller tasks and have multiple operators or even parallel multiple chassis. Seems like a meaningless point.

That's why cycle times are so important to hit as a controls engineer. I've been responsible for getting processes to hit the required time and it isn't always easy or straight forward. Sometimes you have to break convention to do it.

 

[SeaGeo]

This is the one Monroe video that I watched on the R1T and it left me *really* wanting to talk to some engineers at Rivian to ask them what they were doing and why with the frame.

 

[Floridavid]

I found it very interesting and the next video of the body will give the final details. It appears that RIvian has a hybrid unibody/frame architecture with much more load sharing than a traditional body-on-frame. The integrated cab and bed further illustrates this.

The cybertruck and it’s exoskeleton is similar in that it uses the body as a stressed member too. They will most likely have a frame made from their new giga-press that will interface to the stamped body panels similarly.

Traditional pickups have the cab and bed sitting on isolators and basically are payload. Much less efficient. Read F-150 lighting.

David

 

[Max]

This is the one Monroe video that I watched on the R1T and it left me *really* wanting to talk to some engineers at Rivian to ask them what they were doing and why with the frame.

I am curious about the manual welding part. Is it because getting the robots is a part of supply chain problem and they didn’t want to miss more deadlines?

The impression I got from every one of their videos is that Rivian has not been cheap in making choices. That makes me question for how long they can honor original prices before they say nah, we were kidding or cut a corner somewhere. The way Tesla has been increasing prices, I am kinda shocked that GM dropped Bolt prices that much and Rivian is still going with original prices.

 

[CommodoreAmiga]

I am curious about the manual welding part. Is it because getting the robots is a part of supply chain problem and they didn’t want to miss more deadlines?

The impression I got from every one of their videos is that Rivian has not been cheap in making choices. That makes me question for how long they can honor original prices before they say nah, we were kidding or cut a corner somewhere. The way Tesla has been increasing prices, I am kinda shocked that GM dropped Bolt prices that much and Rivian is still going with original prices.

Rivian already raised their prices. They’ve also stopped letting new reservations configure a build so it seems they’re going to let new reservations “float” with whatever pricing/options are available at fulfillment.

 

[R_1_T]

I found it very interesting and the next video of the body will give the final details. It appears that RIvian has a hybrid unibody/frame architecture with much more load sharing than a traditional body-on-frame. The integrated cab and bed further illustrates this.

The cybertruck and it’s exoskeleton is similar in that it uses the body as a stressed member too. They will most likely have a frame made from their new giga-press that will interface to the stamped body panels similarly.

Traditional pickups have the cab and bed sitting on isolators and basically are payload. Much less efficient. Read F-150 lighting.

David

Less efficient how? I've been seeing numbers which indicate that the Lightning actually weighs LESS than an R1T. If true, the Lightning is actually more efficient in the use of materials while also being physically larger.

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