I drove a Rivian today

One of my sons works for Rivian and brought one home for the afternoon, so I got to drive it. This was my first experience with any electric vehicle bigger than a golf cart or lift truck. My only ownership of a pickup has been the last five years with my GMC Canyon crewcab, so that's my only benchmark. It's a very nice vehicle, nicely appointed interior, comfortable seating, more rear seat room than my Canyon. This one hand a full glass roof and a really nice suede effect headliner. Altogether a very nice place to be.

The thing has storage aplenty. There's a sizable frunk, a trunk under the bed, and Rivian's signature storage tunnel right behind the cab. My grandkids loved the storage tunnel. There's room for both of them in there and the rear seat armrest can be pulled down to reveal a pass-through to pass them snacks on longer trips. One of the kids discover the safety release button in the tunnel, so we had to lock him in multiple times so he could "escape".

We went for a drive, only about 20 miles of country roads. Compared to the Canyon it's much quieter, even the huge Pirelli tires couldn't be heard, just a little wind noise. You can hear a slight whine on decelerating, and it'd slightly more pronounced when you turn the regeneration level up to max. These things can be driven with one pedal, just take your foot off the throttle and it comes to a stop, you can't really coast it through corners. You have to maintain a bit of throttle.

This particular truck was the loaded up version, four motor, 810 HP, 11,000 pound towing capacity. I stopped and floored it a few times. It didn't feel like 800 HP, but it got to 75 mph pretty darned quick, and it was so smooth you didn't realize how quick it is. The 7000 pound curb weight is a lot to push around ,even with that kind of power.

Overall, I was very impressed. Am I going to dump the Canyon to buy a Rivian? Nope. I really don't need a truck very often and I'm not about to pay the kind of money the Rivian is worth, for it or any other truck. I can understand how some people would though.

"... 11,000 pound towing capacity..."

The complaints about the F150 EV are no different here. I'm curious what Rivian owners are finding for real world range. I can't help but suspect that most won't ever tow... kinda like how sport crossovers never see dirt, but I digress.

In reply to kb58 :

I haven't seen or read anything to suggest that the R1T will be any better or worse than a Ford EV. The particular one I drove has the biggest battery and is listed as 410 mile range. The "fuel" gauge was reading about 64% and the range remaining was 211 miles, so it wasn't going to go 410. Until battery technology improves the range issue will limit sales. This truck was really nice, but a limited market, especially at the current prices. If I needed to tow more than my Canyon's 7000 lb rating I'd be looking at a full size gas truck. Electric won't be a big chunk of the market until we can quickly charge a car that doesn't weigh 7000 lb. The Rivian is a little over a ton heavier than the Canyon.

I just read something in the WSJ (IIRC) that discussed the frankly appalling tire wear some people with EVs are experiencing; Rivian was mentioned specifically, but it is not exclusive to their vehicles. One Rivian owner, who reported tire life of about 7,000 miles a set, was quoted as saying "Tires are the new oil change". At three and half tons, I can't say I'm surprised.

I was reading about the issue on ther Rivian owners forum (cool that it's not a closed group). There's a wide range of experiences from 6k to 40k. One of the reasons mentioned is that since you can dial in the ride height that you want, if the alignment was done while set at a different height from the one you commonly use, the camber's going to be screwed up.  

A while back, I read an article about the tire wear issue. Kreb hit the nail on the head.

Edit: found it! https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivians-tires-are-wearing-out-in-as-little-as-6000-miles-heres-why

I used to see R1Ts and R1Ss all the time when I still lived in Tampa. There was a yellow R1T that parked at my work that was stunning. One thing that stood out was the size of the brake rotors. They were huge.

While they can hide the weight with power and enormous brakes, they can't get around the reality of physics acting on 7,000 lbs.

Somewhat related, when I drove my then new 2005(?) Z28 at the autocross, I later determined that it cost me about $50 in tire wear for every 2-minute lap ($500 for the day!). That car was maybe 3200lbs, literally twice my Datsun 1200, so I was pretty shocked. With the ever increasing weight in cars/trucks, I'm surprised that tire wear isn't ranted about more often, but maybe people have just become acclimated to it as the new normal.

I'm glad you liked the truck Warren. And I agree with you. They are generally a really nice, well put together vehicle. Just expensive with a small market appeal.

I'm also happy to hear that your son is still gainfully employed with them, despite the many rounds of cuts. I wish him and Rivian the best of luck on their journeys to success.

- Sean

The tires on the test model were 275/65/20. Made my 17" Canyon tires look pretty weeny. While I too noticed the size of the brake rotors, I barely used them. You can drive this thing with the throttle only most of the time. Just lift off and it starts slowing down pretty quickly, and will come to a complete stop. I had to adjust my driving style on curves because I tend to roll off the throttle and not touch the brakes. Doing that in the R1T resulted in it almost coming to a stop at the apex.

In reply to kb58 :

Agreed. Mass matters. Years ago I raced an ITB VW GTI and was contemplating moving up to something with a V8. A friend was racing a C4 Vette at the time, so we compared costs for our tires, brake pads and fuel for a weekend of racing. I sold the VW and built a SpecMiata which was cheaper to run than the VW.

