TECH: Rivian recalls 13,000 electric vehicles for possible steering control failure

Riv­ian has noti­fied cus­tomers of a recall of near­ly 13,000 of its elec­tric trucks and SUVs for a prob­lem that could cause the dri­ver to lose con­trol and con­trol of the vehicle.

The com­pa­ny announced the recall fol­low­ing sev­en reports that the bolt that con­nects the steer­ing king­pin to the vehi­cle’s upper con­trol arm “may not be tight enough,” accord­ing to Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal.

In a let­ter sent to cus­tomers, Chief Exec­u­tive RJ Scaringe said the recall was “out of cau­tion” despite the low num­ber of defects reported.

He also said that “on rare occa­sions” fas­ten­ers could come loose, result­ing in loss of steer­ing con­trol, but no injuries have been report­ed relat­ed to the issue.

Riv­ian cur­rent­ly makes two mod­els, the R1T truck and the R1S SUV, but its fac­to­ry in Nor­mal, Illi­nois, also makes elec­tric deliv­ery trucks for minor­i­ty share­hold­er Amazon.

Like many play­ers in the auto­mo­tive and high-tech indus­tries, glob­al sup­ply chain issues over the past two years have impact­ed the com­pa­ny’s pro­duc­tion capacity.

Ear­li­er this year, it attempt­ed to raise the price of the R1T pick­up by $12,000, cit­ing infla­tion and parts short­ages, but quick­ly backed out after cus­tomer backlash.

In July 2022, the com­pa­ny announced that pro­duc­tion in the sec­ond quar­ter had near­ly dou­bled from the first quar­ter to 4,401 units.

This is a frac­tion of the pro­duc­tion vol­ume of oth­er automak­ers. Tes­la, for exam­ple, pro­duced 258,580 elec­tric vehi­cles dur­ing the same peri­od, and is a pos­i­tive step towards achiev­ing its goal of pro­duc­ing 25,000 by 2022.

This recall will not pre­vent us from achiev­ing this goal, and we expect to be able to review all affect­ed vehi­cles with­in 30 days. At Riv­ian, we told our cus­tomers that they could bring their car to a ser­vice cen­ter and have it zipped up in minutes.

It is also pos­si­ble to dis­patch a mobile repair vehi­cle. Those with poten­tial­ly prob­lem­at­ic symp­toms such as noise and vibra­tion may con­sid­er this option.