Rivian‘s Senior Manager of Vehicle Safety has left the EV maker after nearly eight years, four months after it began customer deliveries of the R2, which has yet to receive crash-test ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
Nachiket Pendse, who joined Rivian in December 2018, disclosed his departure in a LinkedIn post.
“This week I’m closing my chapter at Rivian,” he wrote. “I joined a company with a bold idea and a lot to prove,” he wrote. “Since then, I’ve had a front-row seat to something rare: watching that idea become real vehicles on real roads.”
“From R1 to the EDV, and now R2, I got to help build products I’m genuinely proud of.” The EDV is the electric delivery van Rivian originally developed for Amazon and currently also sells to external customers.
His LinkedIn profile lists his Rivian role as running from December 2018 to October 2026, a tenure of seven years and 11 months.
Pendse’s post did not disclose the reason for the departure.
“What’s next? I’m still figuring that out, and I’m excited about it,” he wrote. “If you’re working on something meaningful in safety, mobility, or beyond, I’d love to connect.”
His profile now lists him as Principal Consultant at Naavinya LLC.
Nearly Eight Years in Safety
Pendse joined Rivian as Vehicle Safety Manager in December 2018, nearly three years before the R1T pickup reached its first customers, according to his profile.
In that role he led the safety engineering team “from Concepts to Production, Homologation and beyond”, covering development, validation, homologation and certification, the profile says.
He was promoted to Senior Manager of Vehicle Safety in December 2021.
His profile describes the role as leading “the end-to-end safety strategy” for Rivian’s vehicle programs, including safety testing, validation and homologation across all of its platforms.
That work covered compliance with US federal motor vehicle safety standards, United Nations vehicle regulations and the main crash-test programs, including the US New Car Assessment Program, the IIHS and Euro NCAP, according to the profile.
He also lists building a global team of managers, engineers and support staff, and responsibility for occupant safety systems, restraints, pedestrian protection and the budgets for internal and external test labs.
In his post, he said leading and mentoring “a team of exceptional vehicle safety experts” had been “the privilege of my career”.
“Their work is the kind most people never notice until it matters most,” he wrote. “They will shape how safe the vehicles of the future are.”
Before Rivian, Pendse spent nearly five years at airbag and seat-belt supplier Joyson Safety Systems as Safety Systems Integration Lead in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
The R1’s Crash-Test Record
His profile lists five IIHS Top Safety Pick+ awards among his achievements, for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 R1T and the 2023 and 2025 R1S, all of which IIHS records confirm.
The 2023 R1S award applied only to vehicles built after January 2023, and the 2024 R1S received the lower Top Safety Pick award.
The 2022 R1T was Rivian’s first vehicle to earn the award, the highest the insurance-funded institute gives.
The R1S also holds Top Safety Pick+ for the 2026 and 2027 model years under the 2026 criteria, an award Rivian announced in March.
The 2025 R1S, redesigned for that model year with a changed front structure for vehicles built after August 2024, rated Good in the small overlap, updated moderate overlap and updated side crash tests.
Rivian ran the small overlap and side tests itself, with IIHS assessing the results, according to the institute’s ratings page.
It also rated Good for pedestrian front crash prevention and Acceptable for headlights, which IIHS said created some low-beam glare.
The R1T’s recent results are weaker.
The pickup earned the lower Top Safety Pick award for the 2025 and 2026 model years because its updated moderate overlap rating was Acceptable, short of the Good that the 2025 criteria required for Top Safety Pick+.
In that test, IIHS rated the R1T’s rear-passenger restraints and dummy movement Marginal, while the structure and driver measures were Good.
The IIHS 2026 criteria require a Good rating in that test for either award, and its 2026 list includes the R1S but not the R1T.
The 2027 R1T carries the same Acceptable rating and no award, though it rates Good for pedestrian front crash prevention and Acceptable in the newer vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention test.
R2 Awaits Its Ratings
The R2 began customer deliveries on June 9, and the third quarter was the first to include three full months of the smaller SUV.
Rivian delivered a record 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter and produced 19,751 at its plant in Normal, Illinois, it said on October 2, without breaking out deliveries by model.
IIHS has not published crash-test ratings for the R2, according to its ratings website.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s ratings database also lists no R2 rating.
Pendse named the R2 among the programs he worked on, without detailing his role in its safety development.
His departure follows that of Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough, who is leaving on October 30 to join GE Vernova, and Vice President of Enterprise Technology Sridhar Thati, who left for Snowflake in August.
Rivian reports third-quarter results on October 29.
