Rivian founder and CEO R.J. Scaringe has been posting information about the company’s vehicles on social media, providing a glimpse into what is happening behind the scenes.
One important fact is that Rivian is continuing to expand the plant it purchased from Mitsubishi in Normal, Illinois. The factory’s total area will be more than 4 million square feet after a new 650,000-square-foot expansion. According to Scaringe, the new area will be used to manufacture Rivian’s next-generation Enduro electric drive units. Silva Hiti, Rivian’s senior director of electric power conversion, also provided information on the upcoming power unit. The company uses that terminology to describe the electric drive unit because it includes additional components, such as an inverter, and is therefore more than just an electric motor.
Her engineering team, according to Hiti, creates inverters, motors, power electronics, and chargers. They’ve been working on the Enduro power unit, an in-house design set to debut in 2024 to replace the Bosch-supplied motors Rivian currently uses. “Our team designed the inverter on the top of the drive unit and the electric motor that goes into the drive unit,” she said. “It is an extremely powerful unit. This enduro drive unit provides almost as much power as two original drive units and when put in a dual motor configuration in our R1T or R1S it gives us more than 600 horsepower.” Rivian has struggled to keep up with demand for its popular pickups and SUVs, and technical analyst Sandy Munro has identified aspects of Rivian’s designs that pose challenges for quick manufacturing. According to Scaringe, the Enduro power units should help alleviate some of this. “There’s been a lot of focus on manufacturability,” he said. According to Scaringe, the Enduro’s power delivery is also noteworthy. “We say ‘600+ [horsepower],” he explained. “We’re ecstatic about that ‘plus.’ There is definitely a lot of potential. This is something we’ve been working on, not just on dynamometers, but also in vehicles. I drove one last week, and it’s fantastic. I really like the power delivery, torque, and smoothness of the ride.”
The Enduro power unit isn’t expected until 2024, but these details indicate that we have a lot to look forward to as the company improves on what is already an excellent vehicle.
