Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “REAL answers from a Rivian R1T owner”.
A portion of this video is sponsored by movement from our first rivian review. When we had the loner. There were a lot of questions there and a lot of questions. I’Ve had on social media about the truck about the company how it performs.
So i tried to take most of those questions that i saw used to more popular ones, condense them all into one video and try to give you guys everything that you want to know about the rivien r1t from an owner, and so the general overview here is. First, i absolutely love the truck. It is not perfect. There are some things i would wish could be fixed about. It need to be fixed about it, which i will talk about, but overall it has been absolutely incredible.
It’S quirky, it’s amazing. It’S probably the most practical family car i have ever had, but that being said, here’s everything that you need to know about the ruby and r1t. It was a really seamless process. Actually, so rivien assigns you a guide, it’s like a person who walks you through uh.
The delivery process, when your name gets called and you’re ready to pick up your car. I took mine in costa, mesa, california, the delivery staff. There was incredible, it was easy they walked me through.
The car gave me a tour. I had to use everything and they offered to drive around with me. I didn’t feel rushed by the time i drove the truck away.
I feel like i was an expert on it and the folks in the costa mesa delivery center made that really easy. It’S something that a new company who’s not delivering in high volumes uh can offer it’s a very similar experience. I got actually in the early days of tesla. Annoying is a strong word here, um, so obviously amazon being heavily invested in arubian uh. It is using alexa to function and do all of its things. Uh, and actually this is the best automotive version of alexa that i’ve tested, but things like text messaging, for example, will still sometimes run through the alexa apps.
If i send a message to my wife, it’ll show up in her alexa app, instead of as an sms. It’S a bit weird there i’m expecting that to get improved, but certainly uh the way tesla handles text and handles voice. I think they do a really nice job there, i’m not generally concerned about reliability, so i have a service center local about 15 minutes away. So that makes my life a lot easier.
Rivien has said anywhere that they sell a truck. They will very least have mobile service able to come, take care of it. If that was a question, if the question was sort of more phrased for a new company, am i concerned that if something happens then the company won’t be there. I guess it’s a concern, but i’m not that worried about it.
Electric cars have less parts than internal combustion. Cars. Things can certainly still break um, but no i’m not generally worried about reliability. So there are some things that i would change about it uh.
So the truck gets really high uh with his air suspension, and it’s awesome. I love it. I like being able to see things uh, you know really high on the road. My wife loves driving this thing.
She loves she’s, a little lady but loves being able to see over all the other cars, but because she’s so little she’s a hard time climbing it. My kids have a hard time climbing in as well. I would have loved to have had running boards. Uh be an option on here, and so that being said, it’s also tough to climb into the bed, got to put down one of the gear tunnel sides and then hop in or kind of really lower the truck and then uh get in.
So i wish there was a step like a lot of other uh trucks. Have there as well and also having said that, i wish there was a way to control the air suspension from the bed. If i wanted to lower it, for example, to get in easier only way to lower the truck is through the center screen, i also wish speaking of center screen uh that it would raise and lower based on geolocation uh. The way the model s and model x do now i’m hopeful that that will come.
So i pull into my garage it’ll lower itself to make it easier to get in and out it’s not there yet uh. I wish it had a power up tailgate, something that a lot of other trucks like the ford lightning have, and the last thing that i wish it had right now. Uh was an opening to open the tailgate on both sides right now, it’s just on the left. So if you’re, on the right hand side you got to walk around, none of these are giant things at all.
They are little things uh that i wish the truck off uh. I would also love when i put my turn signal on to have the cameras on the side show up, so i can see my blind spots better. I’D also love it to know when i’m parking to sort of automatically pull up the front-facing camera. So i can see that, instead of having to do it manually, actually yesterday uh the truck got its first bath and because i have the dark interior, it doesn’t show that much uh, which has been awesome.
