Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Rivian R1S Is… The Best SUV Ever?”.
The best SUV that you can buy right now just happens to be Electric. Okay, that’s probably that’s a pretty controversial statement, let’s, let’s, let’s zoom out a little bit with uh, maybe something we can all agree on like electric cars are really expensive right now, that’s just a fact. I think we can all be on the same page about like there are basically no really really good, but also really really cheap electric cars, but that’s not for a lack of trying like they all know that that would kill like a twenty thousand dollar Tesla would Do amazing people would love to buy that? That’S just not something that’s possible with the prices and the The Way businesses work right now. So when I start just with the best SUV that you can buy happens to be electric, that’s actually a strategy.
Let’S zoom out a little bit so gas cars have been evolving, as you know, they’ve been maturing for years and years, and then now this suddenly very new and very expensive technology comes along. That is an electric drivetrain with a huge battery, and so, if you’re a company, that’s going to add it to your car, it will become a more expensive car. So if you’re a car company, knowing that you want to start making electric vehicles, you have a very specific choice to make, and we get to like follow this in real time and see them all.
Try to do this and that choice is. Do you want to compete at the highest end to be the best possible product, or do you want to compete at the lowest end on price and, of course, business? 101? If you’ve looked at these graphs long enough, you can understand that it just makes more business sense to try now, when the technology is expensive to compete on the highest End by just trying to make the best overall thing a no-brainer, better product. And then you know in the future, when, hopefully, the price of the tech gets lower, we can also get those that are competing on price. That’S why you’re seeing cars that are expensive and electric and not a lot of cheap electric cars? I mean there are some but they’re more expensive than their gas counterparts, so they don’t really make sense. So I guess then that brings us to the question: is the rivion r1s the best SUV in the world? Is it the best one you can buy? Well, it makes a pretty compelling case and I think it’s really good. So if you’ve heard me talk about the truck before the rivien r1t, well then the name r1s makes a lot of sense, because the front half is also R1.
It’S basically the same, but the back half it trades, the truck bed and the gear tunnel for a third row and all the benefits that come with a third row. Suv form factor so literally like if one of these pulled up behind you from this angle, you could not tell if that was the truck or the SUV that just pulled up behind you, because it’s identical and two come to the side, and you see the differences. Now I’ve been driving this brand new Limestone colored r1s, with the dark all-terrain wheels for about a week. Now it’s been really solid and I’m not even going to highlight the front stuff, because it’s basically the same.
If you’ve seen the video go back and watch the r1t video, it’s the same truck, it’s the same interior, not a lot interesting here. So let’s just do the part, that’s different now. So let’s take a look at the new uh and slightly improved interior. I’M in the second row right now: it’s not as gigantic of a second row as like a Escalade or something gigantic like that, but in a lot of its competition, a lot of other three row, SUVs perfectly reasonable and then behind me is the two seats of This seven seater, which is smaller, it’s it’s better for kids. I wouldn’t want to be back there for a road trip, but it’s fine. It’S comfortable, you’ve got three kids. This is the type of thing in the US. You see a lot of and they’ve made a lot of subtle improvements, even since the r1t that I first checked out.
Obviously you’ve got this huge glass roof up here at the top. There are slightly improved, better speakers, so the Meridian sound system that was in the previous one was fine, actually was really good. These, I imagine, are in roughly the same locations around the cabin, but they sound way better and then still material choices are great and there are events everywhere, really solid, builds, nothing’s, creaking or scratching or squeaking, or anything like that. This is this is nice, but of course, since it’s three rows, you want to know how to get back to the third row.
So so, let’s do that. So there’s a nice little button on the shoulder of the seat. You press that it slides It Forward on these rails and you can just pop right back here into the back seat. So look as predicted, not a ton of leg room. That’S the seat right there, but you do have the vents back here. You also do have additional sunroof behind this little pillar here, which feels pretty nice, and you still have the entire trunk behind you. Spacious, Airy at the light interior color helps, of course, but yeah.
