Fred Lambert, writing at Electrek:
Rivian today announced several significant price increases for its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S electric SUV that have resulted in the cost of many reservation holders’ configurations rising by more than $12,000. The price increases come as Rivian is trying to ramp production and make its electric vehicle profitable while adding lower component tiers that will arrive as early as 2024.
The news was sent to reservation holders via email yesterday. I first saw it via a series of tweets from Quinn Nelson. I’d encourage you to go read the thread, as in it, he outlines his communication with the company over the last several months.
Price increases have happened all across the car market over the last two years. COVID, supply shortages and inflation have all wrecked havoc on auto manufacturing. Staying within the EV world, Tesla has marked up its models several times over the last 24 months, but only for new orders, not existing ones like Rivian did. Neither situations are ideal, but the latter looks far worse than the former.
Update: A day later, on March 3, Rivian reversed the decision. Here’s a bit from CEO RJ Scaringe’s letter to customers:
The costs of the components and materials that go into building our vehicles have risen considerably. Everything from semiconductors to sheet metal to seats has become more expensive and with this we have seen average new vehicle pricing across the U.S. rise more than 30% since 2018. Given our build lead up times, we need to plan production costs not only for today, but also for the future.
As we worked to update pricing to reflect these cost increases, we wrongly decided to make these changes apply to all future deliveries, including pre-existing configured preorders. We failed to appreciate how you viewed your configuration as price locked, and we wrongly assumed the announced Dual-Motor and Standard battery pack would provide configurations that would deliver price points similar to your original configuration. While this was the logic, it was wrong and we broke your trust in Rivian.
No kidding.
Here’s a bit more:
For anyone with a Rivian preorder as of the March 1 pricing announcement, your original configured price will be honored. If you canceled your preorder on or after March 1 and would like to reinstate it, we will restore your original configuration, pricing and delivery timing. Our team will be sending an email in the next few days with more details.
My guess is that a chunk of those preorders are gone forever.