Rivian Planning Door Redesign to Address Safety Concerns

Watch Rivian Planning Door Redesign to Address Safety Concerns - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Ed, this doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to change the current design, the R1.

00:05They're just thinking about a new door handle for the R2, which isn't out yet.

00:08Correct. What we're talking about and what you need to know is that in the R2,

00:12which is their next-gen vehicle going into production at some point in the first half of next year,

00:17there's been a rethink on the manual latch or release that a passenger in the front or rear seats

00:24would need to use in the event that the electric system loses power.

00:27And what sources told us is that on their existing vehicles that are already out there in the marketplace called the R1,

00:35as part of a redesign, a generation-to-generation redesign that that went through,

00:40the manual release, again, it's something you use when the system loses power, usually in an accident.

00:46Its position was moved to a sort of more inaccessible area of the rear doors.

00:52And what we discovered in the course of reporting, partly through anonymous complaints,

00:56through NHTSA's database, is that people had a hard time with this, right?

01:01There was also an acknowledgment from Rivian staff internally that on that existing generation of vehicle,

01:07it's a potential safety risk.

01:09It's not intuitive in the event of an emergency to find this cable release that is somewhere inside the rear door covered.

01:17And so, that's the reporting.

01:21Rivian, for a vehicle that's not yet out, is making a design change.

01:25We are not saying that Rivian is subject to any investigation,

01:28and we're not aware of, nor has Rivian disclosed any sort of accident, fatal otherwise, involving the door.

01:35But I do know internally, a lot of the engineering teams and other executives

01:39realized that the design change they made in R1 when they updated it was a mistake.

01:44And this is the reporting we've done with Bloomberg's Emily Chang.

01:48What happens next, we just don't know.