Rivian R1S hands-on driving impressions - The Verge

Rivian’s R1S SUV is a highly capable, expertly designed electric vehicle with an impressive software stack. But the biggest challenge for the company will be getting vehicles to actual customers.

It’s only been a few months since Rivian started (slowly) delivering the R1T pickup truck to customers, but the company isn’t wasting time launching its next adventure vehicle: the R1S SUV.

I recently spent the day with a few early production R1Ss at a Rivian media event and it came off as an impressively capable and useful family vehicle — which it should, considering it starts at $72,500 and quickly options up to $90,000. But Rivian is a brand new company that has yet to ramp up production on any of its cars. Its total target is just 25,000 vehicles a year, of which 10,000 will be Amazon delivery vans, so actually getting an R1S might be the biggest adventure of all.

The R1T and the R1S are more alike than different

From the front door forward, the R1S is the exact same truck as the R1T. The only differences, according to Rivian communications manager Shaheen Karimian, are a slight bit of additional silver trim on the outside, and the addition of a button on the wiper stalk to control the rear window wiper. The drivetrain and suspensions are the same, the 12.3-inch instrument cluster and 15.6- inch infotainment display are the same, the frunk is the same — you get it.

The most important shared piece between the R1T and R1T is Rivian’s built-from-scratch hardware and software architecture. Most car companies — with the notable exception of Tesla — operate much like Android and Windows hardware vendors: they buy finished components and subsystems from suppliers and assemble them into finished cars, with differentiating features and flourishes layered on top. But just as Dell and Samsung depend on Google and Microsoft for most software updates, most carmakers are at the mercy of suppliers to update the software in their cars — a dependency many traditional car companies have identified as an existential competitive threat. (You can listen to virtually any Decoder car CEO interview to understand how much they are all thinking about this.)

In fairness, I told them I would probably break something.

    Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge
  

But Rivian is a wholly new company, with none of those preexisting relationships or dependencies, and the ability to build a team with the required software expertise from the start. If a traditional automaker is roughly analogous to a Windows laptop maker, Rivian (and, yes, Tesla) is much more like Apple: in total control of hardware and software.

https://www.theverge.com/23195814/rivian-r1s-suv-ev-hands-on-impressions

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