The Rivian R1T Is the Coolest Pickup Truck Ever Made

this is the new rivian r1t and it's a fully electric pickup truck but that barely scratches the surface of what this truck is all about so here's more this has over 800 horsepower does 0-60 in around 3 seconds and it goes more than 300 miles between electric charges it's also loaded with some truly amazing quirks and features which i'll show you this is the coolest pickup truck ever made and today i'm going to review it before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era now with free listings you can list your car for free and auction it on cars and bids and we've had some great sales recently including this mercedes g which sold for almost 160 thousand dollars this fantastic tesla model s 90d which brought fifty thousand dollars and this porsche panamera sport turismo turbo se hybrid which sold for almost 150 000 if you're looking to buy or sell a cool enthusiast car from the modern era the 1980s and up cars and bids is the place to do it with great daily auctions and amazing selection at carsandbids.com so let's talk reviewing rivien was founded more than 10 years ago and i got to be honest i spent the last decade being skeptical they showed pictures of this truck and they released specs but i kind of thought it was never really gonna happen but now it's here this truck is officially on sale it's built in illinois and it has a starting price of just under 70 thousand dollars and there's so much more than that this truck has some truly impressive innovations that i absolutely love and some of the most unusual and interesting quirks and features i've ever seen in any vehicle and today i'll show you all of it with a full review first i'll take you on a tour of the rivian the most thorough riven tour yet and show you all of those quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a doug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the very quirky rivien with probably its quirkiest feature and that would be the gear tunnel which is essentially a giant cargo area spanning the entire width of the truck behind the rear seats and in front of the bed and you can see it open back here now to get into the gear tunnel you press this little button on the side of the tailgate push this and then you open this little door and you have access to your gear tunnel and you can stick stuff in here fully waterproof and you can see rubber on the bottom so you can throw like wet muddy gear in here and this is a trunk which is something that basically every other pickup truck lacks and you can open it on the other side too press a button in the same spot on the other side you can see right here on the side of the tailgate and then you can open up this little door and then you have access on that side to your gear tunnel and you can see all the way through it spans the entire width of the truck giving you added lockable storage space if there's stuff you don't want to put in the bed which is amazing now rivien says that the gear tunnel is 65 inches wide and yes you could get a human person in there if you really wanted to and there are emergency inside releases in case someone tries to kidnap you in the rivian gear tunnel you have a little release that you can pull which will open these doors so you can climb right out that's there by regulation but it could also come in handy if necessary and the cool stuff of the gear tunnel is nowhere near done yet check this out there are outlets in the gear tunnel on the driver's side you have a 12 volt outlet cigarette lighter style and over here on the passenger side you have like a household style outlet so you can plug stuff in when your gear tunnel doors are down those are useful but they'll be especially useful with an amazing rivian accessory called the camp kitchen it costs five thousand dollars extra and it's a two burner stove that you can install on the gear tunnel door when it's down and plug it into the outlet inside the gear tunnel and then you can make food when you're camping on your camp kitchen that sits on your gear tunnel door and it gets even better the gear tunnel doors you can see here for one thing they can support your weight ribbing says 250 pounds so you can just sit on your gear tunnel door when you're out camping tailgating whatever that is a pretty cool feature also cool with these doors inside of them you have storage compartments over on the driver's side a little storage area where you can stick stuff if you want and over here on the passenger side the storage area contains a first aid kit so you have that with you at all times again pretty cool this gear tunnel and by the way in case you're wondering you cannot drive away with the gear tunnel doors down by accident the truck won't let you go into drive until you close them that way you won't accidentally damage or smash your gear tunnel doors which would be a problem and next up time for more clever rivian quirks and features i want to talk about the bed starting with getting access to the bed you see these little buttons over here on the side on the bed rail near the back of the truck well press the lower button when the truck is unlocked and the tailgate opens you can see it comes down and opens up but then you're thinking what about this cover this is called the tonneau cover and it's included on the rivian adventure models which is the top trim level or the launch edition which is what this truck is and you can open it by pressing the other button on the bed rail press that and this cover automatically slides itself open completely retracts in order to give you full access to your bed which is just amazingly cool and of course press it again and then the cover automatically slides closed and then it completely covers up whatever you have in your bed giving you extra security so you can have the bed fully open or closed depending on what you want thanks to those buttons and of course when the truck is locked the tonneau cover and the tailgate are locked too and that means you can essentially use the bed as a giant trunk if you want to since nobody can really get access back here now next you might be wondering about these crossbars over the bed this is a rivien accessory it costs 450 extra for the pair of crossbars and you might be thinking i don't want crossbars over my bed some people do want it to mount like bikes or surfboards or whatever but if you don't want them they're incredibly easy to remove you just pull on this little plastic tab at the end and one side is unlocked then go over to the other side do the same tab and then both sides are unlocked and you can then move them to the roof where they can become the roof racks these crossbars can extend or retract in or out to match the width of the bed or the roof and so you can install them in either place you don't want your roof racks on put your crossbars on your bed or vice