My other cars have had light or white interior or the tassels i’ve had and those have been trickier to keep clean. I still don’t let them eat in the car yet just because it makes me nervous and it’s new eventually i’ll have to relax that rule. We’Ve got a road trip coming up to yosemite, actually we’re all going to kind of pile in and drive the five six hours so able to eat in there. It’S probably a better question for after we’ve done sort of a lot more driving in it uh, but keeping it clean has been the same as any other car, so driver plus is rivien’s.
Let’S call it: what is it it’s their version of autopilot, it’s their very semi, uh autonomous driving. Certainly, you have to be very alert with it. It works on pre-mapped highways, it doesn’t work on city streets. You can’t turn it on anywhere, but where it does work, it works pretty.
Well, i equate it to autopilot from like a couple years ago. It’S gon na keep you in your lane. It’S gon na make the turns with you. It’S not gon na change lanes.
For you, it’s not gon na do any navigate on highways, where it’s not gon na change intersections for you any of that at least yet, maybe it will in the future uh, but as far as sort of just adaptive, advanced cruise control, uh and lane keep assist It does those things very, very well uh and i imagine it’s going to get better as time improves. I’M also very impressed with the car visualization that it’s had so where you can see certain trucks in front of you and cars in front of you. It’Ll show you know, bicycles and people again reminiscent of tesla, auto pilot in the early days as far as what it shows and how it performs. But tesla is so far ahead in sort of that area that even to have a new company, that’s sort of the same as a few years ago, i think, is still amongst the best in the business, so it works. Well, it works reliably. I used it a lot on about a you know: 70 mile drive to san diego uh, and it was close to perfect, so the app is beautiful. Looking it doesn’t do that much uh, for example. I can’t control charging on it and by that i can’t say i want to charge a little more today.
I want to go from 75 to 85 from 85 to 100. I can’t control any of that using the app. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give me the ability to control like windows or even to like honk the horn right now to find it it’s a very paired down uh app, but you know it doesn’t work. You can see the things right here that it does and what’s in there does work very well whether or not the rivian’s for you or not for you, you want to look good when you are in your car.
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It also has blind spot monitoring as well. So if you’re worried about a blind spot, which i haven’t seen yet at all it’ll sort of light up and give you an audible, ding uh, if you’re trying to change, lanes and somebody’s there, but at least for me and my wife again, who’s who’s littler visibility Has been really good, uh is equality better than tesla. There’S a lot of comparisons. I think, with tesla with any new ev makers – and i don’t think any new ev company, lucid rivien and the rest that have come would exist without tesla uh, but teslas have not been perfect.
I’M somebody who’s owned, three of them and driven them for eight years. So i think the question probably is build quality um. For me, the build quality has been pretty good. It hasn’t been perfect, there’s some slight panel misalignments, but nothing major. Unless you were looking for it.
The paint’s got a little bit of orange peel on it. I’Ll probably do some paint correction, but as far as how the panels are put together and sort of things inside, i haven’t noticed any squeaks or rattles or things that aren’t built properly at all so better than tesla. I can’t say i think every tesla is unique. Sometimes they are built incredibly imperfect, sometimes, like i had with my model 3, my bumper’s not attached. I think it’s going to be the luck of the draw and probably with rivien too it’s the luck of the draw. But my review is very, very well built and i can’t speak to how maybe your tesla experience has been. So this is awesome, being sort of a new modern eevee car gets over their updates. So, for example, we had our loaner. We did not have the ability to use homelink to control the garage doors. We’Ve been added that over the air and it works incredible. I talked about initial review how the front and rear camera quality was not great at all, which is weird because the 360 camera quality was really good.
Ruby and just added over there update that improved the quality drastically of the rear camera the front one uh, still not yet they’ve added things like being able to pre-condition the battery on your way to fast charger, which is awesome and there’s been a lot of other Sort of tweaks that have come along the way uh, i also just got sand mode as well. So it’s constantly improving. I’Ve only had the car for for a couple weeks, and i’ve already had one software update, so hopefully that regular update schedule continues. So i think a lot of people are excited about the r1s. I think i still would have gotten the truck, mostly because my wife, i think, is going to get the r1s. She really fell in love with how the truck drove how it performed the technology that went in it that she was set on the r1s. We reserved it a long time ago when i reserved the r1t, so i don’t regret it at all.
