NHTSA Complaint #11546596 — 2023 RIVIAN R1S

On the morning of 9/14/2023 while commuting to work, my one month old, 2100 mile R1S ground to a halt while driving normally in All-Purpose Mode at about 15mph in the middle of a busy road. There were zero warning signs or noticeable weirdness with the vehicle before this happened. The vehicle stopped itself, parked and put the hazard lights on with multiple warning messages on the screen displayed. There was heavy morning traffic and we had no ability to shift out of park to move the vehicle to a safer place. This was a very unsafe situation. It was stuck in the middle of the road and other drivers began swerving around us, nearly colliding with us and each other. I had to call a tow truck and 911 to dispatch a police officer to come and light us up to keep the situation safe while waiting on the tow. Today the Rivian Service Center confirmed the diagnosis was a failure of the front drive inverter, which will be replaced accordingly and the vehicle will be put back in service once the repairs are completed. My concerns and reason for this report are the way this failure happens without warning at any speed at any location, and the inability of the driver to move the vehicle, even under limited power and speed, using the other drive unit (either front or rear). In order to be confident in driving my R1S going forward, I'd like to know what exactly failed in the inverter and why, and what was revised on the new inverters to prevent or significantly lower the failure rate. If nothing is done, someone is going to get hurt or killed by this. Also if Rivian can push a software update to allow the vehicle to be limped to a safe place using the other drive unit in the event of an inverter failure, that would be helpful as well. I know of several other Rivian owners who have experienced this exact failure and they all had to be towed away from an unsafe situation on the road after being unable to move their vehicles.