Rivian Is Not Messing Around With Its Off-Road Tests of the R1T
Send it to the Arizona desert, then send it.
Those of us patiently waiting for the arrival of the Rivian R1T have something else to salivate over: some brief clips of it off-road testing in Arizona wherein the electric pickup definitely holds its own.
Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe posted a pair of clips over the past week where they're definitely not taking it easy on their test truck. The eerily quiet truck only leaves the sound of the rocks it travels over, but the point is—it gets over them.
The first obstacle shows just how rigid the R1T is as its travels over some lumpy depressions in a gravel road. Naturally, some of the R1T's wheels popped up in the air through this section, but the four drive wheels kept clawing it forwards anyway.
Once it was out of the bumps onto more level ground, naturally, the quad-motor electro-truck started speeding away from the cameraman. Sucker.
The other clip shows an R1T clawing its way up a steep, rocky, uneven hill—the kind of hill that loves to dent the underside of trucks up. The R1T just keeps going up to the top, though, and it's pretty fun to watch. It's not even on particularly gnarly off-road tires like many of the hype trucks du jour.
While there's always the temptation to look at videos like this and sneer "I've had worse!" like a grizzled old fart, what's reassuring is the fact that they're not babying it to avoid denting it up, spare the battery pack or what have you. It looks like they're doing what the rest of us want to do with it: have some fun off the pavement. Between these clips and posting footage of hooning an R1T around the dunes, though, we can't wait to test the R1T out ourselves.
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