12-Month review: I can't recommend the R1S for most people

[SwampNut]

Yes, off-road it shines at slow speed, but my 3600 vin is not quiet on washboard roads...feels like there's no suspension at all over anything but gravel.

Weird. Mine is plush at any speed. Coming from camp into town I just cruise at low speeds and there's just zero noise or harshness. Crazy. I mostly keep it in off-road all purpose and soft ride feel, unless it's time to whoop it up in washes or crawl rocks. People with a lot of off road experience are simply amazed by it.

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[ATLRivvy]

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions all. I’ll agree that a part of the issue may have been misplaced expectations - but ultimately in a mass market vehicle it doesn’t really matter so I stand by my review.

I don’t hate the car and they have 2 more years to bring me on board so hoping for the best. My wife is pretty much completely out though and she is going to be the primary decider for a 3-row SUV.

If you are fine tinkering with your car, accommodating service appointments with an month+ wait and prefer your SUV ride like a work truck, the R1S is probably great for you. But I’ll say this - if Rivian’s target market is city/suburbs people with $90K+ to spend on an SUV but are okay with it riding like a work truck, then I’m skeptical of their long-term prospects

 

[Newtonrj]

Okay, Figuring to get spiked here but having owned a Porsche Cayenne for over 200k, it does ride on Atlanta pavement better. I say that because the Cayenne was an Atlanta creature until the owner sold it to drive a Taycan. The R1S is not gentle. Rivian is 50% heavier than the Porsche Cayenne. But Porsche doesn't have native Carplay, it doesn't like to stay in lanes when there is any water or snow around. That 60/40 split sucks when the rear end comes back around to kiss you into a ditch. There is no way to be a front-wheel drive car in bad weather.

The R1S is heavy but it is solid. The software is certainly lacking. Most of the problems seem to be on areas where other Mfg seem to not have problems; A/C, door hinge quality, air-suspension with a 3t vehicle acting like a 2t vehicle. Then I remind myself, it is a <5yr old company (in shipping terms). I'm sure they will do things to catch up in some areas and excel on others. Overall, I'm not upset with the switch. Porsche never updated their software, lost 3G connectivity bricking the truck for 6 weeks and consumed brakes/tires nearly as much as oil changes. But Porsche looked great wherever it drove. Rivian is a love/hate vehicle. Owners are both proud and ashamed, sometimes at the same time. But they tend to be approachable and generally polite folk.

Whatever you drive, drive it proudly.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Thanks, it is fair to expect near perfection in a vehicle that costs over $100,000!

No, it isn't. My R1S was 113K, and I got more than I paid for IMO. Perfection or near-perfection starts at 300K and goes into the millions.

 

[bigsky]

Why would you do this to yourself? Even a polar bear can learn which levers to press to get a fish biscuit. If the proximity unlock doesn't work for your use case, do something different. I use my FOB, which always works, but you could use your phone as a key, add a shortcut if you like, etc.

Translation:
Yeah, yeah!
How dare you, OP, criticize the perfect Rivian brand?
How dare you expect for your SUV to do what it is supposed to do and do it always!? What is wrong with you!?
How dare you not come up with workarounds when features do not work as intended!?
Suck it up, move on, or else do not ever believe your lying eyes. Instead, do fall in line with and join our hardcore Rivian fanboys club already!
There is nothing wrong with your perfect Rivian. It's all a mirage.

 

[Popobawa]

Context / Use Case: Leased the Gen 2 R1S max pack (making us a two EV household) about a year ago as we welcomed our 2nd child. Needed a 3-row SUV that would be good for both around the city and for the 3-4 longer road trips (~400 miles) we take each year. Other cars we were considering at the time were the Lucid Gravity and Volvo EX90.

