2023 Rivian R1S Complaint Log

The Rivian is designed to kill fat people. The Airbag for the passenger seat does not function if there is a large person in the seat or the seat is very far forward with a normal person. When someone sits in the passenger seat the lower left corner of the central display changes from “Passenger Airbag Off” to the passenger climate control display. If you pull the seatbelt all the way out the display reverts back to the “Passenger Airbag Off” sign. The seat belt has to retract about 6 inches back into the B pillar for the climate control display to come back on. If the seat belt can’t retract far enough back into the B pillar, you have to drive around with an inoperable passenger seatbelt. I have been able to duplicate this feature on every Rivian I have tried it on. This has been reported to Rivian. A mechanic was sent to my house to repair this. It couldn’t be repaired as expected. I was told the problem would be elevated to a safety issue and sent to engineering. That was in the beginning of February 2024. No answers or fix yet. I have video of the problem, but mp4 files are not accepted below. Please contact me if you would like video.

On the morning of 9/14/2023 while commuting to work, my one month old, 2100 mile R1S ground to a halt while driving normally in All-Purpose Mode at about 15mph in the middle of a busy road. There were zero warning signs or noticeable weirdness with the vehicle before this happened. The vehicle stopped itself, parked and put the hazard lights on with multiple warning messages on the screen displayed. There was heavy morning traffic and we had no ability to shift out of park to move the vehicle to a safer place. This was a very unsafe situation. It was stuck in the middle of the road and other drivers began swerving around us, nearly colliding with us and each other. I had to call a tow truck and 911 to dispatch a police officer to come and light us up to keep the situation safe while waiting on the tow. Today the Rivian Service Center confirmed the diagnosis was a failure of the front drive inverter, which will be replaced accordingly and the vehicle will be put back in service once the repairs are completed. My concerns and reason for this report are the way this failure happens without warning at any speed at any location, and the inability of the driver to move the vehicle, even under limited power and speed, using the other drive unit (either front or rear). In order to be confident in driving my R1S going forward, I'd like to know what exactly failed in the inverter and why, and what was revised on the new inverters to prevent or significantly lower the failure rate. If nothing is done, someone is going to get hurt or killed by this. Also if Rivian can push a software update to allow the vehicle to be limped to a safe place using the other drive unit in the event of an inverter failure, that would be helpful as well. I know of several other Rivian owners who have experienced this exact failure and they all had to be towed away from an unsafe situation on the road after being unable to move their vehicles.

Vehicle lunged to the right without any driver input. Damaged rim and wheel and could have hurt someone . Have never experienced anything like this in my life. Steering wheel was perfectly straight but vehicle lunges to the right. This is a safety issue.

When my wife, 5 ft 5 in about ~100lbs sits in the front passenger seat (legs and feet forward in a regular up-right position), the airbag does not always turn on. It is intermittent and unpredictable when it turns on vs. off. It even turns off and on while driving. It makes us uncomfortable not knowing if she is protected in a crash. Rivian has told us it's working as expected but the photos show otherwise and they say there is nothing they can do to fix.

I noticed when driving with a passenger (female, approximately 135 pounds) that the screen keeps switching between "PASSENGER AIRBAG OFF" and showing the vehicle detects the passenger (hence the airbag is on). I'm concerned about the safety of my passenger when driving as I do not know whether the passenger airbag will work properly. I took photos and videos of this issue with my vehicle as it is reproducible when driving with this passenger. I took the vehicle to the manufacturer's service center, and they noted: "Followed along with the repair plan created by diagnostics team, notated each step as completed, upon following repair plan was unable to duplicate customer concern, found the occupancy sensor works as expected, The occupancy sensor is very sensitive and dependent upon the weight being distributed equally throughout the seat, if the occupant sits too far forward in the seat the sensor will not detect the weight". The issue was first detected on September 9, 2023 and the vehicle had less than 1000 miles on the odometer.

