Cruising almost silently down a suburban Detroit byway in a new electric Rivian R2 acceleration is instant, while sitting in a luxurious, yet supportive seat, with every convenience just a haptic-feedback wheel, screen touch or switch throw away.
There’s no button to start or stop the five-seat SUV that hit the market in June. The R2 “just knows” what to do when the door opens, one engineer helpfully advised this driver in despair.
Here’s the irony. Starting at $49,990 the R2 is Rivian’s lowest-priced model, yet judged by its performance, innovative design and myriad high-technology features, it could easily be confused with a vehicle tens of thousands of dollars more expensive.
“It’s amazing. It’s the best product that Rivian developed to date. It’s so cool. So I could not be more excited to start getting in the hands of customers,” said Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, in an interview shortly before R2 deliveries began on June 9.
At its lower price, the battery-electric R2 is expected to be Rivian’s volume offering.
How did Rivian pull off the trick of producing a lower cost vehicle with no shortage of goodies?
“R2 was designed through subtraction, but we couldn’t just make it feel like the cheaper version of an R1, and that was a key thing,” said Jeff Hammoud, Rivian chief design officer, during a media briefing at the company’s suburban Detroit facility on Wednesday. “So in a lot of ways, we found clever ways through design and engineering to reduce costs, reduce manufacturing complexity, reduce weight through clever design and engineering.”
Those clever ways included consolidating and downsizing components, improving manufacturing processes, reducing the number and weight of materials and simplifying designs.
Take, for instance, something the customer will never see—harness wiring.
By simplifying design, Rivian was able to reduce the amount of harness wiring between the R1 and R2 by 2.3 miles, or roughly 40 pounds, according to Michael Hong, senior director of electrical hardware.
“So it is quite a lot of mass, and that goes directly into range efficiency,” Hong said.”
Staying with the R2’s electric system, the company looked at the second generation R1’s power electronics and decided to in-source production, combining five components into one.
The results, according to Silva Hiti, vice president of electric power conversion, is a 70% savings in high-voltage cabling and a reduction in the bill of materials cost of about 30% and a10% weight savings compared with R1 Gen 2.
The company found several ways to reduce costs along with weight in developing R2’s body.
To start, Rivian went to a unibody rather than body-on-frame structure for the R2, accounting for a cost savings of about 44% while reducing body weight by 37%,” pointed out Matt Wolfe, vice president, vehicle hardware engineering.
In an especially innovative move, the R2’s battery pack actually serves as the vehicle’s floor, eliminating waste and redundancy.
“If we can use the same part for multiple functions, that’s what we do all over the place. So by doing that right out of the gate, we save about 10 kilograms. That wasn’t enough. By doing that, we also eliminated seven millimeters of package space. So we went ahead and we used that for two different things. One is we gave it a little bit extra for ground strike protection, and so we could optimize the off-road package,” said Wolfe.
A major savings came by subbing out a $200,0000 supplier-produced controller to operate the microprocessor for R2’s lights with one created in-house at a cost of just ten bucks, according to Wolfe.
The way seats are attached also came under cost scrutiny, resulting in a change in design integrating the structure into the overall body, rather than attach them with a separate component.
Savings? 32% from the cost for seats and a 22% weight reduction, according to Wolfe.
One of the charms of an EV is the frunk, the extra storage space in front where an internal combustion engine would normally live.
For the R2 Rivian molded the frunk’s apron panel and front end module in-house, creating a savings of $316 per vehicle, but also the ability to better control color matching with the rest of the vehicle.
That’s just a partial rundown of all the methods Rivian used to cut the cost of producing the R2, while attempting to reach a delicate balance.
“The key is how do you save money, but not giving up the DNA of Rivian,” noted Wolfe. “Our goal is to still give Rivian experience.”
