Rivian R1T electric pickup truck slays rocks and dirt in new video – Roadshow [CNET]
We here at Roadshow have been stoked about the upcoming Rivian R1T since we first laid eyes on it at the Los Angeles Auto Show in 2018. Since then the company has had to delay its official launch until 2021 thanks to COVID-19, but that hasn’t stopped engineers from taking a prototype out to the desert in Arizona for some dirt shenanigans.
In the video the Rivian does some drifting on dirt, kicking up a fair amount of photo-ready dust. It’s impressive but it’s fairly easy to get anything to go all slidey on low-traction, flat surfaces. What’s really cool is the rock-crawling section. Here the R1T scrambles up and down a steep, rock-strewn hill with no difficulty. It’s tough to tell if the truck employs a differential locker or if it’s a combination of torque vectoring and brake traction control. Regardless, the result is the same. The truck handles the medium-size boulders like it ain’t no thing.