Rivian delays the bigger battery pack for its electric pickup all the way to 2023

Rivian has confirmed that buyers of its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV are going to have to wait until 2023 if they want the biggest battery pack option.

As we reported earlier this month, Rivian has released its first earnings results since going public and it’s giving us more visibility in the company’s operations – the company confirmed that it delivered its first 652 vehicles as of December 15. It also confirmed that as expected, it is running into some production issues that are going to result in lower deliveries than what it originally guided.

As a result, Rivian is going to have to prioritize models as it works through the 71,000 pre-orders for the R1T and R1S in North America.

In a new letter sent to customers today, CEO RJ Scaringe mainly reiterated things stated in the earnings report earlier this month, but he also announced that Rivian is delaying its bigger battery pack option all the way to 2023:

As of December 15, we had approximately 71,000 preorders for the R1T and R1S in the US and Canada, with the large majority having configured an Adventure Package with a Large pack battery (our Max pack represents approximately 20% of our preorders). In order to serve the largest number of preorder holders, we will be prioritizing building the Adventure Package with Large pack battery during the next year. Explore Package preorders and vehicles with a Max pack battery configuration will follow in 2023. In setting our delivery timing, we optimized our build sequence around the build combination that would support us ramping as quickly as possible and therefore have the largest possible positive climate impact.

Rivian is currently delivering the R1T electric pickup truck with its “Large” battery pack, which gets 314 miles of range based on the EPA cycle.

The bigger “Max” pack is expected to get 400 miles of range on a single charge, but we won’t know that for sure until it enters production and now it sounds like this won’t happen until next year.

The company is sharing the information to let buyers change their configurations if they want to get a delivery sooner.

Speaking of deliveries, Scaringe says that customers will get updated delivery timelines in “early 2022”, when the company should have more information to get more precise delivery windows based on the configurations.