Offroad Comparison - Rivian R1T (Halloween update) vs Chevy Colorado Trail Boss!

[MidnightRivian]

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[R.I.P.]

Yeah ... A Colorado "Trail Boss" is not what most of us would call much of an off road monster lol. They are calling it a "locker" in the rear, but it is not, it is GM's grenade LS.

In similar tests we did just this week, the dual motor "Enduro" equipped Rivians did much better on those types of obstacles than the the quads have been doing.

The Enduro's are much more manerly both on road and off, which is why I replaced my quad with an Enduro.

Progress.
??

 

[jjswan33]

I watched this last night. My only comment is why would you try and climb over obstacles like that with suspension in 'soft' especially with how soft it is now days. I was cringing as he climbed over that last obstacle and the truck was bouncing up and down.

 

[R.I.P.]

I watched this last night. My only comment is why would you try and climb over obstacles like that with suspension in 'soft' especially with how soft it is now days. I was cringing as he climbed over that last obstacle and the truck was bouncing up and down.

Agreed.

We have found that running obstacles in the soft setting does seem to get you a little better articulation, but the additional risk of body damage is not worth it (to me anyway).

 

[RayzorBEV]

I want to see how many Chevy dealerships would sell them at that price; near zero, I'm guessing.

 

[Rob O]

TFL are a bunch of hacks. How that channel has grown to become what it is is beyond me. I guess for entertainment purposes, there’s an audience ... but God forbid these YouTubers be cited as legit or “experts”.

 

[CrazyOne]

One system to rule all terrain does not exist(I mean no one makes it). Lockers are good at crawl, not so good at higher speeds for example.

I think a quad with three locking differential would be perfect for capability. It would be terrible for range and efficiency though. Quad with front and rear lockers would be a good compromise.

 

[Milermore]

I want to see how many Chevy dealerships would sell them at that price; near zero, I'm guessing.

I'm not sure what specs that one had, but I build a Trail Boss version on the Chevy site and it came out closer to $70k

 

[outdoorgrant]

Yeah ... A Colorado "Trail Boss" is not what most of us would call much of an off road monster lol. They are calling it a "locker" in the rear, but it is not, it is GM's grenade LS.

In similar tests we did just this week, the dual motor "Enduro" equipped Rivians did much better on those types of obstacles then the the quads have been doing.

The Enduro's are much more manerly both on road and off, which is why I replaced my quad with an Enduro.

Progress.
??

What's more mannerly about the Enduros? I'm just curious as it seems like the quads would be better for torque management.

 

[R.I.P.]

What's more mannerly about the Enduros? I'm just curious as it seems like the quads would be better for torque management.

The Enduro feels like any other LS-equipped vehicle... very much like the Trail Boss in this test.

We run Toyo MT tires for testing, which offer very good off-road traction. I have hundreds of hours behind the wheel of QMs, and can tell you that they perform well in a variety of conditions. Where they start to fail is in low traction situations, to include if you start getting wheels in the air (as in the example above). Unfortunately, most people I know buy a 4x4 so they have the proper tools in very low traction situations, so there is that.

Under very low traction conditions, the QM tends to yaw sideways a lot. In the PNW this can be bad for a number of reasons, from getting your fenders into trees, to going into the ditch, or worse. The DM brings back the differential, and the inherent lateral stability with it. The DMs track as straight as any of the other trucks on the trail, the sudden, unexpected yaw issue is gone.

The second important area it is more mannerly is in rock crawling as demonstrated above. Where the QM was defeated on the crawl, the DM will simply transfer the torque of the already spinning motors (don't underestimate the importance of the already spinning part!) to the traction side and it just pulls itself over the obstacle that stopped the QM. Even when the QM is not totally stopped as in the demonstration, it gets very "herky-jerky" trying find the wheels with traction as tries to apply/remove torque to wheels that are seeing traction changes second by second.

