Rivian has quietly removed the backrest fans from the ventilated front seats of newer R2 SUVs because they generated excessive cabin noise, the company said, confirming a change it had not announced publicly.
“Because the seat back ventilation generated excessive cabin noise, we streamlined the system,” Rivian said in a statement to RivianTrackr late on Wednesday.
The EV maker added that R2’s ventilated seats are “designed to push air through the seat cushion, where occupants hold the most heat,” and that seat heating is unchanged.
The statement is the only formal explanation Rivian has given for the change, which owners first raised on Rivian Forums and Reddit this week.
The change has set off a wave of complaints from owners and prospective buyers, with several Reddit threads drawing hundreds of comments each, many of them focused on Rivian’s failure to disclose it.
A Running Change Without a Cutoff
Early R2s were built with two fans in each front seat, one in the cushion and one in the backrest, while newer vehicles have only the cushion fan.
The change applies from around VIN 10,000, according to a Reddit comment from a person who claimed to be a Rivian technician.
The Reddit comment placed the cutoff between VIN 9,800 and 10,000 and claimed that the fan connector remains in the seat and that Rivian will not retrofit the fans.
Rivian’s support has not supplied a cutoff either.
“We don’t have confirmation on which VIN’s will include the new version of the ventilation,” a Rivian support agent told a customer in a chat the customer posted on Reddit, adding that the change “is not a safety or recall concern.”
“I know this news may be coming as a shock to many,” the agent wrote.
One customer said on Reddit that a support agent told them the change took effect on the first day of September.
Owner reports do not point to a clean break, with some owners of cars numbered in the 8,700s and 9,500s saying their seats have no backrest airflow, while owners of VIN 9268 and a car just below 9,000 said theirs still do.
Rivian does not break out R2 deliveries, but it delivered a record 19,248 vehicles across its lineup in the third quarter, the first with three full months of R2 sales.
The highest R2 VIN linked on the owner-run tracker Rivian Roamer was 14,6XX on early Thursday, up from 13,0XX on Sept. 29, although an assigned VIN does not confirm a built or delivered car.
Website Still Lists Ventilated Seats
Rivian’s R2 web page still describes the Performance version, priced from $57,990 and the only version on sale, as having “heated and ventilated seats.”
The Premium version, due in late 2026 from $53,990, is listed with “heated and ventilated front seats.”
Neither listing mentions that the backrest is no longer ventilated.
Rivian’s online support AI assistant has also given owners conflicting answers, telling one that R2 front seats ventilate “both the bottom cushion and the backrest” and another that heating and ventilation “are only for the seat cushion, not the seat back,” according to exchanges owners posted on Reddit.
The second answer contradicts Rivian’s statement that seat heating is unchanged.
The online assistant is separate from the in-car Rivian Assistant, which Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid said last week is coming to the R2 in its next over-the-air update.
Noise, Popping and Suppliers
Several owners of earlier R2s said in the threads that the backrest fans were loud at the highest setting, while others said the lower settings were quiet enough.
An owner wrote on the Rivian Forums site, in a post shared on Reddit, that a service technician linked the backrest fan to a popping sound heard when an occupant presses back into the seat.
The technician said the fan housing can hit the plastic cover on the back of the seat, and offered the owner the choice of leaving the fan in place or having it removed, according to the post.
Rivian has not mentioned the popping sound in its public comments.
Before Rivian issued its statement, some customers posted chat transcripts on Reddit in which support agents attributed the change to supply problems rather than noise.
“Due to supplier constraints, new R2 vehicles will be built with a seat cushion blower ventilation system, rather than a seat back ventilation system,” one agent wrote, according to a transcript posted by a customer.
A second agent gave another customer the same reason, according to a separate transcript.
Neither agent offered a timeline for the backrest fan’s return or details of a retrofit.
Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said last month that the R2 ramp-up is “gated by or throttled by the rate at which we ramp up our suppliers”, naming Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers as the hardest to scale.
Rivian expects to deliver 20,000 to 25,000 R2s this year within its guidance of 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles.
A Wave of Complaints
At least four threads on r/RivianR2, Reddit’s forum for the R2, drew nearly 1,000 comments and more than 1,300 upvotes combined between Wednesday and Thursday, according to the counts shown on the threads.
The most active, titled “It appears like Rivian has quietly nerfed the seat cooling,” had 476 comments, followed by “Seat Cooling Change is Unacceptable” with 331.
Owners in that thread reported conflicting answers from service centres, with one saying staff told them the missing backrest airflow was expected and another saying technicians confirmed the fans were missing and ordered them.
Many of the complaints focus on disclosure rather than the part itself, with buyers saying they test-drove cars with both fans and ordered without being told the feature had changed.
“I don’t care for ventilated seats but I am really concerned about the lack of transparency,” one commenter wrote in a post that drew more than 80 upvotes.
“Rivian needs to frigging come out and address this issue. I feel deceived,” wrote another, a reservation holder.
“Received our invitation to configure and order the vehicle, completed the process, and paid a nonrefundable deposit without any disclosure that a feature we experienced during our test drive had been removed,” one reservation holder wrote.
R2 reservations carry a $100 refundable deposit, according to Rivian, while several commenters said they had paid a $500 non-refundable deposit when placing their orders.
Commenters in hotter states including Arizona, Texas, Florida and Nevada said they had put orders on hold or were reconsidering their purchase.
Several prospective buyers said they had paused reservations, delayed orders or would cancel, and some said they were now weighing the BMW iX3, Volvo EX60 or Tesla Model Y instead.
A smaller group of owners with newer vehicles said the cushion-only system works well, and one owner of an earlier car who unplugged the backrest fan said it added little cooling.
Several commenters tagged Bensaid’s Reddit account, asking for a public response.
It is not the first R2 issue that owners have surfaced on Reddit and Rivian Forums before Rivian addressed it.
Late last month, owners reported that Rivian had told some of them to stop driving and had their SUVs towed in for a “high voltage circuit fastener inspection,” before Rivian told RivianTrackr that only 14 R2s were affected.
Rivian also faced five separate R2 quality issues in the first 47 days of external deliveries, spanning paint, exterior lighting software, the high-voltage battery, charging hardware and cabin components.
Earlier this year, a person familiar with the matter linked early R2 delivery faults to Rivian’s 2025 restructuring of the teams responsible for pre-delivery inspection.
