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• Innovative rear wiper design. Rivian created a unique rear wiper system for the R2, hidden in a heated trough to prevent freezing.
• Complex engineering challenge. The design required developing a completely new system due to the vehicle’s unique structure.
• Integrated and functional solution. The wiper is seamlessly integrated, allowing full glass drop without obstruction.
• Team effort and dedication. Significant time and effort were invested to achieve this innovative design.

Bottom line: Rivian’s R2 features a groundbreaking rear wiper system, showcasing the company’s commitment to innovative design and engineering.

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AI assisted, editor reviewed

The Rivian R2 was designed and engineered differently than the R1. In the name of cost, both for Rivian to build and for consumers to have to pay, the R2 was designed through simplification. Except for one bit: the rear window wiper. That is one piece that is complicated.

Rivian Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud, told The Drive, “Yeah, that was something we spent a lot of time debating.” The reason? As the automaker’s CEO, RJ Scaringe put it, nothing like it existed today.

“Where we wanted to have a rear wiper on the drop glass, but we didn’t want it to sit on the body. And so you’ve seen probably cars that have wipers on the body, and then we also didn’t want to put it, we couldn’t put it, in the spoiler, because it was a pass through. 
And so, we actually hid it in that ledge, which is complex, because there’s not any wipers like that. So we had to develop and design a complete wiper system from scratch,” Scaringe said.

This led to challenges, according to Scaringe. “We had to design a way to deal with all the obvious challenges of that, let’s say, it fills with water, and it’s cold outside, how does it not freeze? So it sits in a heated trough. We had to design for ways for it to have a snow mode, so it pops up, it stays out,“ Scaringe said. He continued, “and if you’re in a cold climate, you can set it to pop up just so that there’s no risk of it getting stuck. So there’s a ton of work that went into that. We actually put out an image of it in a cold chamber testing, where the whole car is covered in ice, and the wiper’s still working.”

Hammoud told The Drive, “You can see on the version that doesn’t have it [referring to the wiper in the trough], attached to the glass [pointing to the base Standard trim]. You don’t have to worry about it because it’s integrated. So for this vehicle [referring to the Premium and Performance trims with the inset wiper design], because we have the pass through a spoiler, we can’t put it in the back of the spoiler, right? 
Because it just doesn’t work because it’ll wreck the pass through, which we need for aero. So the other option was we could attach it to the body. Aside from it looking bad, even if it’s attached to the body, you still need a way for it to get off the glass. “

Hammoud continued, “So, I think we came up with a really nice solution that’s very well integrated and hides it, and that way you can get full glass drop. 
And that way when you’re pulling things in and out of the vehicle, it’s not in the way. Because that’s the other problem with the ones that are attached to the body during the way when you’re pulling stuff out.”

But creating an entire rear wiper system from scratch was a hurdle. Scaringe noted, “There’s a whole team that had to work on that.”

“Sweat, nights, and weekends to get that to come together, but it was, as a finished product, what we hope a customer sees is they see it just, as a beautiful detail, and then they’ll [think], when they pull the thread, and they’re like, oh, wow, they’ve thought of you developing the trough properly and developing all the kinematics properly, but those are great details,” Scaringe said.

Scaringe closed the topic by saying, “Came out well. It was hard.”

Got a tip about how a product was engineered? Drop us a line at tips@thdrive.com

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Lots of cars today boast “direct injection,” so it seems commonplace, but that’s only a recent development. Getting the fuel into the cylinders of an internal-combustion engine takes some ingenuity, and it’s been a long road of “firsts” along the way between the late 19th century and the early 21st. The basic carburetor that served to blend fuel vapors with air and deliver the mixture to the intake manifold was one of the “firsts” on the 1886 car devised by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach (some time before they joined forces with Karl Benz). Theirs is often regarded as the first car, and with refinements this carburetor system managed the task well enough for most cars for more than 80 years.

Fuel injection, which allows finer control of the mixture by spraying atomized fuel, was first managed by mechanical means and was a key element for the development of compression-ignition (diesel) engines in the 1920s. There, and in World War II aviation engines, the fuel was most often injected directly into the combustion chamber, known as “direct injection.” When injection started showing up in postwar gasoline production cars, there were dozens of variations but this direct-injection form was rare. One exception was the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL that, like that era’s M-B racing cars, used a Bosch-developed mechanical direct-injection system. (Some credit a 1952 Goliath with a two-stroke engine that also employed Bosch direct injection, but Goliath was selling city cars in Europe only, and most of those cars had to have their injection replaced with carburetors because they failed.) The 300SL’s “first” is often qualified as the first “production sports car” with fuel injection.

It’s easier and cheaper to design and build injectors that don’t have to survive the hostile environment of a combustion chamber, so other pioneers in the late 1950s used systems that simply replaced the carburetor’s role in delivering fuel into the intake manifold. This generally meant a constant, though modulated, stream of fuel to mix with air drawn in through a throttle mechanism, hence “throttle-body fuel injection.” As emissions regulations and fuel efficiency became growing concerns, it became worthwhile to provide a separate injector for each cylinder, delivering a precisely metered dose of fuel only during the intake phase in that port, or “port fuel injection.” Another worthy refinement was to manage the fuel electronically. While American Motors built prototype Rambler Rebels in 1957 using a Bendix electronic system, it didn’t go into production, leaving “first” honors to Chrysler’s 1958 “Electrojector” system on that model year’s Chrysler 300D, De Soto Adventurer, Dodge D-500, and Plymouth Savoy. Only 35 buyers took the pricey option, and most had it replaced with the standard carburetor after it proved unreliable. So, perhaps the 1968 Volkswagen Type 3, which had the latest Bosch “D-Jetronic” system, could be considered the “first” successful electronic-injected car. Still, it delivered fuel to the manifold, not into the combustion chamber.

It wasn’t until 1996 that modern gasoline direct injection with electronic management appeared on the market. Mitsubishi gets the honors, first on the four-cylinder Galant sedan and on a V-6 the next year. The advantage: improved efficiency, yielding the magic trick of making more power while also getting better fuel economy. In the first five years, Mitsubishi built one-million cars with this GDI, well ahead of the rest of the industry. That Mitsubishi has all but disappeared from the U.S. automotive market suggests, again, that getting there first isn’t always a magic bullet for sales leadership. Or maybe that the company should have brought it here earlier instead of restricting initial sales to Asia and Europe. One challenge: New technology is generally more expensive, at least initially, and the advantage to the buyer isn’t always evident. Beginning in 2004, German luxury brands Audi and BMW did a better job of selling direct injection as an advantage in the United States.

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