versa and of course if you don't want them at all you can also just stick them in the bed or leave them at home but that is pretty cool they can go on the bed or the roof but there are oh so many more other cool things to cover with this truck's bed i want to start on the passenger side where you have this little cover lift this up and there are outlets here household style outlets so you can power stuff using your truck if you don't have access to power now right above these outlets you can see yet another emergency inside release if a person gets stuck in the bed just in case you're trying to kidnap someone on your rivien you can't put on the gear tunnel because there are releases in there well there's also a release in the bed so too bad for you and next up we move on to the center of the bed below the bed floor there's a little latch to the left side of the bed you can see it here you pull this latch and that pops open the bed floor and reveals a full-size spare tire which is a big deal because this thing has huge tires all-terrain tires 20-inch wheels absolutely massive well you get an extra and speaking of tires here's another cool feature in the bed on the left side of the bed under this cover you have a tire inflator system just plug in your little tire hose to this inflator and then to a tire and you can inflate your tires after you go off-roading after you've aired down so the tires don't pop when you're ready to get back onto pavement and air back up this truck has a built-in compressor so you can do it easily you don't have to carry one with you that's pretty cool but probably the very coolest feature in this entire bed is rivien's gear guard system just below this air compressor you can see these two little plastic cutouts that's where you mount this which comes with the truck and kind of looks like a rope you can stick in the end of this little rope to the plastic cutout and it looks like a cargo tie down except when you lock the truck this is locked in place and cannot be removed this is a big deal because you can stick the other end of this rope into the other plastic cutout in the bed and then when the truck is locked you have an extra security system for your gear you could stick this little rope through your bike frame for instance if you wanted to stick your bike in the back of the truck and then it's completely locked in place and someone can't just come up and steal your bike or your bag or whatever you want to put through there think of this as like a locking rope or wire or whatever almost like a bike chain but for your gear a really cool idea for a truck bed now with all the cool stuff in the bed it's worth noting there are some drawbacks mainly the bed size this is only a four and a half foot bed and that's all they offer there's no like long bedrivian for people who want more bed space rivien does say that if you put the tailgate down you now have up to seven feet of bed space but of course your tailgate is down so your gear isn't secure if you're driving along but that's the bed situation here but if you're looking for even more storage in this truck you can find it up front this truck is all electric it doesn't have a giant combustion engine up here like every other truck instead it has a lot of batteries mounted low beneath the entire truck and that means there's space up front for more cargo storage you can access the cargo storage here in a few different ways but right now i'm going to do it by sliding my finger underneath the front of the truck until i feel the button to open it now you press the button and then it pops open automatically a power opening front trunk or frunk if you will and gives you access to a storage compartment up here and as you can see this storage compartment is frankly pretty big there's a lot of space up here if you don't have an engine turns out there's a lot of extra space that you can use for other things including storage as you can see and this storage compartment is even bigger than it looks because the floor lifts up if you fold over this piece of floor like this as you can see it has magnets on the back and those magnets correspond to magnets on the back wall of this storage area which then keeps the floor in place and lifted up and obviously you can see here gives you more storage space underneath the floor and there's more cool stuff in this front storage area than just that for one thing you have an outlet up here another cigarette lighter style outlet again to power more stuff just like in back which is a pretty cool touch and you have yet another emergency inside release so you can't kidnap someone on your rivian using the gear tunnel or the bed or the front trunk there are emergency releases everywhere not sure i've ever seen a car before with four emergency storage area releases but rivien had to install them to comply with regulations for all these storage areas now when you're done loading your gear into the front and you want to close this you have a few different options for how to close this panel you can do it using the interior screen which i'll show you in a little bit or you can use the keys or you can once again just sort of feel around under here until you feel the rubber button that opens the front you can press it and then it automatically closes from here as well again fully power operated pretty cool and next up since i'm up front in the rivien let's talk front end styling which is very unusual mostly because of these two ovals two giant ovals up front tremendously distinctive to the rivian unlike everything else on the road now these ovals are not the headlights instead they're part of the running lights which is also this light bar going across the entire front end every time this is on and moving and driving this light bar and the ovals are lit up you will always know if arythian is behind you worth noting though that the ovals do become the turn signals when the turn signals go on in front you can see here the oval kind of switches duties from running light to turn signal when you put the turn signals on then it goes back to being an oval once again it's also worth noting that the turn signal doesn't just light up this oval when you turn on the signal the other oval dims to emphasize the turn signal brightness and it's hard to see here because the camera's showing the flickering led lights but the front light bar dims too so every time you turn on the signal the rest of your running lights dim and when you turn off the signal the running lights brighten back up to normal again now as for the actual headlights they are inside the ovals you can see them here your headlights and your high beams are mounted looking like fairly standard headlights just incorporated in the middle of the oval inside the rivian front end very unusual also worth noting when it's charging the center part of the light bar turns green to let you