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TFL snubbed by Rivian: video

DucRider

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I couldn't sit through the whole video, but it seems what they really wanted was for Rivian to give them a production vehicle to borrow for their normal battery of tests.
Rivian isn't doing that for anyone yet.

The Long Way Up, Rebelle and MT treks were all done with Rivian support staff and also designed to gather data.
Not every YouTube reviewer got to go to the press event. We don't know exactly who or even how many, but it looked like 6 trucks. TFL apparently didn't make the short list.

If Rivian gets to the stage of loaning vehicles to the press to evaluate, TFL may or may not make that list. Wouldn't cause me concern if they didn't (from what I have seen of them).
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Scoiatael

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There are plenty of other channels on youtube I watch before I'd check TFL on something. I'm not saying their channel is bad, but others are more straightforward, unbiased, and more knowledable. I know for certain a few of the ones I watch got invited to the media event.
 

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We are only hearing one side of the story. For all we know TFL wanted the truck for a week and wanted to do whatever they wanted with it and Rivian said “no” when there was some communication.

TFL doesn’t seem to be pro EV, so why would Rivian offer up their truck?

TFL then gets bitchy about it and does almost 20 minutes complaining about how they weren’t graced with the opportunity to drive a Rivian. They didn’t make the cut and now TFL and all of their truck nut fanboys are all up in arms. To the point where they have to put a big ? over the truck.

My favorite part is them ripping on Rivian for following Apple and Tesla’s business models. As if they are unsuccessful.

Rivian will get plenty of press, good and bad, from legit reviews. Not some YouTube with 350,000 followers.
 

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I couldn't sit through the whole video, but it seems what they really wanted was for Rivian to give them a production vehicle to borrow for their normal battery of tests.
Rivian isn't doing that for anyone yet.

The Long Way Up, Rebelle and MT treks were all done with Rivian support staff and also designed to gather data.
Not every YouTube reviewer got to go to the press event. We don't know exactly who or even how many, but it looked like 6 trucks. TFL apparently didn't make the short list.

If Rivian gets to the stage of loaning vehicles to the press to evaluate, TFL may or may not make that list. Wouldn't cause me concern if they didn't (from what I have seen of them).
Exactly!!

TFL will probably get a truck to test but that is not what's happening now. I'm sure Rivian would like to deliver trucks to paying customers who've waited before they start lending out vehicles to testers. The media event this week seems to be on a track/trail set up by Rivian, not a free for all and do whatever you want with the truck.

Besides, the owners manual and details of the trucks operation haven't even been released yet. If TFL (or anyone else) had questions, problems, etc. on how to operate a feature, would they trash the feature because they didn't know how it works? This isn't a Ford/Chevy/Toyota/etc that anyone has been in before, this is an entirely new vehicle. If there isn't a support manual or a Rivian person around to help the reviewer would spend more time than needed to learn even simple operations and form opinions that would be skewed. Imagine if Apple or Samsung gave you their first phone with no manual and you wanted to review it...
 

Riventures

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I have been watching TFL guys for a while now. They do entertaining videos IMO, however, the more I watched the more I have become biased against their reviews.

They self-proclaim to be the "experts" particularly in trucks and off-roading, towing, etc. If you take the entertainment portion off their content and actually try to obtain real technical information, and how the technologies or capabilities translate into ownership experience, their content comes up very short.

I do not know or understand, how they claim to be experts in technologies that make up the vehicles or the vehicles themselves. The simplest example of this, out of a long list of examples that can be cited, is their repeated failure to explain to the viewers what a TORSEN differential is, how and why that differs from a 'locker,' and how one or the other might be preferable in differing conditions. Again, this is just the most simplistic example.

On the EVs, as another example, I do not think they have a clue as to why one EV is or maybe more efficient than the other. They do "real world" tests, but cannot explain the results, they just report their results. And when those results have varying differences from one vehicle to another, they cannot explain why, they just meaninglessly speculate and cannot drive engineering-based impact analysis of those differences. They do not seem to have any engineering experience, let alone automotive engineering.

I think their so-called expertise comes from being able to list specs of vehicles by memory. They get to drive many vehicles, and they do have a lot of driving experiences, I'll give that to them. That creates entertaining content, but not expertise.

Maybe - hopefully - this is a wake-up call to TFL guys. When they state that Tesla and similar other "technology companies" have become arrogant, I think they first need to look into the mirror and do a little bit of self-analysis. I sincerely hope they are able to improve their technical content, because I sure do like their entertainment value; it is just time for them to live up to their claimed expertise.
 

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Not every YouTube reviewer got to go to the press event. We don't know exactly who or even how many, but it looked like 6 trucks. TFL apparently didn't make the short list.
Did *any* youtubers get invited? I would guess they went with more traditional media that produces text articles with embedded video, instead of just purely video based.

I personally prefer reading, I don't enjoy listening to people talk to describe what could be written down with (potentially) greater thought.
 

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TFL doesn’t seem to be pro EV, so why would Rivian offer up their truck?
I definitely wouldn't say that. TFL has a number of videos where they talk about loving EVs. They have had positive things to say about many of them (Tesla, VW, Mini, etc etc). I think they believe EV is the future in general and are far from anti EV. The TFL Truck sub-channel probably doesn't do as much EV talk because... well..... there are no ev trucks you can actually use at the moment.

