Here's How The Rivian R1T Handles In Snow And Slippery Surfaces!

this episode of out of spec reviews is brought to you by magna more on that later [Music] [Applause] [Music] good morning and welcome to beautiful snowy colorado here just in bellevue just outside of fort collins colorado we are gonna take the rivian r1t up into the hills into the clouds where they are currently getting dumped on with snow the goal here which is just an impromptu video because we got some snow this morning is to see how this vehicle handles in cold weather in slippery conditions and of course on some snow and ice on some dirt roads of course all of the efficiency testing you've been asking is happening later it's not the best conditions for that so let's go shred this up a canyon road except not because it's going to be snowy and see how the traction management works uh through some slippery conditions by the way this is our new vehicle we are testing this week it is the rivien r1t it is the middle sized battery pack so 135 kilowatt hours uh they claim about 300 miles on a charge we have not range tested it yet uh this one costs i think if you were to spec it today near as makes no difference about a hundred grand it's like 90 something it does not have the camp kitchen but we do have the tent on the back uh it's got the all-terrain tires on it which is perfect for these conditions i'm looking forward to seeing how these pirelli scorpions do in cold weather they are also i believe mountain snow peak rated the triple peak rating so they are a a winter tire and they also have an electric component and they're an rivien oe specific tire so a lot of the slippery stuff comes down to of course the tires that are on the vehicle this one also has four independent motors that are mounted in board which is really interesting and that's what i'm mostly looking forward to seeing you can you know work with our friends our sponsors over at nokian to get some aggressive snow tires for this thing i'm sure but this is the factory tire and it looks to be pretty good and just my initial drive on sort of this wet slush has been amazing so far this is such a good looking truck isn't it it is amazing some of you have been asking like how does the snow handle with the tonneau cover well with the tent over top it doesn't really have to block too much work these buttons are covered up by the snow uh i can't even find them where are they here let's take a look is the bed dry seems to be completely dry in there so that is a win i would say sweet but you do have to get your hands dirty closing the tailgate um it's weird it i think it should have a power tailgate but that's just that's just me i'm spoiled by that nice f-150 king ranch we also have on tests this week that just anyway i'll show you around a little bit more again four independent motors and that's really the point of this test to see how the traction management system handles everything lovely glass roof nice seats amazing meridian sound system but what do you say we get out of this cold got the starbucks already and go drive up some slippery conditions and see what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into before we do that i actually want to clean off these headlights you see they don't produce that much heat and so last night i was driving home from doing the charging test on this vehicle i'm going to have multiple so give it a few days for that to go up and i saw basically no headlight action out of this thing and it's because they were completely frosted over i'm like wow these headlights really aren't good and then i realized oh they're led they don't produce enough heat to i guess melt some of the snow off so if you have one in slushy conditions you got to keep wiping the headlights off i can't say i've had to do that with many cars i do have to do that with my tesla i have a model 3 but i've driven other cars with leds that seem to heat up a little bit more anyway not a huge deal just got to get out every and then a couple hours or something and wipe the headlights let's continue this episode is proudly brought to you by magna magna is a mobility technology company that is super unique because they touch every aspect of almost every car in the market especially a lot of electric vehicles and they even can produce vehicles from the ground up now you may remember i shot a series just recently testing some of their new electric vehicle powertrains so stay tuned for a lot of magna content to come we're going to be going in depth with some really interesting topics with these guys and out of spec wants to thank magna for sponsoring this review and tons of other videos to come right here on out of spec we look forward to working with magna to define and find out what the future of mobility looks like so what do you say we head out and we start our journey let's do it i have the vehicle in its sport mode right now let's take a look at our state of charge we are at oh if i remember how to do it 67 state of charge car sat outside overnight so it's probably a little bit cold although i was driving it i don't know six hours before it gives me full regen so i don't think it totally cold soaked overnight and we're just cruising through these little towns so once we start climbing the hills we'll get into a little bit more slush and snow but here's a little bit of snow for example just to nail it incredible traction on that that was insane uh so a lot of this comes down to tire like i mentioned but also a lot of it comes down to its traction management so we're gonna play around with all the different modes as we gain elevation and you know i'll give you my impressions after driving this vehicle for the last i don't know 200 miles something like that i drove it yesterday and uh denver to fort collins and back a lot of highway driving and it is really good like if you just want the short answer so good i'll tell you what's good about it of course the first is um the suspension is insane you know i haven't really pushed this up a back road yet we're certainly going to not do that in these conditions but hopefully by the time before this truck goes back this road will be dry and good to go and i expect that to be the case so we can really hammer it but just kind of pushing it around