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WSJ R1S Review

DuoRivians

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R1T, MY
I WAS WHEELING a Rivian R1S between Riverside, Calif., and Los Angeles when I spotted some bare-shouldered hills to the south, with 4×4 trails connecting ridgelines to summits. Eureka! Often the hardest part of testing an off-road capable vehicle is finding new and unsupervised playgrounds.

I took the next exit, passed through some subdivisions and soon arrived at the gates of an off-road paradise: thousands of acres of hill country laced by steep, scary fire roads, gully-washed from the recent rains. Except there was no gate. Dude.


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I paused to set up the R1S for overland operations. From the touchscreen’s Drive Mode menu, I selected Off-Road. Terrain? Rock Crawl. Ground clearance? Maximum. I watched as the pneumatic suspension stood up another 6.5 inches, lofting the R1S to an amazing 14.9 inches of ground clearance. Close enough to heaven.

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In the next two hours the long-legged, googly-eyed R1S—the SUV version of Rivian’s all-electric pickup, the R1T—clawed and crawled, shimmied and scrambled to the top of my If-I-win-the-lotto contingency plans. On the road, but especially in the weeds, the Rivian is a formidable piece of machinery that joyously exploits the possibilities of EV design and kicks ass doing it.

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Take, for example, packaging. The R1S is a midsize, three-row, seven-passenger SUV—never a promising phrase, in terms of comfort. Yet the cabin is open and roomy (160 cubic feet of interior volume), with loads of legroom, long seat-coupling distances, lots of storage and two easily reached, adult-size seats in the back. Like the Tesla Model X, the R1S has a frunk (11.1 cubic feet), providing dry lockable storage separate from the cabin. Still more storage lives under the rear floor panel, as well as room for an optional space-saver emergency tire. Va bene.

Rivian R1T R1S WSJ R1S Review im-777982?width=700&height=466
SKY’S THE LIMIT The roof of the R1S consists of two large pieces of glass, one over the first two rows of seats and another over the third row. Fixtures on the seat backs provide a place to hold e-devices. The Rivian has USB-C ports at every seat. Photo: Rivian
This spaciousness comes courtesy of the electric propulsion system’s compactness. Moreover, any piston-driven power plant to rival the Rivian’s quad-motor AWD array (835 hp and 908 lb-ft, combined) would displace driver and passengers to the roof. On the street, the R1S’s at-will physicality—3.0 seconds to 60 mph—will burst the luftballon of a Mercedes-AMG GLE or BMW X5 M. Yet, in other moods and modes, this same machine can outclimb veteran alpinists like the Land Rover Defender.

Sounds nice, you say. What’s a Rivian? Founded by RJ Scaringe in 2009, the Irvine, Calif.-based startup went public in late 2021, making history as the first manufacturer to bring an EV pickup to the consumer market. It also has an order to build 100,000 EV delivery vehicles for Amazonby 2030.

The company has since struggled to ramp up production at its facility in Normal, Ill., battling the semiconductor shortage, Covid-19, quality-control issues and some ugly price hikes. At one time it had amassed a list of 114,000 preorders.

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Things are better now. The company says it’s on pace to build 50,000 R1s and delivery vans this year. And compared to the early-production R1T I tested last year—which devoured its own cargo-bed tonneau with a cringe-y gnashing of actuators—the black-over-white R1S tester was damn-near flawless. The fit-and-finish was flagship quality, notably the precisely aligned gap around the charge-port cover that’s hidden in the left-front fender. That can’t have been easy.

Rivian R1T R1S WSJ R1S Review im-777974?width=700&height=466
HIDDEN FIGURES The R1S’s charging port is concealed in the front left corner, behind a motorized panel. The charge-port position allows owners to pull up to charging spots, nose-first. The drawback is that the charge-port assembly is vulnerable in front-end collisions.Photo: Rivian
I’m detecting a pattern here. Not unlike the luxury-EV startup Lucid Motors, Rivian launched with a pile of cash and a charismatic, slightly underbaked product that required lots of software fixes and fettling—the dreaded ramp of volume production. Both companies spent the intervening months gradually debugging and upgrading cars in the field via frequent over-the-air updates. This history played out very much like Tesla’s beta testing by any other name.

What didn’t need fixing was Rivian’s product design. The brand’s cheerful, fresh-faced futurism deliberately cleaves opinion along the fault lines of the new and comfortably familiar, the culturally entrenched and the innovative. Traditional truck buyers may not love Rivian’s signature flourish, the expressive vertical headlamps with glowing LED irises. That’s OK. Rivian isn’t looking at them.

The R1S all-electric SUV joyously exploits the possibilities of EV design and kicks ass doing it.
Inside, the R1S’s chic and lean modernism—wrapped in top-notch vegan leather and brightened with grained wood and fine metallic trim—owes little to the conventions of the category. To the extent that the UX sorta-kinda looks like a Tesla, all to the good. The screen is big and bright, the UX autodidactic and instantaneous. It opens on Rivian’s world of configurable wonders, including Pet Comfort Mode, that keeps your pet climate controlled; Car Wash Mode, that represses the wipers’ urge to oscillate; Camp Mode, with a courtesy feature that mutes the locking chirps and dims the exterior lights. When the Gear Guard security system is activated, a cartoon Sasquatch in a Björn-Borg headband appears on the screen to warn away thieves.

The R1S has the usual downsides, too, including lack of range and charging convenience. I was nowhere close to getting the official 289 miles range (on 20-inch all-terrain tires). Then again I spent a lot of time galloping uphill like Teddy Roosevelt. Optimally, the R1S can recover 80% of the battery’s charge in 30 minutes or 140 miles in 20 minutes. Life is rarely optimal.

But with regard to one familiar complaint—price—the R1S meaningfully answers. From the bespoke Pirelli all-terrain tires and forged aluminum suspension links to the panoramic glass firmament they call the roof, the R1S lavishes buyers with value-added content. This thing is beyond loaded. Examples include the integrated air pump in the back, for water toys or reinflating tires. There’s a very nice flashlight in a spring-loaded compartment in the driver’s door. The cargo rails in the rear look like best-of climbing gear. There are eight USB-C ports and six cupholders. I feel…I dunno, appreciated?

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After a couple hours of light trespassing, I headed back to L.A. With the R1S once again humming along effortlessly at 85 mph, I marveled that only a few minutes before, this paragon of enlightenment and urbanity was spitting boulders and seesawing through hub-deep ravines.

Now that’s range.

Rivian R1S
Rivian R1T R1S WSJ R1S Review im-777983?width=700&height=466
FAMILY FRIENDLIER The Rivian R1S is essentially identical to the R1T pickup from the front doors forward. Its wheelbase is 14.7 inches shorter than the pickup. The SUV model omits the pickup’s cross-vehicle cargo box behind the rear seats. Instead, the R1S has wider rear doors that more easily accommodate child-safety seats. Photo: Rivian
 

genepopemt

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gene
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a word of caution: I have read Dan a lot and for years. He loves anything electric and hates almost anything ICE so take the review with a big grain of salt.
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