All-electric Rivian R1T Launch Edition tackles the trail
Cars
Speaker 1: Today, I'm in the gorgeous mountains above Colorado, putting this through its spaces, the fully electric and hotly anticipated Rivian R one T pickup. Now there's been a pretty challenging trail. That's been a lot of fun just getting to this beautiful few here, but there's a lot more trail left ahead of us. Let's hop back behind the wheel and dig into the details. The R one T is the first vehicle from electric startup Rivian. And if I'm not mistaken, [00:00:30] the first fully electric pickup to reach the market with the first customer launch edition units, rolling off the line just this month, the design is almost toy, like in my opinion, with a very happy looking front FASA, both the front and rear ends are highlighted by strong, horizontal light bars with the front end, featuring a pair of pill shaped headlamps that have a surprising depth of them that I really just enjoy looking at the pickup stretches 217.1 inches from the Rooter to thet for scale it's footprint is a touch [00:01:00] larger than that of the ranger.
Speaker 1: A fair bit smaller than a crew cab F-150 of course, the main event here is the electric power train. The quad motor design one for each wheel gets you front axle twist to the tune of 415 horsepower and 413 pound feet of torque. While the rear axle rocks 420 horsepower and 495 pound feet. The math is a touch more complex than simple addition, but you're still looking at a combination of over 800 horsepower and 900 pound feet of torque in [00:01:30] sport mode on tarmac. You're looking at an impressive zero to 60 time of around three seconds. Switch to a more sedate mode to stretch to around 314 miles of electric range for the standard 135 kilowat hour, large packed battery, and later an optional max pack battery will bump the estimated range over the 400 mile mark the R one T features an air suspension that enables auto leveling and right height adjustment with up to 13.1 inches of ground clearance in off-road mode or up to 15 [00:02:00] inches for low speed rock crawling.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can up to three feet of water without being electrocuted. Now I noticed there are no differential settings or axle lockers, but the R one T doesn't really need them with the ability to individually send massive amounts of precise torque to the right wheel at the right time. It sort of already marries the traction advantages of locking dips with the maneuverability of an open that up. Speaking of maneuverability, my pre-production launch edition model didn't feature the software for the R one [00:02:30] T's most interesting party trick. So I wasn't able to experience a zero radius tank turn, but the feature is coming by a software update later. Okay. So those are the specs and we're on a little bit of a smoother bit of the trail now. So let's talk about out what it's like to drive this thing off road. Interestingly, it seems to me like an electric power train is even better suited to offroad driving than your standard four by four system.
Speaker 1: For starters, the power train is absolutely quiet, which means that you're [00:03:00] free to enjoy the sounds of the trail and the streams and things that you're going by. But also because you are not locking, uh, your differential at the front and rear axle, you're using the individual motors one for each wheel, you got better articulation for where your grip goes. So when you're scrambling up a loose it of sand or climbing up some slippery rocks, you don't really have that situation where you're spinning one tire. When your other one has grips. It's just sending power where it needs to go. And that gives you [00:03:30] a really surefooted feel. Also the one pedal driving that makes driving an electric vehicle more efficient on the road really makes driving on the trail a more relaxing and more controlled experience because as you're approaching a climb or as you're, uh, going up the trail, you have really good control with your right foot, but then you can also simply lift to get that sort of, uh, breaking feel, going down and taking advantage of a region on a decline, gives you a lot more control [00:04:00] than say pulsing, the abs sensor for some of the descent control system we've seen with ICUs.
Speaker 1: Plus when you're headed back downhill, you're getting some of that power back on the region, which is gonna help stretch your range. We started this day out with a pretty healthy battery around 80%, and we've done the better part of an entire day of trail driving. And we've still have got plenty of power to get back home with much despair. And also the dashboard technology that serves this vehicle well on the road also serves it on the trail. [00:04:30] We've got this massive screen here that we can use to take advantage of the front side and rear cameras that are gonna help us accurately position our wheels and know what's happening with the trail. You can switch between the front and the rear cameras. If you want to keep your eyes on the front or the rear wheels. And also the front camera comes in particular handing when you're going up a very steep incline and you can't see anything over the hood, it really adds to the safety there.
Speaker 1: And once you get back on the road, you've got your full compliment of infotainment here, and [00:05:00] it's a pretty interesting in good looking system. You got this big old screen. That's great for filling up the map with navigation directions and things like that over here. Next we've got our audio features where you can adjust the Meridian sound system with a custom EQ or 3d surround. You've also got access to a couple of streaming services like Spotify or tune in. If you want to use those right there, we're out in the middle of nowhere right now. So don't expect to get very much signal on those next up. We've got the, uh, vehicle systems [00:05:30] right here where you adjust your different drive modes. You got a couple to choose from right now, we're in offroad, which is gonna give us our 13 inches of ground clearance and adjust the power train so that it's better suited for offroad driving, but we've also got sport settings and all purpose setting.
Speaker 1: There's an eco conserved setting as well as, um, a different customization for towing. And each of those has more customization underneath it. For example, we're in offroad right now, but we can go into rock crawl and that's gonna raise our ride height [00:06:00] up to a maximum of 15 inches for best ground clearance. And also give us even more control on fine tune over our throttle for those slow speed, high torque grip applications. Also, it remembers your custom settings down here for each of the was ride setting. So if you like your offroad setting to be soft, you can set it to be soft. And it'll remember that for the next time. But if you like it a little firm, you don't have to go in there and change it every time. Next up we've got the controls for the various access systems, [00:06:30] uh, everything almost on this vehicle is power, including the hood, the, to cover you also have the ability to power from the tailgate from here.
Speaker 1: And there is the gear tunnel, which is a unique feature to the R one T, which is a tunnel that gives you either side access to a storage space that is sort of back behind the rear seats and underneath the bed. It's a very useful feature that Rivian actually puts to use with their sort of trail camp system that allows you option the ability to have a full [00:07:00] electric stove and cooking system that slides out of the side of the vehicle. That's really cool having no combustion engine under the hood, frees up a front trunk. That's big enough to hold around two to three carryon side suitcases and beneath the power tunnel cover at the back. You'll find in bed spare tire storage, an optional integrated automatic air compressor. Good for airing up your tires after a day of low PSI offroading and rock crawling.
Speaker 1: Of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Well, for the most part, I was pleased with the [00:07:30] R one T suite of driver a technologies. I think that Rian's driver plus highway steering assist system still needs a bit of finesing pretend it comes to the transition between assisted and human led steering. Now I dig deeper into all of that in our written article over on the roadshow.com, but the engineers that I spoke with extensively during my drive assured me that the automaker is hard at work. We're finding that system and will be delivering OTA updates. That'll make the R one T better over time day that it's delivered. [00:08:00] Yes, even the ones that are currently rolling off the line. Now the $73,000 launch edition that I drove is already sold out, but you can still place an order for the 2022 Rivian R one T starting at 67, 500 for the base Explorer model or the slightly better equipped $73,000 adventure, trim factories and options. First deliveries for those specs should start in January, 2022. Now you can find more details about the R one T including a deeper dive into the cabin driver, eight [00:08:30] tech and my colleague, Emmy Hall's experiences, rallying in the electric pickup over on the road. show.com. I'll see you there.
