The Rivian R1T Is the Sports-Car Driver's Off-Roader

 The Rivian R1T Is the Sports-Car Driver's Off-Roader

Don’t think of Rivian as a truck company. Sure, the brand’s first production vehicle, the R1T you see here, is a four-door pickup truck. And next to launch will be the R1S, a three-row SUV based on the R1T. And then there’s the cartoonish RPV, an electric delivery van with up to 900 cubic feet of cargo space. Amazon hopes to have 100,000 of these rigs in service by 2030. The Rivian R1T Is the Sports-Car Driver's Off-Roader

Trucks, all of them. But when founder RJ Scaringe launched his company—in 2009, in his twenties, having just finished engineering school—his dream was to build a mid-engine hybrid sports car. And if you want to understand Rivian, you have to think of it as a sports-car company. The Rivian R1T Is the Sports-Car Driver's Off-Roader

The evidence sits snug on the centerline of the R1T’s chassis: four electric motors, one driving each wheel. The Rivian is the first mass-produced four-motor EV—even Tesla’s top-tier Model S Plaid has just one motor for the front axle. The Rivian R1T Is the Sports-Car Driver's Off-Roader

With each wheel driven independently, the Rivian can do legit torque vectoring, with all the instant adjustability and response that make electric motors so tantalizing. It’s what you’d build if your drivetrain department were run by club racers and rally hoons. It’s also a great way to put immense power to the ground. Right now Rivian offers one drivetrain setup: 415 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque at the front axle, plus 420 hp and 495 lb-ft at the rear. 

Factor in the reduction gearing inside each motor (a roughly 12:1 ratio), and that comes out to well over 10,000 lb-ft of torque at the tires, good for a claimed 3.0-second 0–60 time and a governed top speed of 110 mph. The 135-kWh battery provides an EPA-estimated 314 miles of range, and Rivian says the rig can tow up to 11,000 pounds.

So The Rivian R1T Is the Sports-Car Driver's Off-Roader

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