Following a series of delays, Rivian is finally ready to launch the highly anticipated R1T.
While that’s some overdue good news, it’s not exactly smooth sailing ahead as the company is “working with various governing agencies on the final approvals needed for us to make the first deliveries to preorder customers in September.”
The information was revealed by CEO RJ Scaringe in an update to reservation holders noticed by Electrek. In it, the executive said “Over the last several months we have been focused on not only ramping our production rate, but also dialing in our quality across each of the five areas of our plant: stamping, body, paint, assembly and propulsion (battery and drive units).” He went on to note this process involved multiple build phases and is now apparently complete as “we have started producing vehicles that reflect all of our quality iterations and design refinements.”
While Scaringe didn’t elaborate on what government approvals are needed, one of them could be from the EPA as the R1T hasn’t made an appearance on FuelEconomy.gov yet. Regardless, the fact that the vehicle is pending approval is a step in the right direction and hopefully government bureaucracy will move fast enough to allow the automaker to hit their September target.
When R1Ts start arriving in customer hands, owners will find a limited support network as only five service centers are currently operational. However, Scaringe noted this is “just the beginning” as the company is planning to open over 100 centers by the end of 2023 and they’ll be augmented by a “large fleet of mobile service vans” for performing onsite repairs.
The executive also noted the company’s charging network is slowly expanding, but will grow “quite rapidly” starting later this year.
