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23 Posts
Absolutely bizarre issue - and "fix". I had parked my R1T in open sunlight for a few hours on a 90 degree day. After returning to the truck, and while still sitting in the parking lot, the hood decided to open itself! Got out and checked there wasn't anything blocking the latch or otherwise obstructing anything. Nope, nothing. Closed using the outside button, got back in, and a minute later it opened itself again. After once again inspecting everything and finding nothing obviously amiss, I performed a soft reset. No change. I performed a hard reset next, with the same result. Up and down it went, sometimes right away, sometime after a few minutes.
At this point, I got in touch with Rivian support. They had me remove the top front panel in the frunk to expose the latch mechanism and take a better look (the panel is only held on by magnets), but there was nothing to see. In an attempt to at least get me home, the tech had me turn off the power hood via the service UI, and close the hood manually. This prevented the hood from opening more than an inch or so when it next tried to pop open, as it was still latched. However, it was open enough to trigger the open hood alarm, which limits the vehicle to 15mph if you try and drive somewhere. Good to know if you're stuck out in the wilderness, but wasn't going to hack getting me home in traffic. So we agreed on having the truck towed to the service center, and giving me Lyft/Uber credits to get home.
Two pertinent facts to this story are 1) While troubleshooting, I noticed that the hood to body panel gaps were significantly different between the left and right sides. 2) The truck came from the factory with the underside of the hood unpainted, so they had to have it painted by a 3rd party before it was delivered to me. So my theory was that some fastener did not get torqued correctly when the hood was reinstalled after painting, and once it loosened enough for the hood to move, things were no longer aligned, and the hood latch sensor could not tell the hood was closed. Further reinforcing this theory, I'm pretty darn sure I checked those very same gaps on delivery, and they seemed fine.
But the service manager informed me that what had actually happened had to do with cabin lighting levels (ambient light setting), the rain sensor, and software. And, I was the third R1T with this issue in their shop. Wow. I was told that their engineers were developing a fix, probably to be incorporated in the next software release. In the meantime, I was advised not to change the ambient lighting. He also said that direct sunlight on the rain sensor had something to do with it.
My confidence in this thing is shaken. If something as random as rain sensors and ambient lighting can make the hood malfunction due to software, what's next?
At this point, I got in touch with Rivian support. They had me remove the top front panel in the frunk to expose the latch mechanism and take a better look (the panel is only held on by magnets), but there was nothing to see. In an attempt to at least get me home, the tech had me turn off the power hood via the service UI, and close the hood manually. This prevented the hood from opening more than an inch or so when it next tried to pop open, as it was still latched. However, it was open enough to trigger the open hood alarm, which limits the vehicle to 15mph if you try and drive somewhere. Good to know if you're stuck out in the wilderness, but wasn't going to hack getting me home in traffic. So we agreed on having the truck towed to the service center, and giving me Lyft/Uber credits to get home.
Two pertinent facts to this story are 1) While troubleshooting, I noticed that the hood to body panel gaps were significantly different between the left and right sides. 2) The truck came from the factory with the underside of the hood unpainted, so they had to have it painted by a 3rd party before it was delivered to me. So my theory was that some fastener did not get torqued correctly when the hood was reinstalled after painting, and once it loosened enough for the hood to move, things were no longer aligned, and the hood latch sensor could not tell the hood was closed. Further reinforcing this theory, I'm pretty darn sure I checked those very same gaps on delivery, and they seemed fine.
But the service manager informed me that what had actually happened had to do with cabin lighting levels (ambient light setting), the rain sensor, and software. And, I was the third R1T with this issue in their shop. Wow. I was told that their engineers were developing a fix, probably to be incorporated in the next software release. In the meantime, I was advised not to change the ambient lighting. He also said that direct sunlight on the rain sensor had something to do with it.
My confidence in this thing is shaken. If something as random as rain sensors and ambient lighting can make the hood malfunction due to software, what's next?