That said, I like the TFL content. They are entertaining and their reviews are decent, but a ~20 minute youtube video about being "snubbed" is silly. If you were really getting a ton of messages asking "are you going to review Rivian?", then a 30 second blurb as an intro on another video, a post on their site ,or a tweet saying "We would love to, but didn't get a spot in the current media event, if anyone has an in to get us a car to test, let us know" is fine. 20 minutes of ranting is a little silly and smells of sour grapes. There were limited spots, you didn't get one, sorry. Would it have been nicer if Rivian PR had responded to them to say that they were sorry there wasn't room for everyone? Sure. But not getting that email isn't worth this much of a fuss.
 

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have you had to try to apply for a job in the last 5 years or so?
”ghosting” is how the world turns now.
Maybe it's just the company I work for, but that's not how we try to run things.
 

SeaGeo

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100x THIS. TFL, and many other amateur operations, frequently shows their amateurishness. They don't bother to research their subject before espousing their "expertise", making up numbers to keep their chitter chatter flowing, seeming to think they are all late night radio jocks that have to keep the airwaves full. Far too few of them seem to bother to realize they can actually prepare and present information by, gasp, finding out all the details and editing their material before presenting it.
I'd caveat this as well in that A LOT of major car review outlets (like MT) have done an absolute shit job of reviewing EVs for years, and haven't put much effort into understanding them. There's a reason so many people on here watch OutofSpec reviews for EV cars reviews, and it's not because the major "legacy" auto reviewers have done a fantastic job with their homework over the years.
 

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SeaGeo

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Did *any* youtubers get invited? I would guess they went with more traditional media that produces text articles with embedded video, instead of just purely video based.

I personally prefer reading, I don't enjoy listening to people talk to describe what could be written down with (potentially) greater thought.
Yes. Several.

I think your point is interesting. I prefer reading 90% of content rather than watching a video. But most of the time I absolutely get more value out of videos when someone is evaluating a car. For example, everyone comments on the ID.4 infotainment responsiveness. Without a video I wouldn't have been able to reliability interpret what "lag" was for each person. Or how thoroughly they seemed to understand what was going on.
 

3l3c7r1c

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I definitely wouldn't say that. TFL has a number of videos where they talk about loving EVs. They have had positive things to say about many of them (Tesla, VW, Mini, etc etc). I think they believe EV is the future in general and are far from anti EV. The TFL Truck sub-channel probably doesn't do as much EV talk because... well..... there are no ev trucks you can actually use at the moment.

That said, I like the TFL content. They are entertaining and their reviews are decent, but a ~20 minute youtube video about being "snubbed" is silly. If you were really getting a ton of messages asking "are you going to review Rivian?", then a 30 second blurb as an intro on another video, a post on their site ,or a tweet saying "We would love to, but didn't get a spot in the current media event, if anyone has an in to get us a car to test, let us know" is fine. 20 minutes of ranting is a little silly and smells of sour grapes. There were limited spots, you didn't get one, sorry. Would it have been nicer if Rivian PR had responded to them to say that they were sorry there wasn't room for everyone? Sure. But not getting that email isn't worth this much of a fuss.
Totally agree on both of these point. I first watched TFL about 9-10 years ago and they are now way more EV friendly. In fact Roman personally owned a model 3 for a year and did some long drive with other EVs. But they should admit that they are relatively small player in the field... 20 minutes long video is too much.

The reason I like their video (and same for say Motormouth Canada) - to me they focus on actual experience. Particularly the videos Roman-Tommy make. I care more about how the car feel to drive, comfort, and practical for a regular user; not interested about how complex is their suspension. They also gathered some experience with car charging situation - which most other reviewers still lack. With practical experience with offroads and EV, their review would be one of the most unbiased and practical one I was looking forward for. But possibly unbiased review is exactly what Rivian currently wants to avoid.
 

Scott

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Totally agree on both of these point. I first watched TFL about 9-10 years ago and they are now way more EV friendly. In fact Roman personally owned a model 3 for a year and did some long drive with other EVs. But they should admit that they are relatively small player in the field... 20 minutes long video is too much.

The reason I like their video (and same for say Motormouth Canada) - to me they focus on actual experience. Particularly the videos Roman-Tommy make. I care more about how the car feel to drive, comfort, and practical for a regular user; not interested about how complex is their suspension. They also gathered some experience with car charging situation - which most other reviewers still lack. With practical offroads and EV experience, their review would be one of the most unbiased and practical one I was hoping for. But possibly unbiased review is exactly what Rivian currently wants to avoid.
I like their videos for the same reason. The focus on the end experience. For the non-car people in the world researching a new car their content is the right depth of technical information. It won't educate people and it won't please the hardcore, but that isn't the majority of car buyers.
 

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Ah yeah if they had pure YouTubers then no idea.

I prefer writing for most facts, but the hybrid is the best approach. Get specs and such in writing, then an accompanying video to highlight capabilities that are not well conveyed in writing. Like UI systems, cabin space, charge door functionality, etc.

People learn all different ways, I just can't watch pure video of someone talking and absorb information.
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