That’S the third row you didn’t get with the r1t got a little cup holder back here. There’S a speaker over here, the vents that you can point at yourself and, of course, on the other side same deal. But I do want to show you the trunk space because I think that’s what’s the most important, actually impressive. So of course coming around to the back, you still have that distinctive light bar across you still have the blinkers on either side.
But now, if you want to open this lift gate here, it automatically will pop open, like that, which kind of reminds me, I think a Jeep Wagoneer or something does this, but you’ve got this sort of split gate. The top half opens the bottom. Half stays closed.
So if you’ve got stuff sort of uh rolling around in here, it’s protected it’ll stay in then this button right here will pop this section down, and it’s got this little clever mechanism here that creates this sort of flat surface as it slides open. So now you can slide things in here and if you even want you can use these locking and unlocking bits here that can slide around lock into place and then tie things down to the other side. So if you’ve got something, that’s actually going to stick out the back and you don’t have enough room that can help you out now I mentioned there’s no gear tonal, but they even kept things like what you find in the truck bed, which is 1500 watts of Power – and you also have your air compressor back here, so all that’s still good.
You still get to keep it. There’S also this giant subwoofer on the other side, but of course, if this is going to be the best thriller SUV, it’s got to do better than this right I mean all the seats are up. That’S fine for groceries.
I guess, but you already know it’s electric. So that means there’s even more space where there wouldn’t be a gas tank. That’S your first aid kit.
This is, I believe, a charging kit or Tire compressor, yep, air compressor and then even more sub trunk space, but just go ahead and pull this up. Real quick and you’ll find an even more gigantic area underneath where you could put a spare if you had one, but you don’t so you just have a ton more space where you put groceries that won’t slide around, and all of that is closable and hideable. Under this flat surface, but I do think it’s time to put the seats down just so you can see how ridiculous it gets when you put all that space down.
Actually, this is kind of a sweet setup for me. If I don’t have all the seats needed at once, this is a sort of a giant flat area where you can fit a ton of stuff I’ll try to put numbers on the screen if there are any available to sort of contextualize how much that is, and Then, of course, I can’t reach from back here, but you’ve got the buttons to pop the last two all the way down. I don’t know why the headrests don’t go down, but when they do go down it’s just this gigantic massive amount of space. You could fit a bike or two back here and still have the front seats. It’S it’s pretty sick, so does having enough space for a mattress folded down, make it the best SUV in the world. Not by itself.
No, I mean the sub trunk. Space is great. You also can’t forget about the front trunk which the r1t also had, and all the power tool stuff and all the space and the green roof and oh yeah, and then you got ta drive it of course, spoiler alert. This one’s also really fun to drive, which is probably not a shock to anyone who knew anything about the r1t, because, yes, this one is also a quad motor 800 horsepower missile in a straight line.
It is absurd. It has no right being this fast. Being seven thousand Pounds, but it is so it is that fun again now the difference with this in the r1t is this: one is a little bit of a shorter wheelbase, which means it does actually feel a little bit more Nimble. It does like when I corner or when I turn around on like a tight Road like this, it does have a smaller overall turning radius, which is great um. It also means if you’re off-roading, you have a better break over angle.
All these things, like most people, will not use 75 of the capabilities of this vehicle. But if you do, uh that’ll be really good to know, but again, just like in regular driving. Okay, I’m gon na be in all-purpose mode, because that’s the typical Mo you’ll drive around in this thing and uh it drives like as good as any other SUV.
You could possibly imagine meaning soft suspension check, firm acceleration if you want it, but very relaxed and drivable all the rest of the time check. Regen great stability control great no problems here. This is It’s I I couldn’t expect much more, but now you can go into sport mode, because, if you’re going to spend a lot of money – and you want it to be the best overall product – you can hear the air suspension literally lowering it as I go Into the lowest overall setting and now the firmest most responsive mode, and it should be able to do both right if it’s going to be a super expensive best overall product, it should be able to do both, and this is maybe the only place that I could Possibly see anyone complaining, which is that it’s not the sportiest thing in the world, it actually does drive a little bit looser than the r1t, which is interesting.
