Rivian R1S: First Drive Review

What is the Rivian 1S like to drive?

Rivian’s electric truck the r1t has been blowing people’s minds since it hit the market last year and now it’s time to finally see if it’s suv sibling the r1s can live up to that hype on the surface it sure looks like there’s not much between the new r1s suv and the r1t pick emote truck and if you look at the numbers well things look pretty close there too

Both tip the scales at around 7000 pounds and rely on 835 horsepower and 908 pound-feet of torque to move around resulting in a three second zero to sixty mile an hour sprint power comes from four electric motors one per corner though a less powerful and six thousand dollar cheaper dual motor flavor is coming from the driver’s seat you really wouldn’t notice

That this is the r1s suv and not the r1t at least not until you look in the rearview mirror and see an extra set of headrests sitting back there behind you this interior is more or less identical to the r1t which is a very good thing this is a really nice quality interior with open pour wood here nice big touchscreen big beautiful gauge cluster here as well and

Reasonably comfortable seats yes i am seated up high much like i would be in a truck but given this is a truck platform that’s totally fine off-road this car is remarkably impressive actually this is better off-road than the r1t believe it or not because it’s a little bit shorter get better approach and break over angles and we put this through the mud through

The rocks and it didn’t skip a beat you’ve got a variety of different drive modes to go through here and you can configure this whether you’re plowing through the fish sand or going through mud and rocks you’ve got a mode for just about everything that you’d ever want and it didn’t disappoint on the road you’ve also got a selection of modes to go through here

Too whether you want maximum suspension travel for a big bumpy road or even if you want maximum aerodynamics there’s a mode here called conserve which drops the suv down low to the ground and disables the rear motors to give you the maximum aerodynamics and the maximum performance out of your battery pack to go as far as you possibly can although we did find

That comes at a slight penalty to ride quality because the suv being so low made it a little bit jittery over the bumps but beyond that if you’re running in a normal suspension mode with the suspension on soft this is a very comfortable compliant suv to be in and really the kind of thing that you could do big miles in and you can do big miles in at least if you

Expect a big battery pack both the r1t and r1s will go over 300 miles on a charge with the larger battery pack with the suv having a couple mile advantage presumably thanks to aerodynamics the smaller pack drops the range to around 260 miles and again saves you about six thousand bucks with three rows of seating there’s room for age if you really want to push

It though i’d say six adults is the practical limit that third row actually has decent headroom and tolerable legroom but i surely wouldn’t want to spend 300 miles back there how much are you paying for that third row over the two row r1t the r1s comes out at five thousand dollars higher than a comparably equipped truck with a starting price of seventy three

Thousand five hundred and seventy five dollars including a one thousand seventy five dollar destination but you can bring that figure up to about a hundred k with the bigger battery pack quad motor setup and some other options so it is not a cheap ride but it is an impressive one and one that feels every bit the premium suv that it is it’s also yet another sign

That evs can be game changers even if you prioritize power and performance over those pesky environmental concerns

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Rivian R1S: First Drive Review By CNET Cars