Rivian has deleted the Camp Kitchen, Tunnel Shuttle, and R1T Tent from its online gear shop. All three were previously listed as “not available yet” until earlier today when their entries disappeared.
One of the Rivian R1T’s unique features is its “gear tunnel,” a compartment that fits between the bed and the rear seats of the truck and opens to the outside of the truck. This offers a large, long space for equipment that drivers might not want to keep inside the truck but want to keep in a more secure place than the bed. It’s good for dirty equipment that’s too long to fit in the “frunk,” so perhaps skis, tent poles, or the like.
But Rivian also decided to offer accessories to fit into the space, and one of the most-anticipated accessories was the camp kitchen. The camp kitchen was a custom-engineered solution that allowed the space to be used for a pull-out kitchen, complete with a water tank, space for utensils and other equipment, and two induction cooktops connected to the car’s battery for a fully-contained portable kitchen.
It may have been slated to cost $5,000, but it was cool nonetheless.
The tunnel shuttle was another option to make the gear tunnel more usable. It’s a slide-out deck that makes it easier to load and unload the gear tunnel. It was a little more reasonably priced at $1,500.
However, in October, Rivian stated that it was putting a “temporary pause” on the production of the camp kitchen and tunnel shuttle while it was working to update the design of both accessories.
That temporary pause seems to have become a little less temporary today, as the items are now no longer listed on the store at all. Until a few hours ago, the page looked like this:
But now, the link to the camp kitchen page simply redirects to the overall gear shop page. The same goes for the tunnel shuttle as well.
We reached out to Rivian for comment on the matter, and a Rivian spokesperson gave us this statement:
As we continue the work of delivering vehicles to our customers as quickly as possible, we’ve made the decision to halt production of the current versions of the built-in Camp Kitchen and Gear Tunnel Shuttle. We’re exploring updated designs and will offer adventure-ready cooking solutions for our vehicles in the future.
So it looks like these items may eventually return, but that may take some time. If so, it sounds like Rivian is saying that the design will change – but we’re not sure how yet.
In addition to these changes, the R1S Tent is still listed on the shop as “coming soon,” but the R1T Tent is missing – though this is less new, as its entry disappeared from the site in January. In October, Rivian stated that the R1T Tent would require an additional brake light accessory to ensure that the truck’s brake lights would still be visible when the tent is attached to the bed. With the R1S, the tent does not obscure the brake lights and thus does not have this problem.
City Dwellers’s Take
This is disappointing but a little understandable. Rivian is currently working on scaling up production, and it’s going a little slower than the company would like. Given its need to scale up production, reduce complexity, and increase margins, it makes some sense that it would kick a few side projects down the road.
The company just barely missed its 25,000-unit production goal for last year and announced a goal of 50,000 vehicles for this year, which was below Wall Street expectations of 60,000. But there are signs that Rivian has a higher internal target, and the company is moving engineers to its main plant to help work on getting production up to speed.
We received some signs today that the changes might be going well, with new data showing that Q1 is going better than expected. So in light of these challenges, perhaps the camp kitchen was a necessary casualty.
It’s always possible that some other company might come in and offer a similar solution – perhaps one with less whiz-bang fancy engineering. We’ve seen several third-party accessories show up for other EV brands, so hopefully, an enterprising Rivian owner can step in and fill the gap. Or perhaps owners will come up with their own DIY solutions in the meantime.
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