know that all is good with the charger and it is currently charging you have the light bar turning green in front kind of a weird touch but that's what it does and next up on the subject of charging the rivian let's talk about exactly how to do that this is the charge port door you can see integrated into the front bumper on the driver's side and pretty stealth you wouldn't really know what this is or where this is unless you knew to look for it as for opening the charge port door it's kind of interesting you walk up to the car and you can see this plastic trim around the front wheel arch you have three little lines in the front part of this plastic trim you tap those with your finger and the door opens as you can see now these little lines are not a button you don't press it you just sort of lightly slide your finger over it and the door opens or closes in this exact spot which is a pretty cool little futuristic touch so opening up the charge port door you open it up and it reveals the charge port as you can see and next up moving back to lighting let's talk rear lighting in this truck you can see there is a large light bar going around the entire rear end just like there was a large light bar in front and also just like in front this light bar is on whenever the truck is on and moving you have this light bar back here now one interesting thing with the rear lighting the brake lights and turn signals are small you can see the brake lights here small and over to the side when you put on the turn signal same deal all the way over to the side very small little piece at the corner of the rear of this truck that is regulatory as i've mentioned in previous videos you can't put brake lights or turn signals on a piece of bodywork that moves and since the tailgate takes up the entire middle section of the rear they had to stick the brake lights and turn signals at the very sides which is why they're so small but anyway time to climb inside the rivian so let's talk getting in right now the truck is locked and you know that because the door handles are flush up against the body of the truck when it unlocks the door handles pop out as you can see and then you just reach your hand into the back part of the door handle pull on it and the doors open right up so how do you lock and unlock this truck there are four different ways all of which are pretty interesting for one there's a key fob this thing which is actually a carabiner as you can see you can pull it off and it's a key fob carabiner which is kind of a cool little touch and you can see several different buttons on the key fob your usual stuff lock unlock the trunk and that sort of thing that's one way another way you can get in here is with your phone you can download the rivian app and then sync your phone to this truck and as you walk up to the truck with your phone in your pocket it automatically unlocks and as you walk away from the truck with your phone in your pocket it automatically locks but let's pretend you're using your phone as the key so you leave your carabiner key fob at home and then your phone dies what do you do then well that's the third way to get in this truck which is this key card it's like a hotel room key and you can walk up to the truck with this key card and when you get close it'll unlock you can climb inside and then you hold the key card in a certain spot to start the truck and drive it away the cool thing here is you can leave this key card in your wallet or in your purse and you'll always have it with you so if your phone dies you can still get into your truck because your backup key is a credit card and finally the fourth and final way you can get in the rivien is with a little bracelet that comes with this truck that way you're playing basketball or you're swimming you got the bracelet on and then when you're done come back to the truck use the bracelet to unlock the truck and you can get to your phone and everything else inside which is pretty cool but when it comes to locking and unlocking this truck maybe the most interesting quirk is the sound it makes when you lock it it doesn't have like a normal beep sound instead it's a bird chirp take a listen you may not have heard that or even realized it was the truck because i'm out here in nature and there are birds chirping but that's the sound it makes when you lock it a bird chirp take another listen personally i find this to be a really cool idea i'm often out filming these videos in public in a parking lot someone haunts their horn when they lock the car and it's very annoying a bird chirp sounds just like nature it doesn't bother anybody but it still lets you know the door is locked that's really cool but anyway next we climb inside the r1t and when you're in here the first thing you notice is it's pretty nice in here this doesn't really look like some automaker's first effort at a vehicle even though this is in fact rhythm's first effort at a vehicle the seats look very nice very supportive and they're vegan leather you don't actually use cows it just looks and feels like leather but it's synthetic in fact there's a sustainable focus everywhere in this interior rivien says the headliner comes from 100 recycled material and the floor mats aren't made of leather or lamb's wool or anything like that but instead a material that rivian tells me is called chilewich i guess which is sustainable and it's often used in like kitchen products very easy to clean in case you get it dirty or muddy after you've gone off-roading but beyond everything being surprisingly nice in here there are also many many quirks i want to start with a hidden speaker this is not part of the car's speaker system instead you pull it out of this spot under the center console and it's a bluetooth speaker that you can use like while you're camping it charges in this spot under the center console but you pull it out and you can set it up anywhere you want to and play music from your built-in portable bluetooth speaker very cool and this speaker also comes with a lantern so if you want to light your campsite you have a little lantern in your speaker and it has little ports where it can even charge your phone and speaking of hidden stuff in this car in the driver's door seam you look in here and you can see a flashlight you push on this and a flashlight comes out and it's really really bright it can shine basically anywhere in anything and it stores and charges inside your door and there's more hidden stuff in this car for instance here in the center console you can see there's this little storage pad directly ahead of your armrest that's actually a wireless charging pad put your phone on there and it charges which is a pretty neat little touch and it's not branded with all these wireless charging logos it just looks nice also right below the top of this center console area you have cupholders you don't see them now but