Although the Rivian R1T and R1S EVs have been met with a wave of controversy due to the actions of the company's leaders and the struggle of getting the cars off the production line and delivered to customers. Regardless of the current turmoil surrounding the EV startup, the truck and SUV duo still look like promising products, especially in quad-motor guise.

Despite just a handful of models being delivered to customers, the brand is already looking at providing extensive upgrades to the range. With the updates, we can expect the cars to soon boast new battery chemistry that hopes to increase capacity, reduce the cost of manufacturing, and improve their means of sourcing materials.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe revealed that the company is looking at investing in the development of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell technology during its Q4 and Full Year 2021 earnings call. Using the phosphate compound, the battery packs can offer an improved life cycle over the standard lithium-ion technology. As per industry estimates, it can also lower the cost of a battery by 6% compared to nickel manganese cobalt-based packs.

Motivating this decision during the call, Scaringe says: "Along with that, our standard battery pack is leveraging LFP and LFP chemistry, and that chemistry not only allows us to offer that pack at a lower cost, but it really fits commercial applications well. And it's first going to be launched in the commercial vehicle platform later this year, and then will make its way into our consumer vehicles by late 2023."

"Now as we develop these new offerings, we need to make sure that these offerings could fit into our product portfolio," adds Scaringe. "And to do that, we revisited the overall pricing strategy. Before the pricing changes, our R1 platform had a price range without options of $67,500 to $83,500 and only included quad-motor variants. With the addition of these new product offerings, the R1 platform's price range is now $67,500 to $95,000, including both quad- and dual-motor configurations as well as the standard range LFP battery pack."

We've already seen the use of lithium iron phosphate in the battery upgrade for the McLaren P1 announced earlier this year. Although the fitment would have owners part with $156,700, the benefits were immense as it lowered the overall weight by 123.7 pounds. Unfortunately, with the smaller pack, the electric range was reduced from 7.5 miles to a minute 1.9 miles, but the benefits included much lower weight in this particular application.

The LFP packs set to be introduced to future Rivian products will be developed entirely by the company. Scaringe tells investors, "When I say in-house, that's entirely in-house, not through a joint venture or through a partnership structure. But the LFP that's first launching later this year, that's a cell that we've sourced through a partner and a cell that we're going to be building in that close partnership."

Adding to the conclusive development of technology, Rivian will also be diving into a heat pump-based thermal system that will give its cars a bidirectional charging system. This is the same technology that is currently being developed by General Motors that will allow owners to use the electricity within their EVs to power their homes.