Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Rivian R1S and the future of Rivian!”.
A portion of this video is sponsored by yuffie clean, so for the past, like decade or so, the electric car market was Tesla and everybody else, but it’s changing. Now you have electric cars from established manufacturers and newcomers, so obviously Tesla still uh, but lucid and rivian, and for the past six months I have been driving a rivian r110. I put over 12 000 miles uh on that truck loving. That car was not surprising. What was surprising to me was that my wife, who really had no Affinity whatsoever for any electric cars, was taking that truck and driving it more often she was driving her Honda Odyssey and she drove it so much and loved it. So much that, when my reservation I had made years ago for the r1s came up, she said I want that, so we are now a fully electric all rivian family. I want to talk about the pros.
The cons, uh things that we’ve liked things I wish could be improved and I’ll talk a little bit more also about why we decided to not go Tesla, at least for these car purchases. I want to start off by just like a broad review and discussion, so these are my two cars and from the front they look exactly the same because they pretty much are exactly the same from the B pillar forward. Uh both are launch editions and both are conveniently in launch green, because that what was available instead of waiting for a custom build we’re able to get cars. What our number was called that were already available and they happen to be the same color. I don’t love having two cards in color, but I do love the look of the launch green so broadly about rivian. I was super concerned about build quality.
My VIN on my truck was like 1500s and the VIN on my wife’s r1s is like 800 or so so. Build quality was a gigantic concern, especially coming from through Teslas I’m very attuned uh to to build quality. I was super impressed.
I was the build quality. First of the truck, I didn’t have any huge panel gaps. Things were installed well, when I do the push test, there was any creaks or rattles uh.
Now, after 12 000 miles in six months, the cars held up really well. In fact, I just made my first service appointment to only rotate the tires. Nothing else uh needs to get done. I was impressed with how they handled uh the recall how quick and efficient that process was. I’Ve been incredibly impressed with the speed and iteration of the software updates. It’S a very consistent one. A month when new features are constantly getting added.
No carplay and Android. Auto is still annoying, but seeing things improve has been awesome. Uh rivian on the software front, didn’t try to cram a bunch of stuff into their system and said they paired it down and what they put in.
There worked really well, and they add features when they appeared to be ready to go so that I’ve really liked the speed of the UI is quick. All of that stuff does not scream first car from a new company and that, if you ever worry about sort of switching to a company, that’s unproven that you can put those fears, at least that part of those fears. Um to rest. We have three kids uh, which is why my wife was really excited out the SUV and in the second row, of both the cars. There are some things that I wish would be improved. First, there’s no cup holders anywhere in the second row and for kids that are constantly carrying water balls around with them. That is a problem. Now you can put down the middle seat.
You get two cup holders there, but if you’re carrying three kids there is no spot for that. So certainly I wish there was an option, or at least an aftermarket option that worked uh for rivian to uh, to sort out. Aside from that, I don’t really have that many uh complaints, my wife’s SUV, the build quality was pretty outstanding.
We do have some trim issues that have to be fixed, there’s a little bit of a gap on the part of the clamshell design that comes out on the very bottom you can see here, so that has to go in to get fixed those things aside, the Build quality has been outstanding, but I do want to see how they fix it before. I can finally say that that was perfect as well, and because the r1s is my wife’s car and she’s, typically driving all three kids around it gets dirty. Her last car was a five-year-old Honda Odyssey had a vacuum built in a vacuum that we use all the time to clean up. Some Myriad combination of Cheerios, sometimes fruit, snacks and other gross scenes that get stomped into the seats and carpet. But the r1s does not have a vacuum, but fortunately there’s a very easy solution enter the yuffie Clean Home, vac, H20 and yuffie is a name you know and trust they are owned by anchor.
So it’s a reputation that has been around and not going anywhere. This thing serves the purpose that it’s meant to better than almost any other product that I’ve used, but whether you have kids or not, you look at the corners of your car seats, there’s, probably a bunch of gross things in there. I’M trying to get a vacuum to vacuum. That stuff out is hard and yuffie has you covered for that? It’S obviously has enough suction power to clean up whatever you want, and it’s going to give you 30 minutes of run time and it really compact package, which should be plenty of time to clean up whatever is happening in your car and should you you need to Charge it say that 30 minutes isn’t enough for you uh, because yuffie is an anchor company they’re, giving you an anchor charger.
