Buy R1T today, trade in on R1S later?

[RBR1S]

So we all got the "sorry, they are coming SOMETIME" email. But it gave me a thought.

I've seen people that get on the R1T list and have a truck in relatively short periods of time (basically taking advantage of cancelled order "Buy it Now" production). So if I were to just get in that queue today, buy that R1T and then a year from now when they finally get around to our R1S, trade it in.

Would Rivian do that? Would they give me a decent price for it. Would it be like some of the initial Tesla where it was worth as much used as new?

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[Dark-Fx]

A good question. I don't have the answer to it but I'll let you know if I ever do.

 

[Kenmecca]

If I knew back in Jan 2019 what I know now, I would have ordered a LE R1T and a R1S. I would be driving the R1T now and then a year later picked up the R1S and sold the R1T for more than I paid for it. Ordering now is a crap shoot- they are not locking you in on pricing so you are going to take a hit, but will likely do well on selling the R1T

 

[astonius]

I plan on keeping both, but when my S comes up for fulfillment I may get a trade quote on the T just to see what they give.

Worst case I’d expect private party values to hold strong for a bit. I know they’re dropping, but they’re still selling above retail. Coupled with the tax credit any R1T owner should be sitting pretty for a while.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

I wish I'd had the forethought to place a R1S preorder on top of my R1T preorder prior to 3/1 (and then again prior to the configurator closing).

That said, I have one child who is under 2 years old now, but I could absolutely see myself trading down from the Large/Quad/Adventure R1T to a Dual/Standard/Explore R1S when #2 comes along and the older son is old enough to want to go places with friends in about 4 years.

 

[Yossarian]

I actually did have two relatively early (May 2020) pre-orders in but cancelled one when I learned your can switch models with no penalty. In retrospect, obviously a poor decision on my part, but I didn't really want a pickup, so kept only the reservation for the R1S. When the configurator went live, I found that Rivian had dropped the Max as an option for the R1S (since confirmed via CS), so configured an R1T Max.

I still really want the R1S, but need more range as I will be towing. Rivian says that they are working on a "longer range" battery pack for the R1S; that apparently means one with more capacity than the existing 135 kWh Adventure Long Range, but less than the 180 kWh Max offered on the R1T. When asked about timing, CS always responds with some version of "we're working on the longer range battery now and hope to have more details in the near future." Rivian obviously has a very elastic definition of "near future" as that's been the response since January.

My plan now is to take delivery of the R1T Max and then sell it to buy an R1S Longer Range. My delivery window is 1H2023 for the R1T, but I strongly suspect that will slip, at least to the end of the year, perhaps even to 2024. I'm also guessing that Rivian will not offer the Longer Range with the quad-motor R1S. This makes some kind of sense: Rivian is obviously having trouble fitting a larger battery pack to the R1S and working on that issue concurrently with the engineering for the dual-motor both buys time and frees up some design personnel.

While it's a crapshoot as to what used-car pricing will be in 2025, likely the soonest the R1S Longer Range dual-motor will be available, based on Tesla used-car prices, I'm optimistic that my loss won't be too bad. Of course, Rivian's prices will surely rise a lot in the interim, but there may be other more affordable EV-SUV alternatives such as the Kia EV9 available by then.

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