you push here and they pop out two front cup holders that you can use obviously for drinks and your center console armrest here is of course actually also the lid for a storage area you have a little button at the very front part of the armrest you push it pops open electronically and reveals a fairly large storage area here between the seats where you can stick more stuff pretty nice but the biggest quirks in this interior unquestionably come from the screens just like so many modern cars this one is almost completely screen based in fact there are only two real buttons in this interior both on the ceiling here one is the hazard light which is a button by regulation the government mandates that be an actual button so you can't integrate that into the screen the other is an sos button you press that and it calls like a rivian call help center you want that to be a separate button in case the car is dead and you're terrified and the screen doesn't work you have a separate button for sos but that's it everything else is on the screens including a lot of interesting quirks starting with the gear guard yeti this little cartoon drawing is on the car tab in this center screen and it's like a little yeti with a camera and what this does is when you lock the car it not only locks the car but it arms all of the cameras throughout the exterior of the car these are like your backup cameras your cameras for parking well when the car is locked they act as a camera security system and if you walk up to the car and like bump it when it's locked this little yeti appears large on the center screen to let people know hey you're being recorded and i asked rivien why is it like a cartoon yeti and they said they didn't want it to be too serious like you're being recorded we're watching you instead they wanted to make it seem hey you accidentally bumped into the car but i'm this funny little creature and just letting you know you're being watched and i guess i get that what a crazy feature a yeti as part of your in-car security system and by the way also on that car tab in the center screen there's a top-down image of the rivian showing everything that is currently open which is kind of neat to see and you can use it to open a lot of stuff you can open the hood for instance the front like i mentioned you can do that with the screen and you do it right here but you can open other stuff too you can open the charge port as you can see tap this and it'll open and you can close or open the tonneau cover over the bed and even open the tailgate maybe the coolest thing is you can open the gear tunnel doors here so if someone's hands are full they're trying to load something in they want you to do it you can just tap on the doors and then they pop open so someone can load in stuff pretty cool worth noting the gear tunnel doors can't be closed from in here only open but still a pretty cool little feature to be able to do that at all from your center screen and of course there's more one crazy thing is the control to adjust the positioning of the mirrors and the steering wheel because how do you do that in a car with no buttons or switches well you go into the screen here there's a little menu for adjust wheel and mirrors click on wheel and you can adjust the positioning of the steering wheel using these little wheels on either side of the steering wheel the one on the right controls the height of the steering wheel you can see i move this and the wheel goes up and down very cool the one on the left controls like the telescoping to move it in or out also very cool and you can adjust the mirrors this way too go back into the screen switch to mirror adjustment and suddenly you can use these little wheels to adjust the positioning of the mirrors you can go up or down on the left side for the left mirror and you can also use the buttons surrounding this mirror to go left or right with the mirror so these controls on the steering wheel have multiple functions and they do more than just that if you're not in any adjustment mode just driving along like normal the controls on the left side of the steering wheel adjust your stereo the wheel is for volume and the button around it is for track next track or previous track on the right side of the wheel you can use these controls to adjust your adaptive cruise control system and driver assist which i'll cover in a few more minutes but for now back to the center screen where there are more interesting quirks now adjusting the climate controls is pretty easy you have these climate controls always positioned at the base of the screen and you can change your temperature here and put on your heated and cooled seats the easy stuff you want to do frequently but if you want more climate adjustment than that you just tap on the controls and it pulls up a full climate menu as you can see and the interesting quirk here is this menu is the only way to adjust the positioning of your climate control vents in front you drag your finger around the positioning of where you want the air to go and the vents respond right away and start blowing air in that direction now i gotta say this is a cool piece of futuristic technology but it's also a little bit annoying it's very easy in most normal cars to just position the vents using sliders and this thing you go through the screen which is a little bit extra steps but it is cool and also cool in this car is the vents themselves which are incredibly small you can see one down here just below the screen very small center vent but it does blow out a lot of air and when i move my hand around the screen you can see this vent changing its position to correspond your other vents in here are on the very edge of the dashboard you wouldn't even notice them unless you're looking for them it almost looks like trim but those are vents and again they respond when you move your finger around this climate control area screen pretty cool now otherwise in the center screen everything is fairly intuitive here i showed you this car tab along the bottom you get to that by pressing the picture of the rivien and then it pulls up your car tab and you can open and close stuff you also have a little music tab which of course pulls up your music your multimedia if you want to listen to stuff while you're driving along that's the tab you want to go to next this little tab with like a four wheel drive icon that pulls up your drive modes in this car before i get to that though i love this four wheel drive icon it shows everything is connected even though that's not true in this car the rivian has quad motors a motor for each wheel so none of them are connected like in a traditional vehicle but they kept that four wheel drive icon because it'll be familiar to most of the people who are in the car but anyway you're on this tab and you can see on the left the different drive modes for this vehicle including