You could charge this thing fully and they give you multiple attachments for anything that could happen. It all stores together and it really kind of small and convenient storage bag. It’S also awesome for cleaning carpets and I put rubber mats in my car because gross things happen um, but if you’ve got carpets in your car, this has you covered. If you also have dark Corners LED lights that are built in, so you can see what you are vacuuming. It is really light convenient to store. It doesn’t take up much space if you want to keep this thing in your car at all times.
If you want to keep your car clean, you have car seats, you want to keep clean, your nooks and crannies are gross, or maybe you are just not the cleanest individual and I’m not judging you check out the yuffie clean, homevag, H20 I’ll, put a link to It down below the question one I’ve gotten from a lot of people and I’ve been out and about is why not Tesla they’re the biggest name in electrics, one of the biggest names in the whole Automotive world? I had a few reasons: uh, the big one was. I had driven a Tesla for eight years. My original electric car was an OG Model S. Then I went to a model X and then I had a model 3.. They were awesome. I loved every one of them, but I did want to look at something different for the next few years.
I just want to drive something that wasn’t a Tesla, because I had been driving a Tesla for eight years. That was a big reason why I decided to go for the r1t uh over, say a Model S or another model X. The question from my wife was why we decided to go r1s over a model X. At the time we made the reservation for the r1s.
There was a gigantic price difference. We reserved the r1s at 78 000 and, at that same time, a Long Range model X was 95 000, so that was a giant gigantic difference. My wife liked my model actually did not like the doors very much so an ex for her wasn’t really an option. She knew she wanted to go electric and there was nothing else that was on the horizon, so it was really just Arabian. Those two things aside. I really like having a 360 camera.
I think it’s awesome to have it’s not necessary. Not every driver needs one, but it always kind of bugged. My mind how the Tesla can have so many cameras, but still not offered a 360 camera view. I know something that she felt very strongly about. She wanted to have in her next car, so I think most people when they think of ravian, obviously thinking of maybe RJ the CEO and founder, but thinking of the r1t or the r1s, which makes sense but they’re also working on other things, mainly new electric Amazon Delivery van may not know that actually back in 2019, rivian received around 700 million from Amazon to partner and make about a hundred thousand custom delivery Vans and uh it’s actually here I got a chance. Take a look at one – and I thought I’d say this, but it’s a pretty nice delivery man I was excited to take a look at it and it looked really well and I’m not an Amazon driver.
I don’t know the pitfalls of delivering a lot of packages, but it worked pretty well, you know 100 custom interior. They use screens that are really similar and interface similar to the truck and the SUV integrated with the Amazon App too it sort of help with navigation. 360 cameras were on board, you got traffic alerts and pedestrian alerts and wireless charging built in a cool thing. I guess for drivers too, when you put it in park, it actually opens the hatch door to get to the packages automatically, which I guess is important for that line of work and there’s just a lot of space for a package in the pack.
The main goal is for Amazon to actually go fully. Electric uh by 2040, I think, is rivian Vans are a huge step in doing that. This also kind of got me excited for the possibility of fully electric Adventure van in the future. There’S nothing official from rivian on this, so who knows if it’ll ever happen, but I do think with this platform I probably make a lot of sense and like overall, I think, makes me excited for what’s next from Meridian.
You know the R2 platform, like everything Automotive has been delayed, probably here’s something by 2025 – I imagine it’ll probably be much later in that those will be lower cost SUVs and probably a truck that’ll qualify for a lot of attack incentives. The viridians for me have certainly not been perfect. I understand people are nervous about buying a truck or an SUV from a new company that may or may not be here in a few years, but as somebody who now has put their money where their mouth is and owns two of them, I’m really happy with Them and I think if you are a Tesla fanatic, you already know that that’s what you want to drive, and that is awesome.
You have that option. But if you are open-minded want something, that’s electric and a bit different. I think review is like a really nice job of sort of filling that market they’re, the first electric truck uh on the market, they’re one of the first electric three-row SUVs aside from the model X, they are Paving a brand new path.
I think it’s a path that has a lot of appeal to a lot of people if you are in the market and the price of those cars does not scare you off, and if you owe it yourself to look at a review and just be prepared. There’S a long long wait to pick up one of these cars for yourself, .