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Over the river, through the woods, or just down the highway. Regardless of where you are, Rivian’s mobile service team will come to you, and that’s the goal, according to the automaker’s CEO.
In Park City, Utah during an exclusive one-on-one interview on The Drivecast with the R2 launch as a backdrop, Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe told The Drive, “So if you need service and you’re on the side of a mountain, we can send a truck there.” Bold claim, but also, one few, if any, automaker CEO’s would probably make.
Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Scaringe addresses mobile service below.
Service for Rivian has been a hot topic since day one. At one point the automaker had customers waiting anywhere from 40 to 50 days for their vehicles to even get into a shop for repairs. Though, Scaringe said those days are over. Part of the solution is the company’s mobile service setup.
Scaringe said, “You know, one of the things about service that we have not talked about enough, and I see it starting to emerge in customer forums, is more than half of our service is done with mobile service. And so the goal is for that to grow to a very high percentage. We’d like that to be 75, 80% of our service activities.”
Mobile service is exactly what it sounds like. Scaringe explained the program as, “for those that haven’t experienced it, your car sitting in your driveway, it has an issue, you flag a ticket or you said, like to have it worked on. And we send a technician to your house. And we have a fleet of around 800 mobile service vehicles, so it’s a mostly our vans, which are like a service station inside a van. We also, have some what we call RSTs, Rivian service trucks.”
“The cool thing about the trucks is they can go anywhere. So if you need service and you’re on the side of a mountain, we can send a truck there,” Scaringe said.
While the goal is for 75% to 80% of service to be mobile today that number sits at just under 60%, according to Scaringe. “The beauty of that is you don’t need a loaner, you don’t need to worry about dropping off. You don’t even need to be there. We can let ourselves into the car,” Scaringe said.
Scaringe deemed the mobile service aspect of the automaker “Super convenient.”
In a previous life, then Jeep Senior Vice President Mike Koval Jr told me at the 2025 Chicago Auto Show that the automaker was preparing to roll out a mobile service program in 2025. That never happened. Tesla pioneered the concept of mobile service, and some legacy automakers have followed including Ford and Lincoln, amongst others.
If your Rivian breaks down on the side of a mountain we want to hear about your experience, especially if the automaker sends a team out to fix the vehicle.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
