Visual: why R1 cross bars don’t work on R2

Visuals posted by @sp_limitedreviews

For this wondering, what/how/why the R1 cross bars don’t work on R2. Below are pictures, R1 bars are just a tad bit too long. They do not collapse enough to fit R2 narrower body. The locking mechanism is slightly different. I do think, that then locks were changed since the bars couldn’t fit. I do wish there was just one cross bar solution for all Rivian vehicles but I get it!!

Agreed, I have two set for my R1T, but will obviously need to get the new set for R2.
Does anyone know when these will be available in Gear Shop? Or if ordered with vehicle are that available?

The reason they don't fit is simple - "planned obsolescence", right out of the Apple playbook....

RivAW said:

The reason they don't fit is simple - "planned obsolescence", right out of the Apple playbook....

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Yup. They’re not dumb.
They know that it’s one of the most high-demand, best-selling accessories for the R1 platform.

Do R2 bars fit on the R1? Or have these not be sent out to any customers yet?

RivAW said:

The reason they don't fit is simple - "planned obsolescence", right out of the Apple playbook....

Click to expand...

I seriously doubt that is it. No one went "hahaha, if we make the R2 mount points slightly narrower we'll sell more accessories! Let's do that!"

That is not how engineering something as complex as a vehicle works.

More likely, the requirements for the R2 -- for a whole bunch of reasons (cost, efficiency, handling, whatever) -- resulted in a design that was a certain width to optimally balance as many concerns as possible. Once they got that width, they weren't going to let something as relatively trivial as the size of an existing accessory derail/change it.

Especially considering that, if I had to guess, less than 10% of R2 owners are ever going to care about carrying anything on the roof. And probably a small % of those people were R1 owners and had existing crossbars. The people on this forum are outliers/power users.

Such a tiny population of the potential customer base is not a reason to change what is otherwise your optimal design.

I would guess that at some point they will design universal crossbars.

I think I agree. There was for sure some optimization to gain if the R1’s crossbars would fit directly. If anything, it’s rather unfortunate.

rogersmj said:

Such a tiny population of the potential customer base is not a reason to change what is otherwise your optimal design.

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Yes, it sucks the cross bars are not compatible. However, I'll bet the R2 cross bars will work on R3/X and other vehicles they have coming. That's a good thing.

RivAW said:

The reason they don't fit is simple - "planned obsolescence", right out of the Apple playbook....

Click to expand...

They designed the R1 cross bars years before they even started development on the R2/R3. Hopefully going forward these new ones will work on the R4/R5 and Gen 3 R1. We’ll see…

My argument for a long time has been that Rivian needs to make as many accessories that are cross compatible with new platforms as necessary. Imagine designing future vehicles where everything you buy for your car (boxes, coolers, sleeping mats, roof-top-tents) all fit perfectly in your next Rivian. For many people, that could be thousands of dollars worth of accessories and would be a strong incentive to upgrade to the new car and not stick with the old one.

indy360 said:

My argument for a long time has been that Rivian needs to make as many accessories that are cross compatible with new platforms as necessary. Imagine designing future vehicles where everything you buy for your car (boxes, coolers, sleeping mats, roof-top-tents) all fit perfectly in your next Rivian. For many people, that could be thousands of dollars worth of accessories and would be a strong incentive to upgrade to the new car and not stick with the old one.

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Yes of course. But how long do you keep compatibility? Is it better to break compatibility now, when there are only a few hundred thousand R1 on the road, or to break it 10 years from now when there are a million R2 on the road? Or do you intend that they should be stuck with their non-prescient design decisions made 10 years ago when the R1 was being designed and R3X wasn't even a glimmer in RJ's eyes yet? The cross bars aren't standardized, there's no third-party manufacturer making equipment for these, etc. There's not much compatibility to break right now. But if Rivian *does* want to develop a third party accessory market now is the time to make changes to accommodate that market.

There are at least two fundamental changes that may have contributed to this incompatibility. First is the width of the R2, and the fact that the R1 bars don't collapse that much. Could they have designed R2 bars that expand enough to fit the R1? Possibly, but that still obsoletes the R1 bars. Then we get to the second change, which is the power to the crossbars. Now this didn't make it to production (although widely shown in the prototypes), but doing this clearly has some implications for the crossbar mounting points because you need to allow for the power connectors and wire routing. And it's something they never anticipated 10 years ago. If they ever intend to implement this in the future (which they do), they need different mounting points. So why not make the change now when it's still relatively easy to do, rather than in the future when there will be a much larger installed base?

Then there are the manufacturing issues. Rivian has clearly spent a lot of time and effort to reduce the costs of manufacturing. Even a seemingly small change like reducing the mounting point a fraction of an inch can have large consequences in manufacturing. For example, those of you who have 3D printers know that if a part is a little too large in one dimension then you just can't make it on your printer, and you will need a bigger/more capable/more expensive printer. The same is true for any manufacturing process. Perhaps if they reduce the size just a smidge they can use a different-sized standard stock material (e.g. sheet metal) rather than a custom size stock or a larger size with significantly more wasted material. I don't know if that was a motivator here, but it's certainly possible and again this would be the time to make the change.

Bottom line we're never going to know all the factors that went into this decision, but there are many perfectly valid business reasons and engineering reasons for doing something like this. Making up a story like "planned obsolescence" is a little patronizing and is the least likely answer because Rivian has not demonstrated a pattern of doing things like this as a money grab. That would actually be a lot of extra work for them with very little real payoff, and they have a lot of more important things to do than to redesign the crossbars. The number of parts and processes shared between the R1T/R1S/RCV/R2 demonstrates that they are taking great effort towards manufacturing efficiency, so that's what you can assume unless demonstrated otherwise.

I don't think I've ever bought a new car and expected the roof rack from my old vehicle to fit and work.

Will fit on the front mounting points with a different rubber piece, but not worth it for me to bother.

iamnid said:

I don't think I've ever bought a new car and expected the roof rack from my old vehicle to fit and work.

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This: Having been a lifelong BMW owner, one aspect we just lived with was having to purchase new accessories even on the exact same model when it was updated (i.e. X5). This included the BMW rear bike rack which was very nice and purpose-built for it. BUT, our original one did not fit the NEW model X5. The R2 is a completely different model and different-sized vehicle and I would not expect the accessories such as a roof rack bar to be cross-compatible.

Unsolicited counterpoint #2.

In conjunction with those above logically indicating that the R2 platform was built later and this isn't an intentional oversight (which I do believe is highly probably the case)...
I'd also suggest they intentionally changed the interface to make it pokayoke (IE: idiot proof).

That is: an Engineer/the team realized--unfortunately--that the width of the crossbars were going to be a limiting factor.

And insofar as there are a lot of enterprising individuals out there who might've figured out how to take some width out of their R1 crossbars (angle grinders, reciprocating saws, etc) and rebuilt them, then you're inviting some Engineering challenges, such as load ratings, structural integrity, etc.

SO, we as Engineers then have to go back to the drawing board to determine how to prevent bubba-jerryrig-backwoods-engineer from doing something silly. And thusly, you create a new connection that doesn't accept the original mount.

This, in my experience, lends credence to the idea that this was an unfortunate result of Engineering the R2 platform and not an intentional money-grab by Rivian. I could be wrong, but all indications are: they did what they had to do.