The car automatically, abruptly, and without warning shift into park as I slowed down at a stop sign and stalled in the middle of the road. It did not shift into Park for 30-35 mins and even after doing hard and soft resets while on the phone with service. Somehow it worked again after my hitting the brakes several times and I was able to move it out to the side and drive it back home. This issue has happened multiple times in the past too but it only happened for a few seconds as opposed to such a long time. The car had a ‘charger not connected properly’ warning on the dashboard. My safety and that of my wife was put in danger as an abrupt and automatic shift to park disrupted traffic and we could’ve been rear-ended. This is also a particularly troubling issue if the car stalls abruptly when slowing down on the freeway and cars in the back are speeding up and end up rear-ending my car. This situation could be fatal. I wasn’t able to reproduce the event but it has happened to me multiple times in the past. Rivian is looking into this issue now as I’ve dropped off my car for service today (9/6). I did receive responses to my post on Reddit about this situation and other customers complaining of experiencing the same issue. There were no warning lamps or prior warnings of this issue. The dashboard showed a charger not installed correctly error but I believe that’s for another issue I’ve had with the car where the car does not fast charge. The issue first appeared for me in stop and go traffic in Seattle downtown a few days after taking delivery of the car in June, and once again on the Canada-US border in Vancouver in July when moving slowly in line to reach the immigration booth. The car abruptly stopped and would not shift back to drive. It took a minute or two but it eventually shifted back to drive.

RIVIAN CHANGED THE HORN AND NO ONE CAN HEAR ME. [XXX] Watch this video to understand. Rivian tells me there is nothing to fix because this is the new cost cutting design. Recall these ASAP INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

Immediately after purchasing the vehicle, I got error codes thrown to service the suspension while driving to my house, specifically at 15-20mph over traffic calming bumps. This fault cleared immediately the first few times. On July 25 I submitted a service request as my family headed out on a two week, 900 mile trip. The service suspension fault had returned and disabled my ability to change modes/ride heights, blind spot sensors and cruise control, all of which I was counting on using during trip. I shut off and restarted the vehicle several times trying to clear the fault and regain functionality, but the fault inevitably returned. On July 25, Rivian added a response in the service portal that they would address the problem by July 28th. I heard nothing more. On August 1, I was driving south on HWY 57 in North Idaho. I hoped that code would have cleared, but it came back on almost immediately. After driving for about 5 miles, I decided to pull over at a visitor center parking lot to try and reset again to change modes, regain safety sensors, and cruise control. While turning left into the parking lot, another driver tried to pass on my left on a double yellow line driving above the 55mph speed limit. He collided with the front left part of my vehicle, damaging the body and breaking the front tie rod ends, leaving me unable to steer or drive forward, disabled, in the oncoming traffic lane. I asked Rivian to share data about the turn signal use, brake light, and speed data at the time of the accident with me. They did not respond in writing, but called and refused, getting quite angry during the call. After researching and observing other Rivians, I don't believe that my brake lights were on during regenerative braking. The rear, side, and blind spot sensors were disabled. Turning 1/4 second sooner or 5º sharper would have killed me.

When the passenger seat is occupied, we intermittently get a message that the airbag is off (and the heating/ac controls for the passenger side go away). This occurred when the seat was occupied by two of my sons (one 6'1", 145 lbs and the other 5'9" and 155 lbs). We took the car in to get checked and while Rivian noticed the same issue after testing, they said diagnostics found nothing wrong. They checked to see if this was related to the Feb 2023 recall and said it is not. Additionally, we have a loaner R1S and it has the exact same issue with the passenger seat not detecting a passenger is in the seat.

Passenger seat does not detect my 5'4" 110lb wife, thus preventing the airbags from activating. This is the first car we've encountered with this problem. Is Rivian accounting for the fact that the weight occupancy sensor account for the weight of the legs placed on the floor? Please let us know if there will be a recall or a software update to address this.

Steering wheel was angled when the car was going straight Vehicle felt unstable going into turns and would pull toward the center line in the road Upon inspecting underneath the vehicle, the steering rack bolts were loose and the rack moving side to side making the steering inconsistent and loose.