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Right now we have 2 Cybertrucks and a BMW X5 45e hybrid on order. Wife and I are still debating whether or not to order the Rivian before seeing and driving one.
As long as you don't mind the hassle of reselling it probably not any great loss. It's a $1,000 refundable deposit. Absolutely worst case, which is very unlikely, the company goes heels up and you lost $1,000. If you end up buying it and hate the thing, you can probably sell it to someone for whatever you paid for it. If the market is really weak you can just cancel the order when it comes up.
It's really too rich for my blood. If they had a more basic $50,000 truck, I might order it which is saying a tremendous amount as I never order anything without driving it and kicking tires. As much as I do find the EV6/Ioniq 5 and Bronco interest as well, I'd never order them without a test drive. There's the Wrangler versus the Bronco and Model Y which are basically the same thing. Model Y is a pain to test drive as well but Wrangler isn't an issue. Rivian for now is more unique, nothing really compares with it so I might... just can't afford it.
Another pretty thorough review and concentrating heavily on the off-road capabilities. I was going to say that being bald meant he was unlikely to be a male hairdresser, but I actually don't know if that's true or not. Maybe being bald makes you *want* to work with hair more.
I can't help but think they're missing some opportunities here because they're trying to make this too much like a traditional truck.
First I would say get rid of the front end trunk put a gasoline generator in there so I don't have to worry about range or hookups ever. I don't need cargo space the whole back end is cargo space.
Second with each wheel independently controlled there's some maneuverability that you can exploit that you can't with a traditional drivetrain. You can turn off for Wheels to where the vehicle counter rotates in its own vehicle length meaning you don't ever have to u-turn you can pull in to a driveway turn the vehicle around in the driveway.
There's just so much more versatility you can get out of this I wonder why they're not taking advantage of it
I can't help but think they're missing some opportunities here because they're trying to make this too much like a traditional truck.
They are aiming it at the most conservative of al vehicle buyers, the traditional pickup truck buyers. It's a HUGE market and that's what they want a part of, not the Ridgeline market.
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First I would say get rid of the front end trunk put a gasoline generator in there so I don't have to worry about range or hookups ever. I don't need cargo space the whole back end is cargo space.
So make it a plug in hybrid? That's kind of defeating the purpose.
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Second with each wheel independently controlled there's some maneuverability that you can exploit that you can't with a traditional drivetrain. You can turn off for Wheels to where the vehicle counter rotates in its own vehicle length meaning you don't ever have to u-turn you can pull in to a driveway turn the vehicle around in the driveway.
Ahh, but they DO do that. Rivian calls it the "tank turn"
I can't help but think they're missing some opportunities here because they're trying to make this too much like a traditional truck.
First I would say get rid of the front end trunk put a gasoline generator in there so I don't have to worry about range or hookups ever. I don't need cargo space the whole back end is cargo space.
Second with each wheel independently controlled there's some maneuverability that you can exploit that you can't with a traditional drivetrain. You can turn off for Wheels to where the vehicle counter rotates in its own vehicle length meaning you don't ever have to u-turn you can pull in to a driveway turn the vehicle around in the driveway.
There's just so much more versatility you can get out of this I wonder why they're not taking advantage of it
I think there are some losses that you're not thinking about here. The front trunk is useful because it's a sizable enclosed and locked storage that's easily accessible. Sometimes you don't want to have things exposed to the elements and the dirt, sometimes you want to lock things up, and sometimes you don't to use a tonneau cover to cover it up because you still want the flexibility of just throwing some things into the back.
Having a small range extender generator could be nice, but placing it in the front means running exhaust out to the back (you don't want to exhaust with your windows downwind of it). That's a significant difference in design to adjust for, much more so than something going in the gear tunnel or the back. Having that range extender is also significant additional weight from the engine and additional volume to have a usefully large fuel tank. That takes away from usable space while adding more upfront and maintenance costs while taking even further away from efficiency and range for the given battery pack size. It's also putting significant upfront capital to design and produce something that likely becomes outdated and useless within a single vehicle generation and that's a lot of capital for a startup to spend with fairly little reward.
There is a lot of fancy traction control and torque vectoring Rivian uses with its four independent wheels and the jalopnik article goes further in-depth on that. They are most certainly using those abilities which is why the vehicle is as handy off-road as it is. The turning around in place, or tank turn, is actually a capability of the vehicle, though it's supposedly something that will come as a software update as they're working the kinks out. You can see it here:
You can see the poor articulation, although in some ways that's less of a concern as there's an electric motor on each wheel You don't need to worry about the wheel hanging in the breeze getting all the power so it's just a question of how good the traction control system is. In more of a rock garden where traction on all four wheels is limited though, articulation would matter more. Not sure how much tire you could fit under that which would be probably the biggest limiting factor in terms of capability. Mild ATs with not much sidewall on rocky trails do flat easily. How many people care? Probably not many. It's always been more the aftermarket realm than factory realm but while fitting more tire on a Jeep or Toyota or what have you isn't any realy issue, I really don't know how possible it would be on a Rivian.
Some cool touches. Some not very good ones like the location of the charger port. Locating that far in the front may help reaching front chargers as opposed to say the Taycan where it's often a real stretch to plug in but particularly on an off-road vehicle just not a good location. Add some mud to that trail where maybe you need a bit of momentum to get up a slope and then a nice slip and crunch on your very expensive fender. Ouch.
I'd like to see someone test the compressor. Can't air down a whole lot with this small tires and it good trails so no real need to. Still, I'd think that would be in the script at the PR event. Even if it's not necessary, air down all four of those small tires a bit and use the compressor to show us how long it takes to air back up. It's something to show off, if it works well. Strange to me that no one has compared that to the functionality of say a $50 110v air compressor (hint: they're not great).
