Anyone who has chased an electrical gremlin knows the feeling. The car powers on, the screen lights up, and it still refuses to move. Now picture that problem on a broken Rivian van built for Amazon deliveries.
That is the spot the EV rebuilder behind @RichRebuilds found himself in. He bought a broken Amazon delivery van built by Rivian, and he calls it his “$100,000 Amazon delivery van.” It powers on, he says, but one electrical fault keeps it from rolling even a few inches.
The warning on the dash was clear enough. It read “park brake system fault,” followed by a message to pull over and call for assistance. By the time this video starts, the van had been sitting on his lift for 38 days.
Working Through The Easy Fixes First
Rich says he went through the suggestions people left on his earlier videos, one by one. He did not want to start buying expensive parts until he knew the van itself was not simply confused.
First, he let it sleep. Plenty of people had told him to shut it down and leave it alone for a while, but 38 days of rest changed nothing. Next, he put a fresh battery in the key fob. That fixed one small issue, because the van could finally see the key. The brake fault stayed.
After that came a master reset, done with a button combination on the steering wheel and the hazard switch. The screen rebooted and the fault came straight back. He then plugged the van in to charge. It charged, which told him the van knew it was in park. A generic scan tool plugged into the diagnostic port could not talk to it at all.
A Specialist, A Scope And Rivian’s Own Software
Next, he brought in a specialist, Chris, with a PicoScope. Chris explained that many parking brake motors are meant to be driven with pulsed power, not straight battery voltage. On the bench, the two rear brake motors both moved, but they did not sound or behave quite the same.
Then Rich got access to Rivian’s own diagnostic software. He says there is a short-term plan that costs about $300 for roughly 14 days. The first scan read 20 modules and 124 rows of codes. After clearing them, 14 rows remained, including a right rear wheel speed sensor fault and an electronic parking brake failure.
Following that wheel speed sensor code under the van paid off. The crew traced the wiring and found a damaged section. “That thing’s been chafing since like the truck was made, huh?” one of them says. Rich jumped the wire as a temporary fix, and the speed sensor code cleared.
Two Rivians That Won’t Drive
The van still would not go. So Rich tried a bigger test. He pulled the braking parts off his own Rivian R1T pickup, which he says was working fine, and fitted them to the Rivian van. The wheel spun, but the van still refused to drive.
Next, he did what he says he already knew he would regret. He put the van’s brake parts on his truck to see whether the fault would follow them. It did. His R1T immediately showed the same symptoms as the van.
That should have settled it. However, when he put his own original parts back on the truck, it stayed disabled. “Now we have two dead vehicles,” he says.
His best guess is that the swap left something stored in the truck’s computer. “Whatever we did caused the truck to remember that something was wrong,” he says. In other words, the problem may not be a single bad part at all.
What To Know Before Buying A Broken EV
- Start with the free checks. Key fob batteries, resets and charging can rule out simple problems before you spend money.
- Expect to need factory software. Many modern vehicles hide their faults from generic scan tools.
- Follow every code, not just the loud one. A side fault, like a wheel speed sensor, can block a bigger system.
- Be careful swapping parts between cars. Moving parts to a known-good vehicle can leave it with stored faults of its own.
- Budget time as well as money. A fault that takes weeks to trace can tie up a lift and a second vehicle.
Where Things Stand With The Rivian Van
For now, Rich has two Rivians in his shop that will not drive. He says he now has to sort out his own truck as well as the Amazon van. The chafed wire is only jumped for now, and he has not said what part, if any, will finally fix the brake fault.
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