2025 RIVIAN R1S — Complaint #2148820
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES:DOORS:LATCH:EMERGENCY MECHANICAL RELEASE filed November 15, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2148820 (ODI reference 11699510) concerns a 2025 RIVIAN R1S and was filed on November 15, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 5, 2025. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch:emergency mechanical release, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same RIVIAN R1S cohort independently describe similar latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch:emergency mechanical release failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2025 RIVIAN R1S shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The rear doors cannot be opened in an emergency when electrical power is interrupted. Although the Rivian R1S generation 2 Owner's Manual has a process to open the door, the process could not be performed by a reasonable person in a reasonable amount of time, in an emergency such as a battery fire. The process could definitely not be performed by children. The process requires physically destroying one the side panels and then reaching deep into the interior cavern of the door to hunt for a wire to pull. The process cannot be practiced, nor can it be taught to children, because it involves destruction of the side panel of the door. The side panel cannot be replaced without scheduling a service appointment and ordering a replacement part from Rivian. As a result, my children's life is irresponsibly endangered in case there were to be an accident, especially a battery fire, which would both cut electrical power and also risk burning to death for my children trapped in the back of t
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2148820 |
| ODI Number | 11699510 |
| Date Filed | November 15, 2025 |
| Failure Date | October 5, 2025 |
| VIN | 7PDSGBBA5SN |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.