It's not best in class articulation, but it's a stretch to say it has poor articulation. The Jalopnik article does a pretty deep dive into and goes further in the comments.
The air compressor comes standard and supposedly just a small additional bonus from the air suspension system. As such, it's max rated at 150 psi so it's not that powerful, but as just a nice bonus, it's fine. Good for small fun things, nice to have in a pinch, but you'll want to carry a separate unit if you need more.
My main, though rather small criticism, of the vehicle is that it doesn't do V2L really and the standard sockets on it output up to 15 amps especially if it turns out that it's 15 amps total for the four outlets combined.
It's an interesting vehicle though I'm generally not keen on being a very first adopter sort of thing, and it'll be a bit before we see how well they're able to scale and if there are any major kinks that they haven't worked out or will struggle to work out whether on the vehicle itself, on maintenance, or on ramping up production.
It's not best in class articulation, but it's a stretch to say it has poor articulation. The Jalopnik article does a pretty deep dive into and goes further in the comments.
The air compressor comes standard and supposedly just a small additional bonus from the air suspension system. As such, it's max rated at 150 psi so it's not that powerful, but as just a nice bonus, it's fine. Good for small fun things, nice to have in a pinch, but you'll want to carry a separate unit if you need more.
My main, though rather small criticism, of the vehicle is that it doesn't do V2L really and the standard sockets on it output up to 15 amps especially if it turns out that it's 15 amps total for the four outlets combined.
It's an interesting vehicle though I'm generally not keen on being a very first adopter sort of thing, and it'll be a bit before we see how well they're able to scale and if there are any major kinks that they haven't worked out or will struggle to work out whether on the vehicle itself, on maintenance, or on ramping up production.
It's just a relevance thing. Compared with a CR-V or whatnot I would say it's highly unlikely the Rivian has poor articulation. Compared with an off-road oriented vehicle, Ford Raptor, Wrangler, Tacoma TRD Pro, Bronco, it isn't at all a stretch at all. It's not he be all, end all. Just a question of where it falls from a factory perspective and more importantly perhaps from a potential aftermarket perspective for those that might care.
Certainly in some respects the R1T has incredibly high capabilities that have tendency to get emphasized in the pitch pieces, as they should be. That's what they're there for, to cast the vehicle in a positive light and advertise it so people want to buy it. Ground clearance, approach and departure, breakover is good for a truck, ford depth, Rivian has played up that the front bumper is winch ready, the air compressor for airing up and down tires, emphasis on putting chargers in off-road locations so you can actually use it there. They're absolutely selling it as an off-road vehicle and so that's what I would hold it against is really how capable is it at that versus a Ford Raptor, RAM TRX, Tacoma TRD Pro, or the Ranger Raptor which we don't get here. I wouldn't compare it with a Honda Ridgeline or a Hyundai Santa Cruz or Ford Maverick.
They are aiming it at the most conservative of al vehicle buyers, the traditional pickup truck buyers. It's a HUGE market and that's what they want a part of, not the Ridgeline market.
I think they missed some opportunities here. This is absolutely not for the traditional truck market traditional trucks run on gasoline and Diesel. This is for people who want a non-traditional truck.
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So make it a plug in hybrid? That's kind of defeating the purpose.
No the purpose of a vehicle is transportation.
If generating electricity for the vehicle to use makes it hybrid then every battery operated electric vehicle that ever existed or ever will exist in the it's just the power plant is somewhere else
A vehicle that makes its own energy is eternally more useful than one that doesn't.
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Ahh, but they DO do that. Rivian calls it the "tank turn"
I don't know why every electric vehicle isn't designed to be able to do this.
Agreed. All electric vehicles should come with onboard engines powered by either gasoline or diesel to generate the electricity used to power the motors.
I think there are some losses that you're not thinking about here. The front trunk is useful because it's a sizable enclosed and locked storage that's easily accessible. Sometimes you don't want to have things exposed to the elements and the dirt, sometimes you want to lock things up, and sometimes you don't to use a tonneau cover to cover it up because you still want the flexibility of just throwing some things into the back.
Having a small range extender generator could be nice, but placing it in the front means running exhaust out to the back (you don't want to exhaust with your windows downwind of it). That's a significant difference in design to adjust for, much more so than something going in the gear tunnel or the back. Having that range extender is also significant additional weight from the engine and additional volume to have a usefully large fuel tank. That takes away from usable space while adding more upfront and maintenance costs while taking even further away from efficiency and range for the given battery pack size. It's also putting significant upfront capital to design and produce something that likely becomes outdated and useless within a single vehicle generation and that's a lot of capital for a startup to spend with fairly little reward.
There is a lot of fancy traction control and torque vectoring Rivian uses with its four independent wheels and the jalopnik article goes further in-depth on that. They are most certainly using those abilities which is why the vehicle is as handy off-road as it is. The turning around in place, or tank turn, is actually a capability of the vehicle, though it's supposedly something that will come as a software update as they're working the kinks out. You can see it here:
I'm suggesting making a model was a generator is an option. If you want front trunk space if you don't care about having unlimited range if you don't want the maintenance costs by the one they're advertising in the video.
What's wrong with options if you have options you make it suitable to more people and the point in selling products is selling more of them.
Agreed. All electric vehicles should come with onboard engines powered by either gasoline or diesel to generate the electricity used to power the motors.
I'm not saying they should all come that way just if they had it as an option they would appeal to a broader market.
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