Rivian Has A Bold Plan For You To Skip The Repair Shop
Rivian says 80% of EV repairs could eventually be handled by its mobile fleet, reducing the need for visits to physical service centers.
- Rivian performs about half of all service requests through mobile techs today.
- The company wants to raise that figure to around 80%.
- Around 800 vehicles are in Rivian's mobile tech fleet today—eight times the number of physical service centers it operates.
With the deliveries of the Rivian R2 finally underway, the California startup now has a new goal for the service side of its business: bring the shop to you, so you never have to visit one for minor repairs.
Obviously, the cars will have to be fixed at some point during their life. That's a no-brainer, but when they do require a fix, Rivian wants to bring the service to you—whether your car is in the driveway or on the side of the mountain.
That's what CEO RJ Scaringe told The Drive during a recent interview: "[I]f you need service and you’re on the side of a mountain, we can send a truck there."
Even though not many owners would necessarily need a service while traversing the Appalachian Mountains, RJ made an important point: The repair shop can come to the vehicle instead of the other way around (as long as the repair is simple enough to be performed without the need for the shop environment). And better yet, it's often easier for the customer as well.
"The beauty of that is you don’t need a loaner, you don’t need to worry about dropping off," Scaringe told The Drive. "You don’t even need to be there. We can let ourselves into the car."
According to him, around half of the automaker's service requests today are done through its fleet of Rivian Service Trucks. His vision is to bring that number closer to 80%.
The caveat to all of this is that not all service requests can be performed at a customer's house. If a vehicle needs to go on a lift for an invasive procedure such as a high-voltage battery replacement, it might be better suited to an appointment in the service bay than to the side of that mountain. But for simple fixes like replacing a small sensor in an easily accessible place, mobile service makes a lot of sense for a company that's still scaling.
Rivian says that its fleet of mobile service vehicles is around 800 units. That's eight times as many service centers and a significantly lower amount of capital needed to add a vehicle to the fleet compared to opening a new physical service center.
Saving money is particularly important for Rivian as it begins customer deliveries of its new R2 SUV. After all, it could be the company's Model Y moment if things go well—and if the truck truly does take off like the brand hopes, any service needs must keep up with demand to ensure that the automaker's reputation doesn't suffer.
Mobile service (and the optional spare tire) seems like an excellent way to achieve that. Tesla did exactly the same as it grew, and mobile service is now core to its business. If Rivian can achieve similar success with its mobile fleet, the days of scheduling service appointments weeks in advance could finally become a thing of the past.
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