Pros:

• Still love the styling
• Like the Rivian native UI/UX much better than Carplay in my other EV
• Interior is fairly comfortable and luxury-enough for us without feeling over the top
• Love the frunk and under trunk storage - great for packing in stuff with two kids under 3 years old
• Love the idea of frequent updates (though execution is lacking). My other EV hasnt had a real update in a year.
• The cameras and sensors work amazingly well for ADAS. The cameras are incredibly high resolution and very clear

Cons:

• Overall - I just dont think the R1S is a very good car for the price right now
• Suspension / Ride: Absolutely abysmal - has to be worst in class. The active suspension does almost nothing to absorb bumps. Lots of being bounced around and people in the back seat complain about pain from even a moderate bump. This is the thing that pretty much disqualifies this car as one I would recommend to anyone.
• A/C: Something ive never experience before - the A/C system performance is awful. I've never thought about the A/C in any of my other cars. Set a temp, put it on auto and go. The R1S struggles to keep up to the point of having people sweating in the 2nd and 3rd rows on road trips with 75 degree temps outside
• So. Many. Software Bugs: The "automated" stuff in the car is so unreliable that it might as well be manual.
  • 33% of the time I get in the car, start driving and then realize all the vents are randomly closed so im getting no a/c.
  • I still cant figure out how the car decides whether the 2nd row a/c should turn on or not - there are car seats always plugged in but A/C only starts automatically maybe 50% of the time
  • 25% of the time the car struggles to "wake" when I walk up to it or use the app so not uncommon to be stuck in the rain for 30 seconds holding a 6-month old and waiting for door handles to activate
  • Every other update my wife has to remove and reactivate her PAAK (Android phone)
  • Every once in a while the car loses the garage button despite having accurate GPS position - works when I manually go to the garage menu but the garage open/close button doesnt automatically appear
• Interior space: The interior feels smaller than the exterior would lead you to believe. Cant have rear facing car seats in 2nd and 3rd row and still have a front row passenger. Something I should have tested so definitely my fault.
• 3rd row functionality: Baffling decisions on the 3rd row. The slide mechanism to access third row is terrible - doesnt move forward enough for easy entry/exit, 2nd row headrests dont auto-drop and no easy lift mechanism to get 3rd row back up when stored. Baffling oversights at this price range
• Self-driving / Autonomy: Despite the RJ hype, Rivian autonomy isnt very good right now. Its gotten better from when they started (it was unusable) but still lags what other players (not just Tesla) were capable of doing 2 years ago. I prefer my outdated Ford Bluecruise over Rivian by a mile.

Tl;dr: Love Rivian styling and its a cool tech toy - but I dont think its a very good car. Ride quality is completely unacceptable for its price point, the interior isnt very well thought out and the software is buggy to the point of being unreliable.

OP you will get roasted here by fan boys ( to them Rivian is prefect how Tesla fan boys were 5 years ago the are very protective) rather then constructive criticism of Rivian from car enthusiasts, I agree 100% with OP. I had Gen 1 max R1S for 12k miles, It had quite a lot of issues with battery, software, suspension etc. than I had Gen 2 few times for weeks to month when mine was in the shop, and found it also has ride quality issues, software glitches etc.
I test drove new quad R1S and all in all it drives way better, 4 motor and suspension are in harmony. I was about to Lemon mine when Manager at service center together with Local sales rep, came up with a deal I could not refuse if I went with New quad. So I went ahead and got launch edition R1s quad. 1200 miles so far, and only issues I have is wind noise driver side window, hood fluttering on right sight at highway speed, sub par audio system like subwoofer might not be working. Other then that I think they have dialed in drive terrain with New quad near perfect. in between I still end up driving my cyberbeast more , now with 12000 miles and zero issues to date . FSD is amazing and am hoping Rivian keeps improving. As a car enthusiast I love and enjoy most cars.

 

[bigsky]

A very objective and realistic post. Thank you.
It is so unfortunate that you have to go through all that, and with two babies in tow. Unacceptable.
I hope that you find a good resolution to your situation.

While my R1S Gen 1 has not had all of these issues, I now have had my fair share to the point that I have started to sour on the Rivian brand.
One of the reasons for buying my R1S was that it looks like a real SUV, on a truck chassis.
Then, true to its brand name, it started acting like a Rivian:
Body corrosion, repainted at barely two months old. And no, this is not an outlier; a few other instances of this exist, it turns out.
Not only buggy software, many of the features are half-assed implementations at best.
Sure, Rivian says there is nothing wrong with it, but the eternally hard clunking suspension noise is always disconcerting.
Do not really care about ADAS, but Rivian apparently wrote off Gen 1 vehicles in this regard.
12 V battery replaced at 6k miles.
grease flung all over one of the wheels because of a leaky CV boot, at 11k miles, and no, hardcore Rivian fanboys, it is not because of road-debris damage.
Unacceptable, on-steroids vampire drain.
My R1S just went into hibernation in my garage until next May. Suddenly, it is losing 10 miles 3% SOC daily. At this rate, I will have to charge it again every month. Just sitting in my garage unattended hemorrhaging juice. And no, hardcore Rivian fanboys, I should not have to mess with vehicle settings, plug in a battery tender, etc.
Now I see a new alert in the app: "Replace 12V battery. PLease make a service appointment now if you havven't already." This is the 12 V battery that was replaced last May!! Seriously, Rivian!?

