Rivian‘s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe acknowledged that early owners endured long service wait times and gaps in coverage, saying the company has spent the last four years overhauling its repair and support network in preparation for the R2 mid-size SUV.
The company began public demo drives and started sending order invitations to reservation holders on Tuesday — marking the official start of the customer delivery phase.
In an interview published by Newsweek, Scaringe admits the service infrastructure that greeted Rivian‘s first customers in 2021 and 2022 was not adequate for the pace at which the brand was growing.
“When I meet someone who’s had a R1 since early 2022, I usually start by saying, ‘thank you,'” he noted, “because they had to experience a much earlier version of Rivian that didn’t have the service infrastructure we have today, that didn’t have all the capabilities that we have today.”
Customer and enthusiast forums have long flagged frustrations with Rivian‘s ownership experience.
Both the R1T pickup and R1S SUV have historically scored below the industry average in JD Power‘s quality and satisfaction studies, with owners citing issues tied to software updates, advanced technology and complex in-vehicle controls rather than mechanical failures.
From Weeks to Days
Scaringe used Seattle as an example of the kind of growing pains the company faced in its early years.
“We didn’t have enough service capacity to support how quickly the brand sold in that market, and so, as a result, there were long service wait times,” he stated.
The company has since worked to compress those timelines.
“Service lead times can’t be measured in weeks or tens of days, it needs to be a couple of days at most, and so a lot of work over the last four years has been to take service lead times that in some of our really popular markets were 20, 30, 40 days, in some cases down to two or three days,” the Chief Executive explained.
When the first R1 vehicles launched, Rivian had “a handful of service locations in some of the biggest markets, but there were huge portions of the country that we didn’t have coverage in,” Scaringe admitted.
The company ended 2025 with 97 service locations, just short of its 100-site target, alongside 36 showrooms and nearly 700 mobile service vehicles.
Three more centers opened in the first quarter, pushing the network past the 100-unit milestone.
Charged With Fixing It Before R2
Scaringe framed the service overhaul as a prerequisite for the R2 launch.
“There was a big ramp up of huge investment into our service infrastructure, a very large investment into building a lot more service technician capacity, big investment into the processes that we run our service network with,” the EV maker’s founder flagged. “Everything from vehicle diagnostics to the tools that get used within the service center.”
Rivian built its service tools internally, the CEO added, and is now embedding artificial intelligence into service center operations.
“We built all those ourselves, and now we’re even integrating AI very deeply into how the service centers run, and they’re now running like a much better-oiled machine,” Scaringe said, adding that the company would continue to invest in the network.
The CEO acknowledged that some early adopters left the brand because of their ownership experience — and said he hoped to win them back.
“I think the amount of progress we made between 2021-2022 and where we are in 2026 is really significant,” he stated. “A lot of folks who left the brand with a bad service experience in 2023, I’m excited for them to re-meet the brand and re-meet the company as we’ve scaled.”
Recent Locations
The network expansion is accelerating as the R2 enters the market.
Rivian‘s recent infrastructure push has included a $9.9 million parts distribution hub in Fort Worth, Texas, a second Pennsylvania location in Bethel Park and the conversion of a former Tesla site into a service and demo center in Fort Worth.
Still, according to the company’s service center map, there are still zero locations in states such as North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas.
Most of Rivian‘s footprint is located in the West Coast, where it is based, and in the East Coast — with its local headquarters having been established in Atlanta last year.
The EV maker’s second manufacturing plant, currently under construction, will be located in Georgia.
The Rivian Adventure Network now operates 1,000 stalls across more than 145 stations in the United States, with the company reporting 98% average uptime across its chargers in 2025.
Rivian has also begun recruiting for a lead role to oversee the design and execution of its commercial infrastructure in Europe, covering sales, service, delivery and parts distribution facilities.
The hire signals preparation for an eventual European market entry, though Rivian has removed a specific launch year from its website and pushed Canadian R2 deliveries to 2027.
The company operates two service centers in Canada.
A Transition Year
Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough framed 2026 as a bridge year at the company’s first-quarter earnings call on April 30.
“As a reminder, we believe this is a transition year for the automotive segment on the path towards long-term profitability as we scale R2,” she said. “For 2026, we continue to expect an adjusted EBITDA loss of between $2.1 billion to $1.8 billion.”
McDonough noted that macroeconomic and geopolitical risks remain, but said the company was pressing ahead with its growth agenda.
“While economic and geopolitical conditions, including supply chain and international conflicts, pose risks, we remain steadfast in our plans to invest behind key growth drivers,” the CFO stated. “We continue to progress our autonomy roadmap and the expansion of our sales and service footprint as we scale with R2.”
Rivian has guided for 62,000 to 67,000 total vehicle deliveries in 2026, of which 20,000 to 25,000 are expected to be R2 units.
Founder RJ Scaringe has said the R2 will make up the majority of Rivian‘s volume by the end of 2027.
R2 Demo Drives Begin
Tuesday marked the official start of public R2 demo drives at Rivian Spaces across the country, with the company also beginning to send order invitations to reservation holders.
The EV maker softened its earlier commitment over the weekend, stating that customer deliveries would begin “soon after” June 9 rather than on the date itself.
The first version available is the R2 Performance with Launch Package, priced at $57,990, which includes the Autonomy+ hands-free driving suite.
Vehicles are expected to reach buyers within two to six weeks of a confirmed order.
The demo drive launch follows months of momentum-building.
Rivian toured several US cities with the R2 between April and May under the ‘R2 Block Party’ banner, drawing long queues at every stop.
Saleable R2 production began in late April at Rivian‘s Normal, Illinois, plant, with employee deliveries underway since early May.
The online configurator for customers went live in mid-May.