The DM simply has none of that process going on. The motors simply deliver the amount of torque the driver deems necessary (yes please!), allowing a physical differential to instantly distribute that torque to the wheels. Pair this with a very good, very traditional traction control system and it just feels like any other Jeep or Pickup on the trail. Nothing funky, no weirdness of software trying to adapt to traction conditions.

I understand that there are a lot of "opinions" on the board on the subject, but as we get more people running these things side-by-side actual data will over-ride opinions. We have the data, we are actually running the trucks side-by-side.

It is early, but there are at least two outfits with Enduros on the bench working on the locker. If I can give one single piece of advice to anybody that wants to off-road their R1, it is to go with the Enduro. It is already arguably the better off-roader, but there will be no competition between the machines once we can lock up the Enduros.

 

[WorldComposting]

TFL are a bunch of hacks. How that channel has grown to become what it is is beyond me. I guess for entertainment purposes, there’s an audience ... but God forbid these YouTubers be cited as legit or “experts”.

I can say I know TFL are/were hated by the Subaru crowd after they made a video (5+ years ago) of getting an Outback stuck and for some reason kept TFL kept coming back to say how bad Subaru is.

I feel the problem is they run vehicles in a specific way and if they don't perform they dog it. They have been doing this to Subaru vehicles for years complaining about the AWD system and this was after Subaru stopped lending them vehicles because they scratched one up.

Subaru and Rivian has a similar type of system in that you need to give it more acceleration instead of trying to walk it slowly as the software tries to find where to put the power. when you slow walk it then it can't seem to figure it out. I would think Rivian could change the behavior with software.

Also he ran it with stability on which means it is trying not to slip at all which I would think is counterproductive offroad where you might want the tire to slip a bit as it digs in to get traction.

 

[KirillWA]

The Enduro feels like any other LS-equipped vehicle... very much like the Trail Boss in this test.

We run Toyo MT tires for testing, which offer very good off-road traction. I have hundreds of hours behind the wheel of QMs, and can tell you that they perform well in a variety of conditions. Where they start to fail is in low traction situations, to include if you start getting wheels in the air (as in the example above). Unfortunately, most people I know buy a 4x4 so they have the proper tools in very low traction situations, so there is that.

Under very low traction conditions, the QM tends to yaw sideways a lot. In the PNW this can be bad for a number of reasons, from getting your fenders into trees, to going into the ditch, or worse. The DM brings back the differential, and the inherent lateral stability with it. The DMs track as straight as any of the other trucks on the trail, the sudden, unexpected yaw issue is gone.

The second important area it is more mannerly is in rock crawling as demonstrated above. Where the QM was defeated on the crawl, the DM will simply transfer the torque of the already spinning motors (don't underestimate the importance of the already spinning part!) to the traction side and it just pulls itself over the obstacle that stopped the QM. Even when the QM is not totally stopped as in the demonstration, it gets very "herky-jerky" trying find the wheels with traction as tries to apply/remove torque to wheels that are seeing traction changes second by second.

The DM simply has none of that process going on. The motors simply deliver the amount of torque the driver deems necessary (yes please!), allowing a physical differential to instantly distribute that torque to the wheels. Pair this with a very good, very traditional traction control system and it just feels like any other Jeep or Pickup on the trail. Nothing funky, no weirdness of software trying to adapt to traction conditions.

I understand that there are a lot of "opinions" on the board on the subject, but as we get more people running these things side-by-side actual data will over-ride opinions. We have the data, we are actually running the trucks side-by-side.

It is early, but there are at least two outfits with Enduros on the bench working on the locker. If I can give one single piece of advice to anybody that wants to off-road their R1, it is to go with the Enduro. It is already arguably the better off-roader, but there will be no competition between the machines once we can lock up the Enduros.

Thanks for confirming my theories on Enduro vs QM for off-roading in PNW. I'm waiting for my Performance Enduro to test it out and compare with real locking diffs in my off-road prepared RAM.
From my experience real locking diff is WAY better that all these "lockable" diffs that GM uses and diff lock imitations when bracking. Especially when you are climbing on loose rocks and gravel.

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