Finished R2 demo test drive? Share your review / impressions

[kanefsky]

Same. I would hate manual controls. In most cars I set my preferred vent position & temperature, then leave it alone 95% of time.

I'm surprised there are people out there fiddling with their car HVAC a dozen times a day.

The nature of cars, however, is that you're often getting in and out of them in very hot or cold conditions, so that all you can think about when you get in the car is heating up or cooling off as quickly as possible. That can require a lot of fiddling with the climate controls to accomplish -- especially with automatic climate systems that don't really know what you want to do.

Maybe you don't need to touch the controls much after you've been in the car a while (although even then things might change if you have sudden changes in the amount of direct sunlight for example). But even then I really enjoy tweaking the temperature and/or airflow once in a while based on my personal comfort level. On a car with good controls it's no harder than using the turn signal, changing the radio volume or station, etc. It seems silly that you would make it sound like some kind of terrible burden. Are you also a fan of Tesla's efforts to remove things like gear shift levers because the car can figure out if you want to be in forward or reverse 95% of the time? Would you want an automatic volume control for the radio as well?

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[rvnxyz001]

cooling off as quickly as possible. That can require a lot of fiddling with the climate controls to accomplish -- especially with automatic climate systems that don't really know what you want to do.

On hot days, if a car sits under the sun, I usually roll all windows down, drive like that for a few minutes, close the windows, run the AC with recirculation for a few minutes, then turn recirculation off, always keeping it in auto and at the same temp. I found this procedure in my old VW manual.

 

[kanefsky]

On hot days, if a car sits under the sun, I usually roll all windows down, drive like that for a few minutes, close the windows, run the AC with recirculation for a few minutes, then turn recirculation off, always keeping it in auto and at the same temp. I found this procedure in my old VW manual.

That's still a lot of manual control to work around the limitations of what the car can do automatically.

There's really no downside to having readily available manual controls. The car is such a small volume of air that once you manually set a temperature and airspeed that are comfortable, you should hardly ever need to touch the controls (unless that's your personal preference). It's not like a house where it would be crazy if you had to manually turn your heat or AC on and off every time the temperature went up or down a couple degrees.

 

[rvnxyz001]

That's still a lot of manual control to work around the limitations of what the car can do automatically.

There's really no downside to having readily available manual controls. The car is such a small volume of air that once you manually set a temperature and airspeed that are comfortable, you should hardly ever need to touch the controls (unless that's your personal preference). It's not like a house where it would be crazy if you had to manually turn your heat or AC on and off every time the temperature went up or down a couple degrees.

You pressed more buttons to type this message than I press to control my AC in a year

 

[MaskedRacerX]

On hot days, if a car sits under the sun [...]

I remotely fire up the AC 15-20 minutes before we get to the car

 

[GABarber]

Went on the sixth test drive this morning with my wife doing all the driving for the first time. Will pass along one comment she made as she really got comfortable with one pedal driving: "It's like my sewing machine!"

I lol'd but realized her point - if you've ever operated a sewing machine with a typical foot pedal that you can feather the speed with, it's a great analogy, especially if you're trying to convince someone who hasn't tried OPD yet.

Other quick observations. It was 89 and sunny. The car was warm when we got in but cooled off very quickly. We drove for about 45 minutes and the top of my balding head had no issues. Put my hand on the glass before starting up, during and after the drive. It was warm but not hot. It was cooler than my Mazda sunroof to the touch after it had sat in the sun for about 90 minutes.

As a passenger, I found myself pondering just how visible the front hood is more than I've done as a driver. Wondering how lighter coolers, especially reflective Esker Silver might create a lot of glare? Anybody with a Silver R1 who could comment?

I have the same question- as a Tesla driver i never see the hood and in my last r2 test drive i noticed some reflection off the HMG hood and wondered if the Esker silver could create excessive glare in bright sunlight.

 

[FlyingPilot2012]

The nature of cars, however, is that you're often getting in and out of them in very hot or cold conditions, so that all you can think about when you get in the car is heating up or cooling off as quickly as possible. That can require a lot of fiddling with the climate controls to accomplish

Perhaps my experience is limited to well designed auto HVAC systems, but very limited fiddling is required in Auto. If the car temperature is well above or below the set point (temp.), it will already do 100% of what it can to reach it...adjusting the temp. up or down several degrees won't speed it up.

For vents, I typically leave them pointed mostly at me. When the I first get in, I'm blasted with air as the car tries to get to my set point. Feels great. Over time, as the car reaches its set temperature, the fan slows down, relieving the constant air in my face feeling which is no longer necessarily when the car is at my desired temp.

It seems silly that you would make it sound like some kind of terrible burden

I wouldn't say burden, just unnecessary in most cases.

the car can figure out if you want to be in forward or reverse 95% of the time? Would you want an automatic volume control for the radio as well?

Apples and oranges.

 

[kanefsky]

adjusting the temp. up or down several degrees won't speed it up.

That's exactly my point. I've had several cars, at least some of which I assume have "well designed auto HVAC systems" by your definition: Audi, Porsche, Tesla, and Rivian. A typical example is that I'll get in the car and I'm freezing. The temp is set to 72 or whatever from the last time I was in it. Only cold air is coming out of the vents. I bump the temp up to 73, 74, 75, etc. and there's still only cold air. 76, 77, 78... still cold. Then when I finally hit "HI" the air becomes very hot which feels good for a minute but then becomes too much so I back it off to "HI - 1" (whatever number that is) and now the air is too cold again.