If the Rivian SUV is still a thing and the company doesnt pull a Fiskar, its on the short list in 2-3 years when the wife wants to get rid of her Wrangler PHEV.  

kb58 said:

"... 11,000 pound towing capacity..."

The complaints about the F150 EV are no different here. I'm curious what Rivian owners are finding for real world range. I can't help but suspect that most won't ever tow... kinda like how sport crossovers never see dirt, but I digress.

I agree that many people buying them won't tow with them.  And then there are the people that need a tow rig, but it's only to move a boat 10 miles from their driveway to the launch ramp and back, so range doesn't really matter to them when towing. 

410 miles of range is plenty for me. 

It's interesting that my Excursion did not suffer from excessive tire wear even though it was over 7k lbs. I'm guessing its all that torque vs slow rollong a 7.3 up to speed. 

If you put the truck it conserve mode the ride height drops. I'll bet the previous post about camber is part of the answer to premature tire wear. If an owner were to leave it in conserve mode constantly the camber would do it. Probably should be aligned at the shorter ride height.

From Rivian's site "Yes, all Rivian vehicles have independent air suspension which allows for 6.5 inches of vertical travel — as low as 7.9 inches or as high as 14.4 inches " 

I can't imagine having good wheel alignment through that range. You would need to pick your ride height and optimize the alignment at that setting. 

AFAIK conserve also sends all power to the front wheels which is another reason why people are seeing faster wear rate when using that mode 

I have no need for a pickup.. but I am waiting for the R3x to come out. 

It's got to be down to either tire selection, power combined with driving style, or the alignment issue. Semis have tires that last 200,000 miles (super singles) so it's not like we can't make rubber that can handle a measly 7,000 pound vehicle.

Search for articles describing repair costs for a relatively-minor dent in the rear of a Rivian using "Rivian" and "$42,000", there are a few.  Forty-two-thousand dollars, when insurance first thought a couple grand would more than cover it.  One version I read said the whole rear and side panel had to be removed, which required removing the back window, which required removing the headliner, which required removing the front windshield.  For a bumper dent.

Q:  Does that not make a this a garbage design, to be out there in the real world but effectively be sooo delicate that a little dent is worth half the cost of the car...did any of the engineers doing the body structure have experience with actual cars, and why things are built so as repair/replacement is a consideration?  Let's all put a bunch of  Rivians out there and watch your insurance costs double, for no good reason other than the designers didn't get what used to be a common concept.

There's more than just the environmental cost of making another set of truck tires that shouldn't have gotten used up, that makes me wonder if these things are a bad deal.

Rivian just got a big shot in the arm from VW ($5 Billion I believe). That's good to hear. I like their product line and want them to survive.

Yeah, that's good news for both VW and Rivian. Might save the VW software :) 

All my trucks weigh more than 7000 lbs. I've never gotten less than 35,000 miles out of a set of tires.

Its not the weight.  

Yeah the weight alone is definitely not enough to destroy tires that fast, or every giant dually pickup out there would be eating them just as fast. It's weight plus massive instant-on torque that generally causes EVs to eat their tires faster, plus on the Rivian, goofy alignment issues with variable ride height and highly questionable drivetrain modes.

GameboyRMH said:

Yeah the weight alone is definitely not enough to destroy tires that fast, or every giant dually pickup out there would be eating them just as fast. It's weight plus massive instant-on torque that generally causes EVs to eat their tires faster, plus on the Rivian, goofy alignment issues with variable ride height and highly questionable drivetrain modes.

My F350 dually (2005 or 6) ate fronts at roughly twice the rate of rears, usually outside shoulders. Always put it down to how much mass (and four tires) were still pushing straight when you turned the wheel, so I pictured the outside tire rolling over onto that shoulder, thus the accelerated wear. That persisted through a full "front end" rebuild and multiple alignments. Also ate front wheel bearings about every 50k miles on one side or the other. I got quick at changing those (owned truck through 355k miles)

When I was at audi we had lots of people coming in with their SQ5's and RSQ8's (the hipo versions of their SUVs) who were appalled they only got 10-15k out of a set of tires. Made it worse they were 21-22" tires for a couple grand a set.  

Loren_SD said:

Search for articles describing repair costs for a relatively-minor dent in the rear of a Rivian using "Rivian" and "$42,000", there are a few.  Forty-two-thousand dollars, when insurance first thought a couple grand would more than cover it.  One version I read said the whole rear and side panel had to be removed, which required removing the back window, which required removing the headliner, which required removing the front windshield.  For a bumper dent.

Q:  Does that not make a this a garbage design, to be out there in the real world but effectively be sooo delicate that a little dent is worth half the cost of the car...did any of the engineers doing the body structure have experience with actual cars, and why things are built so as repair/replacement is a consideration?  Let's all put a bunch of  Rivians out there and watch your insurance costs double, for no good reason other than the designers didn't get what used to be a common concept.

There's more than just the environmental cost of making another set of truck tires that shouldn't have gotten used up, that makes me wonder if these things are a bad deal.

Didn't that guy get it fixed at a PDR guy for (comparably) chump change?