some off ramps even with the tent on the back it's super balanced even if not a little bit oversteer biased when you're really leaning it up into corners when you get into a regen and load up the front axle it starts to rotate a little bit so good it's like a sports car in a pickup truck in terms of driving dynamics i have no other way of saying it the steering is incredible i've never felt steering this good in a long time let alone in a truck with big meaty tires i can only imagine what the steering response would be like on the 22-inch sport wheels granted those are probably too heavy uh to really help with performance what do you say we start with a launch though it's cold and no one's really around so i heard the fastest way to launch it is sport lowest suspension so we're going to drop it all the way down there's no like official launch mode but i'm gonna put left foot hard on the brake whoa all the way to the floor that's a long brake pedal flooring it with the right nothing happens and three two one crazy that's definitely quicker than just nailing it in all-purpose mode um i hope i've heard in this vehicle a couple times and you may have heard it there in sport um i don't want adaptive cruise um where there's a little clunk when you launch it at the initial point in all-purpose and in sport it's less i just think the suspension kinematics are better anyway we're not here to test sports stuff um i'll continue giving my impressions though just just right off the bat from driving it the uh noise levels in the cabin are okay i'm going to actually measure them against other vehicles so you have accurate data this one does have a little bit of wind noise ooh macan out for a rip in mamba green very nice this one does have a slight wind noise from the passenger window not ceiling you don't hear it from the driver's seat but i sat in the passenger seat earlier and i was like oh that's not not the best i'm going to put us into all-purpose mode and out of sport mode because now we're getting into slush the yeah the sound system to me is is one of the most impressive parts of this vehicle you know i've i've driven every truck on the market now um and i have to say the meridian in this is unbelievably good by far the best pickup truck and i would say on par with some of the best sound systems in the business really really good especially if you go through the built-in spotify app and use high bitrate streaming you can select audio quality like extremely high and it's like whoa and and it really seems to do well with like classic rock songs especially is sort of i would say where this system shines the best um now we're getting into some slippery stuff so i'll i'll probably pause the video we'll get into some deeper snow but i would say like even this just kind of nailing it coming out of corners really like you can't even tell it's uh wet outside or slushy pretty insane truly insane actually here we go wide open wow the traction management's great all right let's do a full abs here on snow great brake pedal feel does a really good job let's just nail it from a stop the motor sounds so healthy and you can just hear it trying to put power where it thinks would be best super duper impressive coming out of a corner it's unbelievable the traction management really unbelievable i've never driven anything that kind of drives like this before all right here we're just on straight snow no need to cut the video so under steer front axle is at its limit and throttle does not add any rear rotation so let's go into sport mode really quick and see if this prioritizes a little bit more rear motor yes see that see that so in sport mode it's definitely saying hey i'm gonna back the stability control off a little bit even though it says it's on and uh definitely more rear bias look coming into this corner look at that on right on the edge that's full brakes we're just on ice now this is great this is what i wanted so limited front axle grip throttle and a little bit of sideways action lovely that's what we want let's go stability in reduced so there's three levels of stability control on reduced and off and just because it's a blind corner i'm not gonna do anything crazy in case someone loses traction on the way up but here we go throttle on oh yes really good what's amazing is you don't hear it grabbing brakes anywhere and you don't really hear the motor spinning up or down it's just it just it feels like it knows exactly what it's supposed to do this is a really grown-up powertrain uh control software i would say for being a brand new truck that is insanely impressive and that's why we don't shred around corners like that so under light throttle you can tell it's rear rear wants to go first in sport mode that's pretty sweet i want to try conserve mode conserve mode is front wheel drive only i believe but what i don't know is if that happens under wheel slip so that will be kind of interesting to try out so it's just raising us i'm waiting for the suspension to come to standard now so okay let's try a launch in conserve mode i wish i had a power meter i can feel like the front wheels were at the limit of traction under regen there so wide open and conserve yeah it's just front wheel drive the car's barely moving let's see the traction control flashing my foot's welded to the floor so it's just just turns into a front wheel drive vehicle even under wheel slip conditions it doesn't use the rear motors at all and so i mean this is slippery slippery stuff for sure um let's go into off-road mode now i'm going to set stability to reduced and i'm going to go to i guess auto off-road so it's definitely designed for higher clearance with a softer ride on uneven paths okay so this is just auto off-road mode let's give it the beans man the motor sounds so good in this thing and i mean it's just super impressive brakes on the way in the braking system is great in the vehicle it's a little bit soft of a brake pedal but certainly you can feel abs it's really nicely connected and i believe it's a totally physically connected brake pedal based off of my initial impressions now i was just sitting on the highway i haven't done a ton of braking tests yet we'll do that on the field let's just spin it under power super 50 50 biased in this auto