Rivian impressions

Last year we decided to get serious about acquiring an electric truck to pull our house-on-wheels, so we put a deposit down on a Rivian R1T truck.

It is billed as an “adventure truck” which sounds right up our alley.  To be completely honest, at this point we’re looking for any electric vehicle that can tow our trailer, but since it appears like the Rivian will be available first, we’re quite happy to jump on board as soon as that happens.

Some details from the Rivian website:

• Starts at $69,000, although we will choose the largest (180 kWh) battery pack so we will be paying some amount more (TBD).  The federal tax rebate will help.
• Range is up to 400 miles, which will certainly be reduced when towing.
• Maximum towing of 11,000 pounds, plenty for our trailer and the stuff we have in it (and we’re planning to lighten up the stuff a bit more).
• All-wheel drive, quad motor system, OK to drive in a couple feet of water, up to 750 hp.  Not requirements for us, but it will be really nice to have more options for getting to trailheads.

We were driving through Illinois in August and noticed that our route was taking us close to the town of Normal, where Rivian is building their factory.  On the very-off-chance that we could see something interesting, we pulled into the parking lot and walked to the front door.  The sweetest, nicest security guard ever greeted us.  No, there are no tours available yet, they are still constructing the factory, hopefully soon though!  He explained this while smiling the whole time.  Hopefully we can come back when there is something for the public to see.

We did get something out of it – a photo of Howie in front of the Rivian sign, yay!

Not long after, we were excited to receive an invitation to a Rivian event in Atlanta, and although we hesitated because of the extra driving (and diesel gas usage) to get there from Tennessee, we decided we could not pass up this opportunity.

Hello Rivian!

Here’s a better photo, without us in the way:

We met a bunch of great Rivian folks, including many engineers who are designing and building the trucks.  James, an aerodynamics engineer, was happy to spend a few minutes with us brainstorming about ways to improve the profile of the truck + trailer combination.  For example, normally a cap on the back of the truck would make aerodynamics worse, but with the trailer attached it’s better to cap it.  He didn’t bat an eye at our suggestions of rear flaps on the trailer and a solar-panel-as-air-deflector on the top of the truck cap to reduce drag.  Sure would be neat if we could model different designs!  We’ll see where these ideas take us.

Checking out the driver’s seat:

I don’t know much about wheels and tires, but these seem ready for adventure:

Look Ma, no engine under the hood!

We will be ordering the 180 kWh battery pack with the hope that we won’t be completely constrained by our driving range while towing.  Rivian claims the range will drop to 50% (~200 miles instead of 400), which would be workable for initial testing.  At least we think so… we will be figuring out the charger network and where we can actually go.  Watch for future adventures as we attempt to make this work!

Each battery pack is 1600 pounds, so that’s a significant consideration if we were to think about putting an additional entire pack in Howie to connect to the truck for extra range.  I’ve heard mention of a weight/range curve, something I need to research and understand.

Checking out the battery location:

We talked with a software engineer who told us that the vehicle performance will be optimized based on our driving habits and the vehicle data will get uploaded into the Cloud.  That is really good to keep in mind when we start running comparison tests.  It’s not so obvious how to perform independent tests when the test subject modifies itself based on what you are doing.

We asked about the availability of this data for customer use, and that is not something they could promise.  Even a basic set (obviously nothing proprietary) would be nice to have.  The truck will have an OBDII port but someone will need to write an app to decode it (like the LeafSpy).  Hmm, perhaps another new skill I could learn…

John contemplating whether he might fit in the gear tube:

We mentioned the challenge of using a charging station while towing, and they thought it will be a good idea to push for pull-through charging stations.  Yes indeed, this is going to be a big challenge in our future, I can tell already.

I think we met some of the people on the photo boards – all friendly and helpful folks!

“Not the easy way.  The right way.”  We totally relate.

RJ Scaringe is the founder of the company, a guy with a vision of the future of electric adventure trucks.  We hung out long enough that the line to meet him became manageable and we were able to thank him for everything he has done so far.  Good start RJ, now please help us with the next step in making our all-electric project a reality!

Another interesting angle is that Rivian is partnering with climber extraordinaire Alex Honnold.  He runs the Honnold Foundation with the goal to “reduce environmental impact and address inequality by supporting solar energy initiatives worldwide”.  The partnership with Rivian appears to demonstrate each’s commitment to adventure as well as cleaner transportation to/from those adventures.  Alex wrote some thoughts in a Facebook post that I found helpful, especially looking to a future where we’re actually driving an EV truck.

Rivian sent us a poster so we put it on our fridge to remind us of what might be in our future… we can certainly hope:

Until then, I follow the Rivian Chat forum to see what news might be available.

Hopefully I will have a lot more Rivian information and data to write about in future posts!