The guy from the shop who installed my new tires said his Ford Ranger tires wore out in about 6k miles. My Tacoma's tires lasted almost 50k. Sometimes car manufacturers cheap out on factory tires
TFA is about a Rivian with high-end Pirelli tires, this is not a mfr cheaping out situation.
It's clearly an alignment issue, which is not surprising at all when it's related to a deliberate ride height change.
Vehicles with independent suspension tend to have "bump steer", which varies toe with suspension travel. When the vehicle is designed to operate for sustained periods at substantially different ride heights, its suspension geometry has to adapt to these modes or it'll exhibit crap like this.
When I ran over a nail in my Prius C I swapped the stock tires for the cheapest set the dealer had. It was $80/tire instead of $230. My MPG did go down ever so slightly but when you're talking 51 to 49 who cares, I'd never make that money back in saved gas. They grip better in winter too.
6,000 miles is pretty extreme, but maybe the Ford needed to go with really soft tires to get the handling characteristics they wanted? Going by the Ford we used to own I think their engineers are a make-it-work bunch and don't care too much about longevity (which is too bad, other than horrendous reliability it was a great car).