The primary time a producer loaned me a car in order that I might overview it for a publication was in 2005. Since that point, I haven’t pushed each pickup truck manufactured, however I’ve pushed a lot of them.
The 2025 Rivian R1T affords the perfect driving expertise I’ve ever encountered in a pickup truck.
It’s additionally among the many most irritating I’ve ever pushed.
The frustrations of dwelling with it are all stuff you’d develop accustomed to for those who owned it. None would make you hate your truck. If the R1T pursuits you, it’s best to take a look at drive one with an open thoughts. You may find it irresistible.
After per week of driving it, I feel I liked it. However I liked it the way in which you like a superb teenager who nonetheless makes bafflingly unhealthy choices (I’ve had greater than a kind of, too). You’ll be able to’t shake the sense that this factor may very well be superb sometime … nevertheless it has to study a couple of alarmingly staple items.
With a couple of easy modifications, Rivian might have a traditionally nice truck on its arms. It doesn’t but, nevertheless it does have one you may get pleasure from.
My tester was an expensive luxurious truck. This Tri Max version boasts 850 horsepower, 371 miles of vary, a 0-60 mph time of two.9 seconds, and an asking worth of $107,650 (together with $1,800 for supply). It got here in a good looking Forest Inexperienced with an inside scheme Rivian calls Driftwood, filled with muted grays, delicate bronzes, and plaid ground mats that felt surprising and funky. It’s the best-looking inside I’ve ever seen in a pickup.
Basic-However-Up to date Look
Designers have given the R1T a incredible basic pickup silhouette and up to date it for the electrical period.
There’s nothing outlandish concerning the look — truck designers have perfected the form that will get most work executed moderately nicely, and Rivian has saved to it. However rounded edges and a delicate inverted swoosh to the rear doorways make it distinctive.
Rivian’s signature tall oval headlights inform everybody in visitors what you’re driving with out trying, nicely, “cyber.” My tester’s Forest Inexperienced is a shade truckmakers badly wanted to rescue from the Nineties, and I’m so completely happy to see it again.
A Cabin With Character
Inside, the driftwood theme reveals actual consideration to creative element. Even the backs of the seats are textured elegantly, however designed to not entice mud.
Rivian is dedicated to a vibe of upscale personalization. Loads of luxurious automobiles lately let you choose ambient lighting colours. However within the R1T, you don’t select inexperienced, orange, or purple. You select Glacier Fog, Pacific Sundown, or Twilight Path, named like inside home paints.
However the impact works. Maybe probably the most pleasant this-is-not-particularly-important characteristic is the cartoon graphics of the touchscreen interface, which present a playfulness you gained’t get in a Ford F-150 Lightning.
A Container Retailer’s Price of Storage
The R1T encompasses a 54-inch mattress that may be a good rectangular prism — there are not any obstructions to stop carrying plywood flat. It additionally options two customary family energy shops and a compressor nozzle, plus 4 helpful fold-away tie-down factors.
Beneath the mattress is a usable trunk area designed for a full-size spare for those who select one. The frunk (entrance trunk) is giant sufficient for a weekend’s price of baggage, with area beneath put aside for the charging wire.
There may be wasted area in each trendy pickup truck besides this one. Close to the junction the place the cab meets the mattress, there’s a roughly trapezoidal void enclosed within the bodywork. Rivian turned it right into a storage tunnel accessible by way of doorways from both facet — a superb characteristic I’m astonished nobody has constructed earlier than. This gear tunnel is sort of a truck trunk, separate from the mattress.
Bizarrely, there’s no technique to open it with the important thing fob. There’s no key fob. Rivian’s bank card key has no buttons, requiring you to open the gear tunnel from the touchscreen or buttons on the mattress rail. The touchscreen perform is especially irritating. To search out it, you faucet a truck-shaped icon (as a result of everybody is aware of the truck icon in a truck opens doorways), then choose an icon formed just like the door you need to open. The charging door is sort of the identical form, so you could have solely a 2-in-3 likelihood of getting this proper.
The mattress rail buttons are a greater choice, however different automakers put a button to open the car in your pocket. The most cost effective car on the market in America at the moment, the Nissan Versa S, comes with a key fob with a button that opens its trunk. This $100,000-plus truck doesn’t.
The worst Silicon Valley design treats all change as enchancment. In its quest to really feel contemporary and high-tech, Rivian has made key fobs worse.
A Implausible Driving Expertise in Each Mode
Most autos able to any off-roading have a drive mode or two that works very nicely and some which are unsatisfying. Within the R1T, all of them really feel nice.
The day-to-day mode Rivian calls “all-purpose” is crisp, with a medium suspension setting that Goldilocks would love. You would depart the truck in its default settings more often than not and revel in driving it.
Higher but, modifications felt like actual modifications. In so many trendy autos, drive modes are practically all the identical. However “Sport” right here makes you need to problem Porsches on observe day. “Preserve” stretches the vary (to 405 miles, Rivian claims) with out feeling disagreeable. A mid-Atlantic snowstorm let me take a look at it on unplowed roads, and the truck felt sure-footed.
I didn’t get the prospect to check the 4 off-road settings. I did modify the suspension, discovering “Agency” to be genuinely sporty whereas “Gentle” is nice for filth roads with none of that marshmallowy wallow many off-roaders get of their softest settings.
Steering was probably the most direct and crisp I’ve ever felt in a pickup. And, with a quicker 0-60 mph time than a number of Porsche 911 trim ranges, hammering the accelerator seems like going to warp. That’s utterly pointless — be at liberty to accept two motors as an alternative of three — however Rivian has confirmed its level. When you’re underway, this can be the best-riding truck on the street at the moment.
One observe for the old style: There is no such thing as a technique to flip off one-pedal driving within the R1T. Rivian’s one-pedal driving system is nice. However for those who favor to make use of two pedals on a regular basis, this truck will drive you to unlearn that.
Some Baffling Selections
The sentence above beginning with “when you’re underway,” does so for a purpose. As a result of earlier than you’re underway, the R1T is a little bit of a Silicon Valley mess.
Adjusting the mirrors? You’ll want to search out the precise touchscreen mirror to show that perform on. Then, two nondescript buttons on the steering wheel turn into mirror adjustment settings. That is on no account higher than having mirror adjustment buttons.
Adjusting the steering wheel place? Identical. Even beginning the automotive isn’t apparent — your secret is a card that have to be positioned within the telephone charging tray to start out the car. Even finances automobiles have a tendency to return with a key fob that may be anyplace within the automotive. Rivian’s system is much extra finicky.
Earlier than you drive a Rivian, a consultant teaches you find out how to use the essential controls and arms you a written cheat sheet lest you neglect.
That shouldn’t be essential.
What’s Incorrect Is Simple to Repair
The Rivian R1T is probably the most pleasant-driving pickup I’ve ever encountered. It’s filled with pleasant bits of persona and modern storage concepts.
It additionally falls sufferer to the worst excesses of present tech design. I can’t assist however surprise if, with a couple of years of person suggestions, the following version of this truck gained’t eliminate these and permit it to stay as much as its full potential.
A key fob with a couple of buttons on it might clear up all of this. Most automakers construct these even on economic system automobiles. If Rivian adopts that easy concept, this might simply be the perfect truck in the marketplace, although its worth will hold it out of attain for many.
Cox Automotive, the guardian firm of Kelley Blue Guide and Autotrader, is a minority investor in Rivian.