an off-road mode which is pretty advanced and has several different drive modes onto its own depending on which type of off-roading you want to actually do they're very serious about off-roading with the rivien like i mentioned earlier it has all-terrain tires and it also comes with air suspension that can raise it pretty high over on the right side of the screen you can see different air suspension heights that you can select and if you go into off-road mode it allows you to pick the highest possible mode which allows for almost 15 inches of ground clearance that is a seriously impressive number now using this suspension setting over on the right you can also go into your lowest possible mode which allows for easier entry and exit into the vehicle if you have like elderly people or kids you're trying to get in or if you're trying to load heavy items put it in the low mode you don't have to lift them as high when you have it in the lowest mode possible it's about 7.9 inches of ground clearance which is like a normal standard crossover finally the last tab worth noting here is the navigation tab you tap on this it goes to navigation you see you have a satellite map image which is pretty cool but you can also change it to a regular map if you want there's a lot of stuff i like about this navigation very intuitive you can just plop your hand down on a point and it will direct you there easily this is one of the few navigation systems i've seen that's easier than just using your phone and it's quite simple one cool thing about this nan system is how it displays charging if you're on a trip say you direct yourself somewhere very far away this screen will actually show where you need to charge along the way and for how long you should charge until you get to the next charger and then it'll tell you how long there and it continues and continues and continues that's a really cool touch and it helps to exactly estimate how long your trip is going to take if you have to charge during because it can tell you precisely how long you'll need to charge for very cool and next up one drawback of the infotainment system is the camera technology in this car despite the fact that rivian proudly touts something like 11 exterior cameras frankly the camera system isn't really all that good for one thing there's no top-down camera like there is in basically every other car at this price point but also the camera resolution just isn't that great and there simply aren't as many angles as in some of the rivals including pickup truck rivals that show like the tow hitch the bed all sorts of different stuff you just don't have that here with that said one drawback of the rivian infotainment system no apple carplay or android auto it's too bad that such an important feature is missing from such a futuristic and advanced truck and that'll be a big deal to some people no apple carplay or android auto at all and next up we move on to the other screen in this interior and that would be the gauge cluster directly behind the steering wheel and it's nice to see this here tesla models have given up on a gauge cluster in the interest of simplicity but i like to see something very close to my line of sight while i'm driving and it's nice to have this one the most interesting part of this gauge cluster screen is right here in the center when this truck is stopped you can see it shows a top-down view of the truck letting you know what's open and i especially like its display of the gear tunnel doors being open very accurate very clear to see hey the gear tunnel door is open and it's kind of funny that they depicted it so well but when you're moving it shows like an image of your truck sort of from behind and it actually mimics exactly what you're doing so you can see here i'm driving along it shows lane lines and other vehicles precisely corresponding to where the lanes and other vehicles are on the road that i'm traveling on now couple cool things that this display shows one these little yellow lines turn on occasionally as you can see that is your blind spot monitor the lines light up to let you know a car is in your blind spot on that side of your truck which is cool to see it there makes it pretty easy to tell if someone's in your blind spot but the center screen is also tremendously useful if you're using your driver assist technology this is similar to tesla autopilot when this is functional and when you've turned it on a blue icon comes on at the top of your screen letting you know that the car is now steering for you and breaking and accelerating so you can use this in heavy traffic and you don't have to put your foot on the pedals or even really touch the steering wheel only periodically you can see it reminds you to touch the wheel but otherwise you can be hands off and the car can do a lot of driving for you in certain circumstances like on the freeway in traffic or even at higher speeds which is pretty cool a couple of other notable items with this one when you're using the driver assist features now the controls on the right side of the steering wheel control that so the little wheel adjusts your following distance to the car in front of you and the little switch around the wheel adjusts your maximum speed so you set it for 75 miles an hour but if you're in traffic it'll obviously only go as fast as the car in front of you until it's gone and then it goes to whatever speed you set it to so this is a pretty good driver assist system although i will say it's not quite as good as tesla's autopilot for one thing it's geofenced so you can't use it on all possible roads you can still use adaptive cruise control but not full driver assist also it won't make lane changes for you tesla will cadillac will a few other brands but rivien won't still a pretty advanced system works quite well now one other item worth noting on this gauge cluster screen there's no status light on the outside of the rivian when it's charging to let you know how charged it is but you do have a status update on the gauge cluster screen as you can see here and it's a pretty comprehensive one it lets you know what percentage you've charged to how many miles of range you have left it tells you exactly how long you'll need to charge in order to be fully charged and it even shows you how many miles of range have been added during this charge stop so it's pretty useful information right here on the gauge cluster screen whenever your truck is charging and finally last items in the front seat i want to talk storage for a second this truck does not have a glove box which is kind of interesting a little bit surprising but not really that disappointing you do have this large center console i showed you and there's more storage than just that on the door panel you have this little pocket which you can put stuff in and this pocket even pulls out to allow for larger stuff to get in there