off-road mode definitely is not going for any oversteer just a tiny bit of neutral steer steer maybe and the nice thing is when you lift off it gets the weight on the front and the back comes around look at this just so balanced right on the edge i mean we're just like slipping around it's fantastic the um interesting thing with auto mode is or i should say forget about that what's interesting about driving this pickup truck in loose surfaces is it's different than any other pickup truck i've mentioned or mentioned driven before because you don't feel like there's all the weight on the front and nothing on the rear it feels extremely balanced which is so unique for having a truck um you know just just sort of be able to balance right along its center axis like this pretty impressive i want to go into rally mode because that to me seems like the way to do it so let's just get it in here a little bit wow there's zero traction this is straight ice that's like welded to the floor and it barely wants to spin up all the traction control forward collision morning stuff's off here headlights are on full rally mode come on definitely is pulling with the front a lot more than uh in other modes even though it's so what it does is it allows a little bit of rotation and then it starts pulling with the front to dig you out of a corner so in and there we go i think we should just go no traction control and with an ev you really need good throttle response or or i should say input because they'll just spin to a million miles an hour let's just see actually if it will if it's truly off from a traction control perspective you see the problem with an ev if you have full like no traction control logic is if you start to spin up your tires on a low mu surface like this a low traction surface and you switch to a high traction surface what can happen is the wheel catches and that puts a ton of stress into your driveline uh you know your half shafts into your motors and so usually you can end up breaking motor mounts like i3s had those issues back in the day all right here there's kind of no one around here regen doing a good job of managing itself with no traction sort of abs with regen and foot down so there is traction control even though it says it's off so it just says stability off which makes sense and traction control is definitely on otherwise we were going on because my foot was welded so i would say stability off might be the best program here as we just drive around in straight snow this is wonderful here we go oh yes full slides it's so balanced and wonderful to just look we're right on the edge here it's so good wow call me like impressed i know we're only going 20 miles an hour and it's not that like crazy exciting but like just to be able to come out of corners in rally mode like this is one of the most unique experiences because it's sort of like tesla's track mode where i can dial in okay i want this much rotation that much rotation but here we're doing it in kind of like a 7 000 pound truck just kind of angle and then straighten out and rally mode does try and straighten you out because of course rally's all about loose surface and hammering and so um you know you really want to use that front axle a lot in in a rally situation and so it can do that here coming through look at that just right on the edge super easy i can slow we're sliding with no hands on the wheel it's so balanced wow i know i keep saying the same thing but this is like the coolest freaking thing ever we're just like drifting around little angles too nothing major just little whop so good anyway well there you have it i think the off-road modes we've tried pretty well is there anything else we should try let's go down a dirt road shall we so this is like a legit dirt road it says private road use four-wheel drive well now we're on like a legit so let's try okay i'm gonna drive it like a normal person let's go to auto off-road auto which i imagined where you kind of want to be we'll go to the one down from the highest ride height icy roads four wheel drive or chains required let's just see how it does on some of this deep powder stuff i mean this is legit snow we're driving through here snowmobile style so suspension unbelievably soft i have to say more so than i actually remember driving it it's not as smooth as the eqs off-road that was a whole nother world but it definitely is magically smooth on some of this really beat up surface pretty impressive for sure wow and we're just climbing this thing like nothing it's going straight up so we're hitting some big bumps doesn't care it's taking it honestly i haven't even aired down for this just because we're driving up like someone's driveway you shouldn't have to air down for this but if we were going to take it trail riding i probably would drop the pressures down to 30ish psi for even something like this if we were going to do it for a long time just to smooth out the ride of course we're running about 48 psi under normal temps it's cold out it's 27 so they're probably down a bit i think i can actually tech check the tire pressures here they're 44 yeah so that's foot to the floor and it's just crawling its way straight up it is a little bit of an awkward feeling because maybe i just i need to take time to get used to the powertrain management but it is nice sometimes to just lock the diffs and then you can sort of know exactly all wheels are going to spin at the same exact um you know speed which would be nice but i mean this is like we're just driving to starbucks in the morning type thing like who even cares and we're up here in the middle of the woods cruising up some pretty serious trails i mean steep and ice and snow i'd be curious to see how it does on the way down we'll try that just hammering it up here what's our state of charge we probably burned quite a bit 59 and it's so gorgeous up here isn't it yeah the future out of spec ranch needs to be around here somewhere look at this just literally walking straight up fresh powder with no care in the world wow amazing let's bust a u-turn here and head on down shall we so that's foot down and it's just sort of almost a little bit of tank turn there i wish it allowed a little bit more wheel spin in these slippery conditions if i'm honest