This feels like a suspension thing, but a lot of the accelerations and decelerations and the way its sways a little bit back and forward and going around turns, I feel a little bit extra swaying where I didn’t expect it. You could argue that that’s a weakness of this particular vehicle sure, but in literally 99 of the cases, especially with 99 of the drivers, nobody’s uh actually ever going to notice. So I’ve been really really impressed and just having a lot of fun with it.
I actually find I find it fine to just be in all-purpose mode most of the time. I also don’t have that much off-roading in my daily commute or my normal use of this vehicle. So that’s also fine, but if I did, I would have off-road mode snow. Mode’S cool to have uh, of course, if I was Towing something I could pull that off too. The only thing I really tow is a camera rig, so I wouldn’t get this. If I was towing a whole ton of weight, you should watch Jerry everything’s video, where he actually did test out how well it would tow.
Actually, he had an r1t for that video, but I wouldn’t get it for that either, but this just really fits the uh that is Nimble. This just fits the. It fits the adventure vehicle Mantra. It really feels like it matches that description, Adventure vehicle. So it’s like all right Marquez if you’re gon na call the best. What is it competing against? Well, if you’re just going straight six row, SUV, there’s a lot of them out there and America loves these things, they’re the Toyota Highlanders or the.
I think. That’S a Honda Pilot right there, that’s a three row, lots of things that will all be cheaper than this dramatically cheaper than this one. I think even the Escalade, the Cadillac Escalade will be cheaper than this rivian r1s. But what this rivian r1s does is it’s able to offer all of the things that you want out of the vehicle like this and doesn’t really skimp? So some of those might be really comfortable and well built, but they won’t be as high tech or they might be really high tech and well built, but they won’t be as fast. You see what I mean now. This is the electric one too.
So it’s going to be the quietest, it’s going to be the most responsive, the most efficient it’s going to have the most space and those are all benefits kind of over all of the other six seven seat SUVs. So I think if the mission is just like make a great thing: that’s just the most fun for the people who don’t really have a budget and just want to go crazy and have the coolest best thing uh. I don’t think that there’s much else that I would take over this one like if you just pressed a button, then I had three kids and I had to daily Drive something that could you know, go get groceries, take them all to school and just have a Fun time in otherwise this would be uh. This would be pretty good now.
The question for everyone else is like okay: when is this experience? When is the electric vehicle experience? That’S actually fun and good going to come down in price, and that’s just a tech and a Development question keep in mind. This company also has to spend money on building a charging Network and all the other things they’re doing with the delivery Vans. I keep seeing the rivian delivery vans on the road all the time because there’s an Amazon Warehouse near here so I feel, like I see one like every single day, but you know that’s just one company rivian’s doing stuff Tesla’s doing stuff a bunch of other Rock Solid companies that have been making cars for a long time are all starting to make EVs and develop them and spend money and lower the price slowly, but we’ll eventually get there. I actually talked to the CEO of rivian RJ on my podcast this week, I’ll link it below.
If you want to listen to that. But we talked about the R2 platform and what that’s designed to do to be a lower priced version of this same experience. And if they’re able to accomplish that in as short as a year from now we’re already moving in the right direction, so look I really like this thing uh, whether it’s the best SUV ever or not. You know that’ll be up for debate.
I I really like it. I’Ve had a lot. I think people just have fun with it in general, that’s pretty obvious, but I am really impressed with this first effort from this particular company and I’m hoping they’re able to continue because r1t and r1s really set the tone for what we can expect from rivian in The future – and hopefully we get a bunch of other cool EVS following in those footsteps and lowering and price sometime soon. Please, okay! That’S been it thanks for watching if you want to watch the the podcast with with RJ or even uh watch the autofocus videos that I make on all kinds of other thoughts on cars I’ll leave, both those links below.
If you want to check them out and I’ll catch y’all in the next one see you over there, peace .