Rivian cut the inline connectors that sit between the R2’s main harness families and shifted that complexity onto its zonal controllers, according to one of its electrical distribution engineers.
The premium brand began customer deliveries of the midsize SUV in early June and is scheduled to disclose third-quarter production and delivery results in the first days of October.
Rivian entered the passenger market with the R1T pickup and R1S SUV, which now start above $70,000, and began delivering the smaller R2 this year at $57,990, with a $45,000 version due in 2027.
“The complexity will definitely still be there, but it’s a strategic decision,” Dmitry Fudym, Rivian’s Principal Electrical Distribution Systems (EDS) Engineer and Manager, said in a livestream hosted by Automotive Manufacturing Solutions.
“The most effective way to do that is to put that complexity on an existing circuit board,” he said. “We shifted it effectively into the zonal controllers.”
“Earn Its Place”
Fudym credited two consolidations as big contributors to the R2’s wiring savings, then pointed to what he called “additional important steps that have not been covered.”
“The 17 to 7 ECU [Electric Control Unit] reduction was a really big contributor to all of these reductions that you mentioned,” he said. “What we’re calling the powerhouse module, where we consolidated ECUs, that was also a big driver.”
The first was a target his own team set for the R2. “We said we don’t see a need for this many inline connectors, at least not the inline connectors between main harness families,” Fudym said.
“No inlines means fewer circuits. It means less time required to install those harnesses during our general assembly,” he added. “Every inline connector needs to kind of earn its place, needs to provide value.”
Rivian has said the R2 uses 60% fewer in-line connectors and 2.3 miles less wiring than the second-generation R1, figures Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe posted on X.
The company first cut its electronic control units from 17 to seven with the second-generation R1 in 2024, along with 1.6 miles of wiring, Senior VP of Electrical Hardware Vidya Rajagopalan said at the time.
The R2’s Powerhouse merges five components that were separate on the R1, which Rajagopalan listed to The Drive in June as the onboard charger, the DC-to-DC converter, the DC-to-AC converter, the cell zone controller and the battery management system.
“You Might Be Too Late”
Moving circuits onto controller boards makes early planning critical, Fudym said.
“If you don’t plan early enough, you can’t come in halfway through a development cycle and say, ‘Hey, I want to stick 10 more circuits in this controller,'” he said. “You might be too late.”
The approach also cuts the number of harness variants.
“Some OEMs have a lot of part numbers for any given harness families,” Fudym said “In our case, we have literally one or two part numbers, and that’s intentional.”
85 Degrees, Not 125
Without an engine, Rivian’s harnesses run cooler than those in combustion cars, Fudym said.
“If a cable is rated for 125, we’re usually good,” he said. “Our operating temperature is usually at 85C, because we don’t have to worry about exhaust, internal combustion engine.”
He gave as an example an AI tool that would know where every cable runs in the vehicle and check each circuit’s temperature automatically.
“That’s not something we need an Excel spreadsheet for anymore,” he said. “That’s something that we could potentially automate completely.”
He did not say whether Rivian is building such a tool.
A 400V-Class Vehicle
Rivian rates the batteries in its current vehicles at up to 450 volts, the peak voltage of what the industry calls a 400-volt-class system.
Rajagopalan told Design News in June that the R2 is a 400-volt system because the car was built to a target price.
As reported by EV, Rivian job posting last week said its powertrain test lab was preparing for “future 900 V platforms.”
Fudym joined Rivian in October 2019 from General Motors, where he was a Senior Design Release Engineer on the main body wire harness for the BEV3 electric platform, according to his LinkedIn profile.
At Rivian he first led the team that developed the electrical distribution system for the EDV 700 and 500 delivery vans built for Amazon, the profile says.