which is kind of nice you also have these little hidden storage compartments at the base of the front seats you can open this little lid here and stick stuff underneath the seats driver and passenger side both has these hidden storage compartments which are pretty nice and pretty practical and next up moving on to the back seat of the r1t and before i talk about quirks and features i want to talk about getting in which is made a little bit more difficult because of the angle of the door which is like this because of the gear tunnel it's a little smaller opening so a little harder to climb inside but to me a very small price to pay to have the gear tunnel here worth noting also when the gear tunnel door is open it's pretty challenging to get into the back seat there's not a lot of room to climb past it to get in but you can get in another small price to pay in order to have the cool gear tunnel but anyway once you get inside you get back here and it's actually pretty roomy in the back of this truck i say that with surprise because this truck is only about the same size as a toyota tacoma with a crew cab and frankly it feels a lot roomier than that but anyway moving on to the rest of the quirks and features back here one is the rear screen you can see it here on the back of the front center console this is a climate control screen it's a touch screen and you can use it to adjust your rear climate controls you can change the temperature the air speed positioning and turn on your rear heated seats all of which is pretty nice now right above that rear climate screen you can see traditional climate vents which can be moved using a traditional little switch on the vents they had to give up that front climate screen movement situation in order to have just old fashioned climate vents back here which i suspect some passengers will prefer now also in this vicinity you can see here two usbc chargers one for each rear passenger which is a nice little touch and you have more chargers than just that on the back of the front seat near the headrest you can see a charger and a hook now the thinking here is you can mount an ipad here you can charge it with the charger and mount it to the hook but you could also just use this charger to charge a device and mount other stuff to look like clothes or frankly whatever you want you have that on both sides driver and passenger side that little hook and charger situation pretty cool and two more cool quirks of the back seat one there's storage under the back seat you can lift up the seat bottom and you can see a little storage compartment here where you can stick stuff more hidden storage in this car which of course is nice to have the more the merrier if you want to keep stuff out of people's reach or out of their view but probably the very coolest quirk in the back seat is that you can access the gear tunnel from here drop the center armrest in the back seat and then fold back this little lid and that's the gear tunnel you're reaching it back here so if you've put something in the gear tunnel and you want access to it while you're driving oh i forgot my phone charger whatever you can have a rear seat passenger reach back in here and grab it without having to stop the car get out open the door find your thing they can get it from the inside thanks to that access point very very cool feature and finally we move back outside the rivien because yes there is still more to cover next i want to discuss styling i love how this truck looks now the front end is a little weird with those strange ovals not exactly in love with that but otherwise i like the fact that we finally have a muscular brawny looking electric vehicle instead of that boring teardrop shape that so many of them have this thing actually looks like a truck that i would want to own and take off road which is so different from most other electric cars and they're relatively similar boring looks so how did they do it how did they make an electric truck go over 300 miles of range without that teardrop shape well there are a few different ways one is aerodynamics it's more aerodynamic than you'd think for instance the front looks very upright and blocky until you get up to it you can see it's sort of curved at the edges not a flat shape like most pickup trucks curve to allow air to go past it for arrow purposes and there are all sorts of air pass-throughs around this truck right in front of the tire here you can see a little slot for air to pass through and same deal right behind the tire there's also this little hidden spoiler here behind the passenger compartment where again air passes through rivien told me that things like this various little improvements in aerodynamics were able to help them get their desired range but the other big way this truck achieves its range is with a massive battery this truck weighs almost 6 000 pounds which is incredibly heavy it's about the same length as a toyota tacoma but it weighs 1500 to 2000 pounds more than a tacoma largely because of the massive battery that helps this truck achieve its amazing range so there's some trade-offs here and heavy weight is definitely one of them also worth noting when discussing range this truck has these all-terrain tires big chunky tires which certainly hurts range most electric cars use low rolling resistance tires to eke out a few more miles but not this thing they wanted him to be functional and capable off-road and that was another thing they had to fight against also on the subject of range this truck can tow up to 11 000 pounds which is a pretty good figure and puts it very much in pickup truck territory but of course when you tow anything but especially 11 000 pounds it's gonna deplete your range very quickly next up i wanna talk sizing for a second i've compared this truck to a toyota tacoma several times in this video and i do that because they're almost the same size the rivien is 215.6 inches long a tacoma is about 213 inches long so we're talking only a couple inches difference between these two trucks this is definitely shorter than a full-size truck most of those are around 230 inches depending on configuration but it's certainly big a toyota camry is like 190 inches long this is longer than a chevy tahoe so don't get into this thinking you're going to be driving some relatively mid-sized vehicle it's mid-size for a truck but it's big overall and it would be a full-size suv if this was the suv version finally one other subject to discuss and that would be pricing there are two versions of the r1t at least right now the base model is called the explorer it starts around 68 000 and then you have the adventure which starts around 74 000 this is an adventure it's actually a launch edition model but it's equipped the same way as the adventure with the same price all rivian models come with four motors one at each wheel meaning they all come with