Rivian’s flagship EVs, the R1T pickup and R1S SUV, aren’t strangers to safety recalls, but this latest one can probably be filed in the “not a big deal” folder of things that could go wrong on the assembly line.
The two battery-powered adventure vehicles were recalled for faulty airbag sensors, improperly secured seatbelts and potentially improperly fastened side airbags in the past, but this time it’s a missing airbag label that’s the culprit.
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No OTA fix for this recall
Rivian, as well as other software-focused EV makers such as Tesla, have been known to address some safety recalls with a simple over-the-air software update. However, this latest recall which affects certain R1S and R1T EVs, is different.
A total of 127 R1T and R1S units are potentially involved in the recall, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s report. The cars were built between February 19 and March 8, 2024, without an airbag label on the dashboard, which violates the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 571.208–Occupant crash protection.
The rule says that all cars that come with an airbag from the factory need to have “a label attached to a location on the dashboard or the steering control hub that is visible from all front seating positions.” The thing that makes this recall rather red-tapist is that the label itself doesn’t even need to be permanently fixed to the car–think of the piece of paper that sticks out of the glovebox of a brand-new car.
To fix the issue, Rivian will send a copy of the missing label to the affected owners together with the recall notification letter. Seeing how the label would have been ripped out of the car anyway, we’d call it job done.
But what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
