[Video] Out of Spec: Hitting The Trails For The First Time This Year With A Rivian R1T, Frontier Pro-4X, & Lexus GX!

[kanundrum]

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[RWerksman]

The guy screaming when filming - OMFG.

NOT EVEN A CHALLENGE FOR THE FRONTIER!

 

[OutofSpecKyle]

The guy screaming when filming - OMFG.

NOT EVEN A CHALLENGE FOR THE FRONTIER!

Ha! This was Zach's first time running a shoot for us - it'll take some time but he'll learn to tell the story and explain better. Can't improve filming / audio etc without trying - we have some new equipment going his way so Overlanding videos look and sound better as time goes on.

I can't wait for more electric off-roading

 

[RivianXpress]

Great video guys!

 

[SeaGeo]

One thing that would have been cool to see, but I'm not even sure how you'd design for it is a mechanical connection between the two front or two rear motors in a specific drive mode. So in every day driving or most driving modes have the true quad motors, but when you're rock crawling and likely have one or more wheels on a loose surface you are still maintaining the same total power like you traditionally have with a locker. So that front tire Kyle wanted the truck to pull on would have been powered by both front motors instead of just one.

Again, I have no idea how Rivian would have designed for that, even if it were custom motors, but it'd be cool!

 

[SeaGeo]

Ha! This was Zach's first time running a shoot for us - it'll take some time but he'll learn to tell the story and explain better. Can't improve filming / audio etc without trying - we have some new equipment going his way so Overlanding videos look and sound better as time goes on.

I can't wait for more electric off-roading

I got a kick out of the opening edit and (I'm assuming) Zach making fun of his own breathing on the trail. I thought it was a really good first video from him after his first time or two being a little anxious on camera with his Ioniq 5.

 

[RWerksman]

Ha! This was Zach's first time running a shoot for us - it'll take some time but he'll learn to tell the story and explain better. Can't improve filming / audio etc without trying - we have some new equipment going his way so Overlanding videos look and sound better as time goes on.

I can't wait for more electric off-roading

I liked the video by the way excluding this. Twas interesting.

 

[LoneStar]

R1T sorta sucked...

 

[Snazzy Labs]

This brings me back to a conversation I had with a vehicle dynamics engineer at the Breckenridge event. He was extremely against the idea of 34" tires primarily because of how difficult that would make things like the kingpin offset for on-road use. Their vehicle target in sport mode was a Porsche Cayenne Turbo and he said they just couldn't make it happen because despite torque vectoring and other attempts to hide that effect, they still battle with the reality that they've got massive tires and a long wheelbase. They achieved 3 deg per G in sport mode which is frankly amazing.

Fun story, this individual (exec 1) told me he outright told another employee (exec 2) that 34" tires were not going to work (in any scenario) better than slightly smaller tires and he refused to put them on as they had already gotten to a really good spot with kinematics on a 32" tire. According to exec 1, he walked onto the showroom floor at the LA Auto Show after the vehicle's unveiling and noticed exec 2 (a higher-up) had put the 34s on the car anyways. Furious, he told exec 1 that it would take months to redo kinematics testing for larger wheels and exec 2's response was something along the lines of "but 34s look cool." Exec 1 told me that 34s do indeed look cool and they got to a point where kinematics were very good but he still thinks 32s would have been better. "It's a constant battle between designers and engineers."

IMO, the compromises made to ensure good on-road use necessitated affecting the vehicle's performance off-road. For one, quad-motors are an amazing feature until you're traction limited with multiple wheels slipping/off-ground—it's at that point that you wish for a lot of the low-end torque you'd get with, say, mechanical lockers. I reckon airing down the tires (that segment at around 10 min where it's really struggling appears to be at normal pressure) would have done a better job given the larger surface area on the ground, but I also wonder how just straight up smaller tires (maybe 33") would have done in the same scenario. Less rotational movement of inertia would surely help it get moving, right?

 

[dzmconstr]

R1T sorta sucked...

Not sorta...kinda embarrassing IMO.
Dzm

 

[Max]

Lexus looked the best to me on this trip. Both R1T and Frontier wheelbase just looked unnatural and iffy for those rocks. I really wish R1S had enough space for a full size spare inside.

what was the noise at minute 26? Sounded like a drone but it looked like it was coming from the lexus.

I was surprised, R1T dude was not using the camera going downhill.

 

[mikehmb]

Watching the Rivian struggle in a few areas really makes me wonder if a 2-motor setup, with active clutches for each wheel per motor, wouldn’t be a considerably better way to go for wheeling.

It would be very useful to hear from Rivian engineers whether my hypothesis - which is that you can’t dump nearly infinite current into a non-spinning electric motor without Consequences - is the reason why the wheels just can’t get moving when they are met with otherwise pretty straightforward obstacles.

 

[SeaGeo]

Watching the Rivian struggle in a few areas really makes me wonder if a 2-motor setup, with active clutches for each wheel per motor, wouldn’t be a considerably better way to go for wheeling.

It would be very useful to hear from Rivian engineers whether my hypothesis - which is that you can’t dump nearly infinite current into a non-spinning electric motor without Consequences - is the reason why the wheels just can’t get moving when they are met with otherwise pretty straightforward obstacles.

It would also help of people would actually apply the accelerator. Will noted he was baying it on the first obstacle that looked like a challenge.

 

[SASSquatch]

Ha! This was Zach's first time running a shoot for us - it'll take some time but he'll learn to tell the story and explain better. Can't improve filming / audio etc without trying - we have some new equipment going his way so Overlanding videos look and sound better as time goes on.

I can't wait for more electric off-roading

Perhaps I am in the minority but I found his raw, unfiltered, enthusiasm endearing and refreshing.

Storytelling can come in different shapes and font sizes.

Now the heavy breathing will probably require a little more cardio training to remedy.

 

[SASSquatch]

It would also help of people would actually apply the accelerator. Will noted he was baying it on the first obstacle that looked like a challenge.

Will was babying the accelerator because he didn't have enough time under his belt with the R1T in that environment to predict how the R1T was going to behave.

A four motor setup has never been done before (to my knowledge) and so I think drawing comparisons to ICE trucks that have much more predictability and more control from the end user isn't exactly apples to apples.

In order to make this comparison fair, we would need to have the same driver, preferably someone who has had significant experience in the R1T in this situation drive all three vehicles and then compare relative performance.

Given that Will is just getting acclimated to all of the very different attributes of EV rock crawling, I think he (and the R1T) performed pretty well especially considering the other vehicles were performing at ceiling and the R1T has a lot of room for improvement from the driver-control perspective.

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