I don’t think i would have waited, but i know a lot of people are really excited for the r1s. I can certainly see why. So i don’t know if this question is like how quiet is it while i’m driving or how quiet is it? You know in general, when you’re inside of it it’s an eevee, it doesn’t make any engine noise uh.
I do have some with noise that comes in when i’m going. You know 75 80 on the freeway uh, it’s nothing worse or really any better than what i saw with tesla, but it’s a big car and you don’t have engine noise that sort of drown that out. You are going to hear things.
I’Ve heard some people, though, with rivens that have had issues with sort of smaller windows as well triangle windows uh by the mirror there are some windows can come in. I haven’t had that. I know quinn uh did for the most part it’s as quiet as any other evo driven, so i have never driven a truck really before this. First time i drove a pickup truck was actually when we did uh our r1 tv with the loner. So i consider myself to be a good driver. I do not consider myself to be the best parker. This has been something that i am still struggling with, trying to get it into spots. Unfortunately, 360 cameras are there and i’m getting better and probably with practice, i’ll become a much better parker. But if you are an excellent parker and you can park without cameras, you’ll have no trouble.
Uh parking this at all. I’M just it’s not my strong point yet so. Charging, i think, is a big concern for a lot of people, especially those that are getting their first ev, so i haven’t taken it yet on a road trip.
I did a 200 mile round trip about there to san diego we’re taking it to big bear in a few weeks and then we’re going to do our longest trip, which i think is about 400 miles each way to yosemite. I don’t have much worry about charging the in-dash navigation system. Much like teslas will route you to chargers and tell you how long you have to stop to charge, but i think one area where tesla’s got a huge advantage is the superchargers.
Now, certainly the line is going to be long. They don’t always work. I think they work with more reliability than sort of the third party stations that are available for non-tesla cars. Now rivien does have their own charging network. That’S coming online, very slowly. I’Ve had a lot of good luck, though.
Charging electrify america, my experience with them, has been very very positive. Yours might be different, i think the big rule with evs, maybe i’m getting off topic uh. If you have a place to charge at home, i wouldn’t worry about it. Um. The road trip situation for me takes a little bit more planning, but not something, i’m concerned about. Is it worth buying after the price increase, so ruvian like pretty much every other car maker uh raised their prices a few months ago? I think the way they went about it pissed a lot of people off, including me, but prices went up.
You know, i think, anywhere from 12 to upwards of 16 000, so they went up quite a bit. I love this truck and i can’t say whether it’s worth it, i don’t know your fanduel situation, but i’ve loved everything about this car, how it performs how it drives the tech in it. I wouldn’t have any reservations paying the increased price for, especially when you consider how much cars are costing nowadays, but that is a really a very subjective question. So i have a lot of things that i love about the r1t, the first one’s. Probably, how much my kids love it um, i’m excited to do a bunch of you know, camping with it to just have picnics with the kids in the back.
But the thing that’s surprised me most about it has turned into my favorite uh is how quick the ui is, and a lot of people are very easy to dismiss how important that is, but coming from a lucid air where the ui is relatively slow, it sort Of limits, everything that you can do it takes away from the enjoyment everything about this car is crazy, fast from tapping on the screen to when things changed, pinching and zooming. I’M really impressed with how quick uh the ui is. So i did some digging, so the car is running on unreal engine, but using software from android automotive.
So i think the combination of those two things have made it a very, very fast, really elegant experience. Obviously, a lot of questions about the ravine, r1t new company new product, a lot of things people want to know so hopefully i answered the biggest ones that you guys had, but the moral is. I love the truck. I don’t regret getting the truck.
I am happy every day to get into it, my wife, who is not a truck person at all, loves it as well. I’Ve tried to answer questions from people who come up to me want to know what it is. Everybody who looks at it sees it and then can drive it. I think, can appreciate what rivien has done and i think the future for the company is really bright.
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