Battery Pack Catches Fire at Rivian Plant, Sandy Monroe Tears Down the R1T: Rivian News Roundup

Intro hi welcome to vulture media where we talk about the latest review news and the exciting things rivian is doing in the ev industry don't forget to click the subscribe button and ding the bell to set your preferences to this channel it really helps out the channel Battery Pack Catches Fire rivien's production held this week has been tough the automaker has experienced a few headline problems on its manufacturing line in normal there was another fire on the production line as the normal fire department responded to the emergency at rivien's manufacturing plant on saturday morning a battery pack caught fire on the production line this will be the third fire at the plant in recent months seven months to be precise the fire occurred at rivien's battery testing area in the southwest side of the plant the battery pack that was assembled and being tested went into a thermal run away that is to say when a battery cell overheats and catches fire the event caused the facility to be evacuated while the fire department fought the flames firefighters moved the battery outside after putting it out and said they continued to cool it with water until it was released to rivien engineers for investigation and disassembly the exact cause of the fire is under investigation but the battery pack had been in a repair area and was being tested when it ignited a thermal runaway happens when a battery's cell overheats and catches fire the ignited cell releases more heat to the adjacent cells in a self-sustaining chain reaction the only damage riven's production plant sustained in this incident was to the battery pack the carrier and the test booth equipment the news of the fire broke after charlie mewangi who helped kick-start the electric vehicle maker's manufacturing process announced his plans to leave the company miuinggay a former tesla executive served as executive vice president at rivien from may 2020. he brought the r1t pickup truck and r1s suv to production in late 2021. his departure comes amid the arrival of former magna international executive frank klein who is due to take over as chief of operations in june and oversee production supply chain and manufacturing engineering his hiring was announced in march rivian plans to use this transition opportunity to better reorganize its manufacturing department after the reorganization climb will oversee production manufacturing engineering and supply chain unchanged in the reshuffling is tim fallon who remains vice president of manufacturing overseeing day-to-day production operations at rivien's plant in normal the reorganization also includes the restructuring and alignment of the rivian operations team rivian's manufacturing line has been hard at work trying to make these vehicles and get them to customers hands it's been more difficult because some aspects of certain trims of the vehicles are not ready yet like the ocean coast interior and rivien has had to skip orders with such features not only that but rydian did recently decide to prioritize the production of models featuring specific interior and exterior colors and wheels this has led to the unusual situation that some early reservation holders are getting their vehicles delivered later than customers who place pre-orders years after them this has left many customers unhappy one such customer jeff wells an accountant from southern california who placed a reservation for a rivien r1t in early 2019. despite being one of the first in line for a truck wells has become increasingly frustrated to see people who place their orders years after him take delivery of their trucks while he keeps waiting wells is just one of many with the same issue there have been a lot of complaints in online forums and groups recently about unreliable delivery timelines and delays the complaints started to add up last month after rivien said it was prioritizing the production of vehicles with black mountain and forest edge interiors over the ocean coast interior at the time rivien said that building in few build combinations reduces complexity with their suppliers and in the plant and allows them to build a greater number of vehicles however that also meant many early reservation holders determined to stick with their original color preferences saw their orders delayed R1S Video Review the r1s which has been delayed beyond customers patience got its first video review this week two videos published by the ezrak sisters and the persons of ijustine and jenna ezrick featured the same r1s vehicle a launch edition r1s painted l-cap granite featuring the quad motor powertrain and large battery pack the suv also came with a seven seat layout they took their parents from los angeles on a trip to yosemite national park in the rivien taking full advantage of the vehicle's massive cargo area when the third row seats are folded they also discovered that when you need the third row there's plenty of space there for adult passengers more than expected actually rivien has big plans for the future and is actively taking steps to make sure those plans become a reality the automaker is on track to break ground on its new electric vehicle battery and assembly plant late this summer members of the joint development authority of jasper morgan newton and walton counties got an update on rivien's progress at the authority's regular meeting tuesday afternoon in covington closing procedures and land sales transactions on the nearly 2 000 acre site to be used for the rivian project will have been completed by the end of june to get the project going smoothly the georgia department of transportation is making preparations to enter into an intergovernmental agreement with the state and the jda for the construction of a frontage road to serve the rivien site utility partners are working to get the infrastructure in place to serve the auto plant overall the rivium project is on schedule and the site should be ready for grading to begin sometime in late summer rivien has also not relented in its efforts to install waypoint chargers across the country New Drive Mode the latest installation project is at michigan on friday the county celebrated the installation of the first of about 15 ev charging sites over the next few years at a series of state parks and a state fish hatchery rivien is providing open network rivian waypoints chargers for the site and others at no cost while the non-profit organization adopt a charger will be providing technical support and more from charging to driving rivian is striving to make the rivien experience better the automaker announced that it will issue an over-the-air software update adding a new drive mode specifically for soft sand it's part of a wider update that includes improvements for battery pre-conditioning which warms the battery and allows for faster and safer charging rivian announced the new update via a tweet the new drive mode will be the ninth drive mode on offer for the rivien with the others and even split for on and off-road options Sandy Monroe Teardown on a more interesting note sandy monroe has started showing of his teardown series of the rivien r1t as it is his tradition sandy has begun with the front of the vehicle taking off the plastic cover from above the headlights under the hood is very clever engineering from rivian as sandy remarks taking off the plastic reveals that it is held in place by magnets which is quite a novel solution according to sandy we can see in addition to rivian's implementation of clever technology that the automaker also uses neat design and cable management finally rex briggs is a data scientist and now the owner of arivian r1t he used his skills to try to calculate the real world off-road range of his electric truck he took it on the coyote flat off-road trail in california's inyo national forest all the way up to funnel lake and then back to the star this was a journey of around 100 miles which rex started with 93 percent in his r1t battery pack he reached funnel lake with 65 percent in the battery after some ten creek crossings climbing to ten thousand three hundred feet above sea level with the kind of ease that we now know this vehicle can deliver in tough conditions in his calculation that he had used 37.8 kilowatt hour to reach the lake he considered that the rivien's battery pack had 135 kilowatt hour usable capacity however tom mullathy and kyle connor of inside evs measured this in another video and found that the usable capacity of the big rivian battery is actually around 125 kilowatt hour which means rex actually used a bit less electricity to complete the climb than what he states he is made aware of this in the comments and then calculates that with 125 kilowatt hour the rivian could have done around 137 miles of driving in those conditions it's worth noting that he obviously used most of the electricity on the first light of the journey going uphill and then used hardly any at all 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