fortunately for me, I can cut my losses and look for an alternative. Will see how the new Range Rover behaves.

Unfortunately for me, Tesla does not make an SUV on a truck chassis; otherwise, that Tesla SUV would be in my garage today and would not have had all these issues that my R1S has.

My glorious Tesla Model Y performance sat in my garage undriven for one full year. I charged it to 50% only three times during that year. Master of efficiency, Tesla is.
My Tesla Raven, six years old, still the original 12 V battery, no issues. My beloved Model Y Performance, 4 years old, what 12 V battery? No issues with it whatsoever, either.

Seriously, Rivian, I will say it again: buy, get, strip down, hack into a Tesla, poach Tesla engineers if you must, and learn from Tesla how to do everything EV right from masterful software integration to reliability that is the stuff of legends. Exhibit A and B sit in my garage as living proof of this.

Now sit back, grab popcorn, and watch all the hapless hardcore Rivian fanboys so pervasive in this site, and you know who you are, come after you.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Here’s my obligatory reminder that Tesla is overpriced junk these days.

 

[SwampNut]

obligatory

Can't help spewing nonsense? I think they make meds for that.

I just took a drive in a friend's new Y. It has really nice improvements all around. Tesla AP still blows away Rivian ADAS by a long shot. Price was cheap.

 

[Dave Cundiff]

I suppose I can't recommend the R1S for "Most People" either.

My name isn't Most People, though. We're all very different.

***

All things considered, including environmental impact, our R1S will do things no other vehicle does.

I'm definitely glad we own and drive our R1S.

I hope your experience gets better, @ATLRivvy.

Best to all!

 

[mkhuffman]

Here’s my obligatory reminder that Tesla is overpriced junk these days.

Can't help spewing nonsense? I think they make meds for that.

I just took a drive in a friend's new Y. It has really nice improvements all around. Tesla AP still blows away Rivian ADAS by a long shot. Price was cheap.

A good friend of mine just got his first BEV - a new Tesla Model Y. He took me out for a FSD drive yesterday, and it was amazing. The car is very well put together, was quiet, smooth and very nice. Sure, there are few buttons, and one screen, but it is a good car. IMO.

He loves it so far, BTW.

 

[ebellinder2]

Can't help spewing nonsense? I think they make meds for that.

I just took a drive in a friend's new Y. It has really nice improvements all around. Tesla AP still blows away Rivian ADAS by a long shot. Price was cheap.

Agree. While I really enjoy my R1T I also like the simplicity of my model Y. Have owned 4 Teslas in the family since 2015 no significant failures of any kind experienced. Just a standard interior and a hard ride.

 

[higrob]

I have 2 gen 2 R1S's and have none of the issues that you describe. The ride in both of mine is impeccable. AC is always smooth and top notch. Third row seats slide very easily to allow accomodation into and out of the 2nd and 3rd rows. It kind of makes me wonder if you even have an R1S...

 

[sfvR1S]

If you don't need off-road capabilities, the Kia EV9 is probably a better lower cost option.

 

[2kwik4u]

Why would you do this to yourself? Even a polar bear can learn which levers to press to get a fish biscuit. If the proximity unlock doesn't work for your use case, do something different. I use my FOB, which always works, but you could use your phone as a key, add a shortcut if you like, etc.

Mine is always this way. I use the fob exclusively. If the truck is asleep I just plan on it not working. Often times I stand around tapping the truck with the fob after repeatedly pressing the unlock button. Even the key card is slow to react if the truck happens to be asleep.

Rivian physical access is a horribly awful experience. Guess the good news is it's so awful I can't imagine anyone would steal the damn thing. Honestly, if they can get it open, they can have it.

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