Automakers That Claim Owners Don’t Use EV Frunks Are Probably Lying Or Just Make Bad Frunks, Says Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe

Despite what far too many weird nerds seem to believe, Tesla didn’t actually invent the front trunk. That said, since electric vehicles don’t have engines taking up space anywhere, they’re basically perfect for a frunk. Except, if you ask a lot of other automakers, EV owners don’t use their frunks very often, which is why many electric vehicles don’t include anything other than a small space for storing a charge cable or half a bag of groceries — and some EVs have no frunk at all. According to Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, the automakers that claim their customers don’t use their frunks are probably lying, because Rivian owners use their frunks all the time. 

During a recent roundtable with other journalists at the launch event for the quad-motor R1, I asked Scaringe whether Rivian’s frunks get used enough to keep them around in the future, since other automakers don’t seem to be convinced. “It’s, like, wildly used. It’s super used,” Scaringe responded. From there, he continued, saying:

I guess, if you have a car that doesn’t have a front trunk, then you don’t have data to show you that the front trunk gets used. But if you were to look at user data — and we have a ton of it around what people are doing — the very last thing you would take out of the car would be the front trunk, based upon our not our, I mean, this is a data set of whatever it is, of 130,000 R1 customers, but it’s heavily used. In fact, on R1S, the front trunk gets used more than the rear liftgate.

So why do some automakers say their research shows customers don’t love the front trunk, but Rivian owners reportedly use it all the time? According to Scaringe, they’re either lying or they delivered a bad frunk experience:

I think two things could be happening, one is they may not be telling the truth, which is a convenient statement to say people don’t need it, but the reality is, they just couldn’t package it in, or the architecture of the vehicle didn’t allow for so I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t ignore that as a very likely reason for not being there or a reason for them, saying that?

But the other thing is, if you have a bad front trunk experience, which could be both [that] its very small, or you don’t have cinching, meaning you have to push, like if you’ve had a rear-engine car like a Porsche, it’s always very weird to push down in the hood. You do it, and you can feel the hood bow a little bit every time you do it, and the whole experience makes you feel like, “I don’t want to do that.” And in R1, it powers up [and] powers down, so it’s very different. In R2, it doesn’t power down, but it cinches. You just get it close enough, and it pulls it in. But not having to push on a Class A surface, we think, is a big deal.

And even with, like, I’ve owned multiple Teslas, I’d say it’s one of the things that deterred me from using the front trunk on my Model Y, that I never went to dent the hood, pushing them. But the data for us has been very compelling.

According to Scaringe, the frunk isn’t the only innovative storage option that Rivian owners use often. R1T buyers use their gear tunnels almost as much as they use their frunks:

The other one that gets used a lot, now it doesn’t exist in the R1S, is the gear tunnel gets used a ton. We had a hypothesis that people would start to change their behavior to use this big space, but there’s like no precedent at all. Like, will people use this tube you put through the side of the car? But it’s become very actively used, and because it’s so comfortable getting dirty, you can put, like, gym gear or a snowboard or wet stuff. It’s the second most-used storage in the car.

That said, not every storage spot gets used frequently, with Scaringe telling us, “The one that doesn’t get used in the R1T is there’s under-seat rear storage that most people don’t even know exists. So, yeah, that one doesn’t use a lot.” 

So there you go, other automakers. If your customers don’t like your front trunk, try giving it a better design. Apparently, that helps a lot. Or just admit you sacrificed a good frunk for packaging reasons. And maybe consider adding a gear tunnel, too.