all-wheel drive and they all come with over 800 horsepower and 0-60 in three seconds regardless of which trim you get you get those performance numbers you also get 314 miles of range according to epa which is a very strong number gives you a long range before you have to recharge again and rivian says that an even longer range model is coming there's going to be a larger battery available in an extended range version for 10 000 extra that should go around 400 miles between charges which is obviously even more impressive and so those are the quirks and features of the rivian r1t electric pickup truck now it's time to get this out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the rivian r1t i have had this truck now uh for a couple days and i've driven it around in a lot of different environments and situations and so here are my impressions first i want to talk about why i didn't show off the full circle turning capability that's because it's not available yet uh rivien says that's going to come with an update to this truck next i just want to show some acceleration that's a speed that's a speed i i probably shouldn't say on camera but that is quick uh wow it doesn't feel as fast as model s plat oh but it's close whoa the really incredible thing is not how fast it is although that is obviously incredible but you know all electric cars are starting to feel like this that's not that amazing the incredible part is how it feels like this in a vehicle this size it's just unbelievable that they were able to do this um but that's what happens when you put such a massive battery in this thing this is a very weird vehicle in the sense that it's a total clean sheet look at a pickup truck it's like if you knew there needed to be a truck but you had never seen one before what what would you do how would you create one and so as a result it has some cool stuff that regular trucks don't have and then it's missing some stuff that a lot of trucks do have and it probably should have too for example some stuff that's missing one is getting into the bed is not particularly easy now a lot of new trucks have like innovative tailgate step designs which is pretty cool this doesn't have it another drawback compared to other pickup trucks is the camera system like i mentioned before chevy ford they have really good cameras they're right at the tow hitch so you can line up a trailer this thing is just not as good and the other drawback there is it's a big vehicle and some of these other trucks that have great cameras it just makes them easier to maneuver in small spaces but then you focus on some of the incredible other stuff that it has gear tunnel i think is really cool this thing has a trunk behind the seats the gear tunnel a trunk in front and that lockable tonneau cover it has like 70 cubic feet of lockable cargo space and it's still a truck with a bed and then there's the performance which is which is maybe an even better thing it's incredible how fast this is and all of the rivian r12 trucks are like this you don't have to step up to some special model whatever you get incredible acceleration no matter which model you choose and the off-road capabilities are seriously excellent in this vehicle and then there's the handling i don't want to say that this handles like a sports car because ultimately it doesn't but handling was really clearly a thought in the mind of rivian when they created this vehicle and it handles better than a truck it handles smaller than a truck it feels more car-like than a truck now ride quality i do want to touch on it's fine it's not as good as some 74 thousand dollar vehicles i have to say you got to remember the fact that this isn't just all about luxury it's also performance and it's also off-road capability um and so i kind of forgive it for that but ride quality is fine it's just not like luxury car supple i would say this is one of the best packages i've ever driven of i don't want to say this is the best electric vehicle because it's very large and it's expensive but if you're in this price point this thing's unbeatable i truly was not expecting rivien to really get it right at first because making a first effort car is hard but they did like this is competitive i haven't noticed any glitches or anything that isn't working like it should be it's it's great it really is great and so that's the rivien r1t the electric truck world is on fire right now the tesla cyber truck the hummer ev the ford f-150 lightning and also this but this came first and frankly it's going to be a tough act for the others to follow i love this truck it's not perfect it has some flaws but it's seriously impressive and now it's time to give the rivian a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the rivian is attractive though i think the truck is just a bit awkward looking both in terms of overall proportions and the front end the suv is nicer still it's pretty nice overall and it gets a 7 out of 10. acceleration is impressive 3 seconds 0 to 60 gives it a 9 out of 10. handling is good but not amazing and handles better than other full-size trucks but it does still feel like a big vehicle and it gets a 5 out of 10. fun factor is exceptional considering the amazing off-road capability and incredible on-road performance and it gets a 9 out of 10. cool factor this is very cool right now and it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 37 out of 50. next up for the daily categories and features this truck is well equipped but it is lacking some things no apple carplay or android auto is a big deal and a shame for instance and the camera quality is mediocre it gets a 7 out of 10. comfort is fine nice for a truck but not particularly exceptionally it gets a 6 out of 10. quality is fine the interior is very nice better than truck rivals but i did have a few early quality glitches after spending more time with the truck nothing huge but still noticeable and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is excellent the bed isn't as large as some rivals but it's plenty big enough and the other storage tricks are very useful and the full electric drivetrain helps here too it gets a 9 out of 10 falling short of a 10 only because of its size and just 5 seats finally value and truthfully this is a bargain it's cheaper than a trx or a raptor and it's faster and it seems like a deal for what it offers it gets a huge 8 out of 10 for a total daily score of 36 out of 50. add it up and the doug score is 73 out of 100 which places it here against rivals not only is the rivien the best truck i've ever tested but it's one of the best vehicles overall as the all-time high doug score is 74. the simple truth is this vehicle is amazing great tech innovative ideas excellent performance and extensive off-road capability the rivian does it all i really want one [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,753,101