because that was foot down i was like ah come on spin up a little bit i wonder if there's a so there's off-road auto rock crawl rally and drift there's no like mud mode i think we need like a mud snow mode for those at rivien who are watching to basically say i'm also going to put the stability control from on down into reduced um just to allow some some a little bit more wheel spin because it just felt a little bit held back to me and at least in auto mode and maybe there's a better one so that's regen slipping and it's locked the wheels so that was not great logic there did you see that basically lock the rear wheels i had to go onto the throttle and there we go completely sliding there on regen huh that is not good i expected it to have a little bit better low speed logic where it would pull back you know basically the idea with regen what you want it to do is to um you know hold you at the lowest possible wheel speed where you're not necessarily you know locking because you always want a little bit of rotation to maintain control and it definitely was not doing that and i had to apply throttle to unlock the wheels so maybe this slippery mode like this snow mode could be really useful to add through soft all this is software able to be tuned and perhaps i should try a different mode because there's regen and now it's doing the well it does it to about seven miles an hour and then locks the rear axle watch off throttle definitely pulsing pulsing you can see the regens pulsing i'm off everything regen's in high and there's rear axle completely locked wow that's kind of weird i didn't expect that that's very for like your average person that's not good let's try a different setting let's try rock crawl hold turned off okay oh now it's really locking the rear axle yeah for sure all four just locked there so rock crawl is not the move let's go regen in standard which is kind of what you would want so now we're in rally mode regen and standard why does it say 20 miles an hour max not sure now it's gone away maybe that was a rock crawl setting thing all right so rock crawl is not the answer for slippery surface i have to say that is a surprise so now it's doing regen through abs and the rear is locked at six which is just a little bit um a little bit unnerving especially as there's behind us i don't wanna like slam all the brakes too much i don't want to make them have to ditch their vehicle anyway okay rally mode seems to seems to feel the best honestly in this loose surface stuff and regen and standard makes a big difference so i guess if you're gonna drive in snow at least for now if you own arabian just regen and standard would be my recommendation based off of this little test but i have to say its capability and its powertrain control under throttle is really good um although i would like some more wheel spin the the braking is is quite odd now if i go into full abs i mean that's full brakes we just have no traction so maybe you want a little bit more of an aggressive tire as well to be honest yeah good on the way up but it's a lot of weight to stop on the way down that's for sure and just be prepared like if you start to slide in this thing you know gentle throttle just to unlock everything so just be mindful of that uh because you know a locked wheel isn't gonna give you any any traction anywhere really what an interesting experience heated steering wheels wonderful and not not much uh steering wheel sort of feedback or or input when you hit these bumps even on one side watch you can see a little bit but not much uh wheel um wobble on the way in i'm forgetting all my words this morning wheel wobble but then when you get the speed up it kind of likes this stuff this stuff it's doing really well on well there you have it uh should we head back down the mountain because we got to do some towing tests today i got to charge this thing up and talk about towing efficiency in a future video i have to say though the suspension when you put the ride in soft is truly stellar rally mode let's go rally mode traction off stability off and make sure no one's coming and power out of here full power nice skids as soon as i counter steer it says okay front axle rotation or front axle power interesting power train control here on loose surface had a good time on that little dirt road and we learned a lot i learned a lot about the low speed calibration it's really not great in very slippery deep snow under braking at least with regen and high because if i lift off here you can see the regen pulsing which means it says oh we're locking a little bit i'm going to back off regen and it's basically keeping you at the maximum amount of deceleration rate that you can have without locking a wheel just like abs in theory would do right and so abs uses a physical mechanical uh braking system that that pulses the brake and let's go a little bit and varies pressure this is just using the electric motor regen and sort of you know you can see holding it right on the edge but you can see it gets you right perfect uh amount of deceleration force in rally mode to just like tuck the car in a little bit on the front and then you can power out so like the calibration a lot and there you have it rivian in a loose surface we learned a little bit about some of the modes uh we tried all-purpose we haven't we tried sport a little bit conserve front-wheel drive not the mode for snow but interesting that it doesn't apply rear axle help even under ultimate wheel slip conditions and then we also tried um yeah rally and drift rally with stability off and the ride in soft and the regen in standard is my recommendation for a snowy blast again i've only driven it 20 minutes in the snow maybe not even because i can come out of a corner like this and just hammer it little angles the way it should be little angles everywhere and a big truck heavy truck not so big thanks for watching another out of spec reviews video see you on the next one bye

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 134,674

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car, rivian, snow, colorado, 4 motor, dual motor, esp, traction, drive modes, rally, drift, all purpose, conserve, rock crawl

Id: CGUzpJO5ACw

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 17 2022