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I was invited to drive the new Rivian R2 recently at the company’s offices in Plymouth, Michigan. I was excited to drive the new Rivian, since many of my colleagues seemed to really like it, and I was fine with driving the couple of hours needed for the opportunity.
Before we got behind the wheel, as automakers often do, Rivian employees did a song-and-dance showing off the various parts of the new R2. Design and engineering were both present, and Rivian was keen to point out how much more they were able to simplify and modernize R2 than the second-generation R1 platform.
That, in and of itself, isn’t all that remarkable. I will admit seeing the R2 wiring harness sitting next to the R1’s second-generation harness was a stark comparison of how much the new zonal architecture saves Rivian with both weight and packaging, but what really surprised me was how open Rivian was about cost-cutting.
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You see, some modern engineering enhancements naturally save an automaker money. And there is most certainly some of that at play in the R2 (the battery being a structural element of the vehicle, for example, saves on having to add more structural elements); they also pointed out what we’d call obvious cost-cutting.
The designer, for example, made a point of noting the material on the lower door panels. He told us how it’s just plastic in the R2, and it’s wrapped and fancier in the R1. Why? To save money.
To be clear, the plastic doesn’t feel that bad, and the company kept the inside of the door pocket with a rubber material so you don’t hear your keys, water bottles, or whatever rolling around. But I can’t remember, through all of these programs, an automaker pointing out “look, this isn’t the same quality as in this, and we did it to make the car cheaper.”
Auto journalists quickly notice where cost-cutting occurs in most vehicles, and the fact that an automaker cuts costs on less expensive items is no surprise. But automakers hate pointing that out and will sometimes come up with overly clever answers instead of just saying, “Look, we wanted to save some cash, and here’s where we did it.”
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More automakers should do this. Being honest with us respects our intelligence and likely curries favor with us when we’re talking about your vehicle. Heck, I just wrote an entire post about how I was impressed an automaker did this.
It’s not unique to Rivian, but it’s something I’d like to see more of from other automakers. Also, I didn’t think the efforts that Rivian made to make the vehicle less expensive hurt the experience of driving the R2 at all. In fact, many of the changes give the appearance that the R2 is the more technologically advanced vehicle the company makes. And while I’m impressed Rivian did point out its cost-cutting, you’d be hard-pressed as a normal car consumer to point them out unless you went looking really, really carefully.
I’ll talk more about the driving experience of the Rivian in the near future, but as we talk more and more about affordability without making the customer feel like they bought a cheap car, efforts like what Rivian is doing become more and more important.