The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how electric car maker Rivian services its vehicles’ rear suspension components, after receiving two reports from owners who lost control of their cars while driving.
The federal safety regulator’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) said on Thursday that both vehicles had been previously serviced, one of which had been in a collision before the work was done. According to the ODI, Rivian first realized in March 2025 that the rear toe link — a critical part of the suspension that helps keep the wheel straight — had a “sensitivity to service procedures,” causing the company to update how it handled the part during service and repairs.
The ODI’s investigation will look into how and why the rear toe link on Rivian’s R1 vehicles is sensitive to “foreseeable road and service conditions,” compare the two failures submitted by owners, evaluate Rivian’s current toe link repair procedure, and assess the condition of other 2023-2024 model year R1 vehicles.
Nearly 115,000 vehicles could be affected, the ODI said.
Rivian in January 2026 recalled almost 20,000 vehicles to include those that had received the toe link service “prior to the March 2025 improvement,” according to the ODI.
“Vehicle safety is a top priority at Rivian. Rivian data indicates R1 toe link joints are operating as intended,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch. Rivian also said that one of the vehicles in question was handled by a third party repair facility.
Both owners who submitted complaints reported a sudden loss of control after a bolt on the toe link “fractured,” according to the ODI. In one case, a Rivian R1 driver suddenly lost control at highway speeds, swerved into another vehicle, and then “collided head-on with the guardrail,” according to the complaint they submitted.
In the other case, the Rivian owner said their R1S “veered over adjacent lanes, over the bike path, onto the side walk and back onto the road and side walk” after the same left rear toe link broke. “I was left with a sore neck for several days, my apple watch kept trying to call 911 thinking I was in an accident,” the owner wrote in their complaint.
The probe comes as Rivian is less than two weeks away from starting deliveries of its much-anticipated R2 SUV, which the company expects to sell in much higher volumes than its other cars. Rivian also plans to add over 50 new service centers by the end of 2027, which would give it more than 150 total locations, and expand its mobile service van fleet as well.
Rivian has said that the R2’s simpler design should help reduce the level of service required. “Reducing mechanical complexity during assembly results in higher quality assurance when vehicles roll off the line, simultaneously improving the ease and expense of servicing your vehicle if the need arises,” the company wrote in February.
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Sean O'Kane Sr. Reporter, Transportation
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
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