Issue 11 - Rivian RT Review: Flat Tire Fiasco 🚙

OpenAI and Trust

The reporting and commentary on the OpenAI drama was thorough and pervasive. In our own attempt to analyze this moment of shared AI history, a masterclass in how not to stage a board coup, we want to return to the lens of trust.

In our salon a few weeks ago, we argued that people around the world are losing trust in their governments and expect societal change to come from brands. This is a problem if one realizes that particularly in the tech industry, where trillion dollar brand behemoths are to be found, these brands are associated with the founders and faces behind them. Combine this with chronic bad behavior on the industry-captain front: Meta, Uber, FTX, Juicero, Theranos, Twitter, etc.

As entertaining as the entire drama is to watch, it is clear that everyone here loses, especially in grace and reputation.

Jan’s Rivian RT Review: Flat Tire Fiasco

When a fellow Punk asked me if I wanted to go on a short road trip to pick up his daughter from college prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. My friend, the driver, had done the math--driving from New York City to Providence, RI and back in his combustion engine powered vehicle would cost approximately the same in gas as renting the new Rivian RT, a fully electric pickup truck, with all bells and whistles including autonomous driving, that had just been released. So we shelled out $149 USD for the day, mounted the 9 ton eyesore of a spaceship and got onto the highway, Providence bound.

It doesn’t matter whether you like pickup trucks or not—it is impossible to not instantly fall in love once you are inside the Rivian RT (starting at $73.000 USD). Spacious, with plenty of room in the back seats, the car accelerates, navigates and manuevers miraculously like a sports car. Even the autonomous driving (which continues to creep me out as a concept) was quite compelling and felt safe on the highway—the ride could not have been more comfortable, smooth or simply better. Pure bliss and joy.

In Providence, we picked up my friend’s daughter, grabbed a snack prior to the 3+ hour long ride home, and then had our EV-bubble-burst and pop loudly. Upon our return to the car we saw the front left tire was flat. And by flat I mean rim-on-the-asphalt flat. We had never seen a flatter tire before. The good news was that my friend’s roadside assistance coverage from his insurance immediately kicked into gear despite the fact that we were travelling in a rental car—the lady on the other end of the line could not have been more helpful. The bad news was that upon hearing what vehicle we were traveling in she had already started to hint in her third or fourth sentence that finding a new tire might be . . . “challenging”. Plus, we needed a big tow truck “because of the weight of those EVs.” Well, this surely would get figured out, somehow. We patiently waited for the tow truck. 

While we were waiting, we had an epiphany: Spare tires! We remembered that there used to be such a thing in cars. Somewhere. It took us 20 minutes to find the compartment in the car that houses the spare tire. It was a beautiful compartment, clean and spacious, but unfortunately empty. We learned from YouTube and Google that spare tires are considered an “extra” these days, particularly in EVs. Manufacturers do apparently everything keep the weight of the cars down, even sacrificing the spare tires.

The driver from the towing company called us 10 minutes before he arrived: there were no replacement tires available for our car anywhere in the region. It was a new vehicle, the tires that it needed were exclusively manufactured for Rivian and only used on this very model, and it would take two days to get the tire delivered to Providence.

We drove to a Pepboys branch in Providence, and the driver complained during the entire ride about the specificity in tires that not only Tesla and the new EV car brands, but especially the European manufacturers require. Tires are no longer standardized across makes and models, standards don’t seem to exist, every car is special. Both sourcing, and especially, storing these many different types of tires has become simply impossible for car shops around the world due to the sheer quantity of them. And we thought that the erosion of phone-charging-plug standards was a major problem!

The Pepboys were not happy to see us. They liked the car, but not what was wrong with it. They had no lift that could even lift the 9 ton up, and had no way to replace our tire. The best they could do was send us to a shop across the road to buy a can of “Fix-A-Flat” - that they would then apply to the tire, hoping for the best. We are not quitters, so we tried that too. The owner of the shop himself kneeled down next to the tire and sprayed a can load of white foam through the air-valve of the tire into the tire. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it: Here we were with a car from the future, pumping chemicals through an air valve into the tire of a 9 ton vehicle. Surprisingly, this didn’t work either. 

We aborted our mission, our friend stayed in a hotel in Providence overnight, while I took the cheapest available Honda from a car rental that was still open at that time of the day, and drove home without any difficulties. After refusing to get the car towed to a garage that was 2 hours away for $450 USD the next day as suggested by the car rental company, our friend finally found a Midas shop in Connecticut who had a lift for the car and were also able to patch it up. They didn’t even charge our friend. And he finally made it back safely to New York City, the only mishap on the way home being that the lid of the socket for the charger didn’t open when the car needed electricity. 45 minutes and a few YouTube tutorials later, our friend had solved this problem as well through a complete re-boot and re-set of the car’s electronic system. 

The core takeaways from the experience are the following:

1. People are great. Everyone involved in the drama was friendly, nice and willing to help.

2. The self-driving mode was impressive.

3. Despite all the technology and innovation, we’d be well advised to also continue to pay attention to essentials that we take for granted, such as tires.

4. No matter how much any given day sucks: they can still be great days as long as you are with a friend.