Rivian has deleted all three of its online shop gear entries, including the Tent R1T, Shuttle, and Tunnel Kitchen Camp, which were previously available but disappeared earlier today.

Similar to the distinctive characteristics of the Rivian R1T, one of its notable features is the “gear tunnel.” Situated between the truck’s bed and rear seats, this tunnel opens to the truck’s exterior. It offers drivers a spacious and elongated area to store equipment that they prefer not to keep inside the truck but still desire to safeguard more securely than the bed. Dirty equipment such as skis, tent poles, or similar items that are too lengthy to fit in the “frunk” serve as suitable examples.

Rivian also decided to offer accessories to fit into the space, including one of the most-anticipated accessories, a fully-contained portable kitchen for the battery car. This custom-engineered solution allowed the camp kitchen to be used with two induction cooktops and other equipment and utensils, complete with a water tank.

It might have been planned to be priced at $5,000, but it was awesome nevertheless.

Priced at $1,500, it was slightly more affordable. An alternative for enhancing the usability of the gear tunnel was the tunnel shuttle, which featured a retractable platform facilitating the loading and unloading of gear.

Rivian stated in October that it was temporarily pausing the production of both the shuttle tunnel and kitchen camp accessories to update their design.

Until a few hours ago, this page had the same appearance, but now the items are completely absent from the store’s listing. Presently, the temporary interruption appears to have extended beyond its initial timeframe.

The identical applies to the tunnel shuttle too. However, currently, the connection to the camp kitchen page merely directs to the general gear shop page.

We reached out to Rivian for their perspective on the matter, and a representative from Rivian provided us with 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.

However, we cannot be certain – the alteration will create the impression that Rivian is similar to it if it sounds like that. It may take some time, but these items may eventually be returned as they appear to be.

This problem does not have a solution yet, as the tent’s brake lights do not obscure the problem. However, to ensure that the truck’s brake lights are functioning properly, an additional brake light accessory would be required for the Rivian R1T Tent, as stated by Rivian in October. Although this entry disappeared from the site in January, it is still listed as “coming soon” on the shop, indicating that the R1S Tent is still available, in addition to these.

Electrek’s Perspective

A few additional projects are underway that make sense down the road. Margins are growing and complexity is decreasing, allowing for the necessary production upscaling. Rivian is currently working on scaling up production, albeit at a slightly slower pace than desired. This is somewhat understandable but also disappointing.

The company is getting help from its main engineers to speed up production and there are signs that Rivian has a higher internal target. The company announced a goal of 50,000 vehicles for this year, which was below the expectations of Wall Street. Just last year, the company barely missed its production goal of 25,000 units.

The kitchen camp was perhaps a necessary casualty in light of these challenges. We have received some signs that the changes might be going well, with the new data showing that Q1 is expected to be better than anticipated.

An innovative Rivian owner could potentially fill the void, thus it is possible that another company may step in and propose a comparable alternative – maybe even one with less flashy and extravagant technology. We have also observed the emergence of various external accessories for other electric vehicle brands.

Or maybe owners will devise their own do-it-yourself solutions in the interim.