Rating: 4.8673091 out of 5

Keywords: rivian, rivian review, rivian r1t, rivian r1t review, 2022 rivian r1t, new rivian, electric truck, electric pickup, new reivian reivew, 2022 rivian r1t review, 2022 rivian, 2022 rivian review, r1t, r1t review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: CYrunRy8hmw

Length: 44min 48sec (2688 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/notalwaysverynice]

Doug DeMuro's complete guide on how NOT to kidnap someone in the Rivian R1T.

[u/LargeMonty]

Bold of Doug to assume our weight is under 250 lbs for the gear tunnel seat.

[u/verifiedverified]

I feel like electric trucks are optimized to do really well on the Doug score. Amazing 0-60, great storage space, and tons of tech.

[u/xCrossfirez]

When's the Lucid Air video coming u/Doug-DeMuro? Super excited.

[u/Yepkarma]

How would those little touch buttons for the charging door work if the car is covered by ice or snow ? Does it still work if you have gloves on ?

[u/Uptons_BJs]

Doug, Rivian or F150 lightning?

Did Rivian really nail the "truck" part of "electric truck?"

[u/1greyhound]

Where do I get it serviced if it breaks though? That’s where Ford will have a huge advantage in dealer network.

[u/ARAR1]

No one talks about everything being motorized. Air vents - motorized really? So when that breaks you have to pay $1000 to have the air directed to the location you want in the future.

Gizmos for the sake of gizmos...not good for the consumer.

Edit: adding this post I just saw. No one needs a motorized charge cover: https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/r2cj43/how_is_this_not_covered_under_warranty

The cool factor wears off when the repair bill comes in.

[u/Snoo74401]

Doug, I'm concerned about your phone's state of charge when you showcase the wireless charger. Is everything ok? Do you need help?