In the old days, there seemed to be much more of a direct relationship between the position of the temperature dial and the temperature of the air coming out of the vents. That's all I'm wishing for (plus easier access to the fan speed control, which it sounds like the R2 at least partially addresses).

 

[not_found]

I test drove on the 11th. I can't believe how quiet it is. The overall experience definitely has me leaning towards buying one when my reservation comes up. I can echo the audio being kind of meh, especially at higher volume. I'm old and don't like super loud things any more (old man yells at clouds) so it probably won't bother me much.

I liked how it drove, and holy smokes does it go when you step on it.

 

[Millbarge]

That's exactly my point. I've had several cars, at least some of which I assume have "well designed auto HVAC systems" by your definition: Audi, Porsche, Tesla, and Rivian. A typical example is that I'll get in the car and I'm freezing. The temp is set to 72 or whatever from the last time I was in it. Only cold air is coming out of the vents. I bump the temp up to 73, 74, 75, etc. and there's still only cold air. 76, 77, 78... still cold. Then when I finally hit "HI" the air becomes very hot which feels good for a minute but then becomes too much so I back it off to "HI - 1" (whatever number that is) and now the air is too cold again.

In the old days, there seemed to be much more of a direct relationship between the position of the temperature dial and the temperature of the air coming out of the vents. That's all I'm wishing for (plus easier access to the fan speed control, which it sounds like the R2 at least partially addresses).

When the car is cold, you can set the temp to 60 or 80, run the fan on lo or hi; it won't make a lick of difference until the engine is warmed up.

And all you have to do is turn off AUTO and manually control all the functions. Just because there aren't dials doesn't mean it works any different than your '92 Accord.

 

[Thebandit]

That's exactly my point. I've had several cars, at least some of which I assume have "well designed auto HVAC systems" by your definition: Audi, Porsche, Tesla, and Rivian. A typical example is that I'll get in the car and I'm freezing. The temp is set to 72 or whatever from the last time I was in it. Only cold air is coming out of the vents. I bump the temp up to 73, 74, 75, etc. and there's still only cold air. 76, 77, 78... still cold. Then when I finally hit "HI" the air becomes very hot which feels good for a minute but then becomes too much so I back it off to "HI - 1" (whatever number that is) and now the air is too cold again.

In the old days, there seemed to be much more of a direct relationship between the position of the temperature dial and the temperature of the air coming out of the vents. That's all I'm wishing for (plus easier access to the fan speed control, which it sounds like the R2 at least partially addresses).

The heat in ICE vehicles comes directly from the engine coolant. Coolant circulation through the heater core doesn't happen until the engine is up to operating temp, which takes 3-8 minutes, typically, depending on how cold it is and how fast you're driving. So when you first start it up, how much the heat is cranked is completely irrelevant because there is no heat.

 

[kanefsky]

When the car is cold, you can set the temp to 60 or 80, run the fan on lo or hi; it won't make a lick of difference until the engine is warmed up.

You would think that, but in my experience across several cars it doesn't really work that way. There is a huge jump between every temp setting less than HI and the HI setting, once there is any heat at all available. It wasn't like that in the days before automatic climate control.

And all you have to do is turn off AUTO and manually control all the functions. Just because there aren't dials doesn't mean it works any different than your '92 Accord.

Again that is not my experience driving cars over the last 40 years. Around the time when auto makers started adding automatic climate control, they seemingly decided that they no longer needed much control over the air temperature coming out of the vents, and could simply modulate the fan instead (much like a home HVAC system works).

Older cars with just the dials seemed to have much more control over the exact temperature of the air coming out of the vents. So if you wanted a strong breeze of slightly warm air, a trickle of hot air, or anything in between you had full control over that (not to mention that you could make the adjustments in about one second without even looking versus taking your eyes off the road and fiddling with several taps on a touch screen).

 

[lordsutch]

Test drove yesterday (July 12th) at Rivian Alpharetta after putting in a reservation on the 4th. The demo car I drove was a Glacier White performance, although there was also a Catalina Cove performance in the lot with manufacturer plates so maybe they swap out demo cars; there was also a Half Moon Grey in the showroom that you could sit in and figuratively kick the tires on. Coming from my 2021 Volkswagen ID.4, I was generally impressed with the car.

I got to try the Universal Hands-Free system on the freeway (Highway 400) for a few miles and it seemed at least as competent as the hands-on Travel Assist system on my ID.4; the automatic lane changes mostly worked but one time it didn't for unclear reasons. I also tried UHF on "normal" streets and it worked well for the short distances I tried; the red traffic signal warnings seemed a little later than I'd want to slow down personally but I tend to ease off early and coast into signals.

The acceleration was impressive, even in All-Purpose mode. Getting used to the true one-pedal driving wasn't too difficult, although I did set it to the minimum setting so it was closer to VW's "B" mode than the default.

The hood was a bit longer than I was used to, and definitely more prominent, but the front camera and 360 cameras are great for parking.

Seats were comfortable. I'm a big guy and had no trouble getting the front seats in comfortable positions for me and easily fit in the backseat behind when I had the seats set for me; the back seat is definitely spacious. AC generally worked well although the heat from the roof was definitely noticeable until it got the AC cranked up and I started up the cooled seats. The MagSafe charger worked well with my Pixel 10 Fold once I had it positioned to the left in the correct spot to "stick."

The limited selection of media apps was disappointing but not terribly unexpected after reading other reviews. Anyone creating their own automotive OS is going to suffer from the "lack of the long tail" issue that while you might have the most popular apps, you're often not going to have the more obscure apps that don't have a lot of users in total but lots of people have 1-2 of those. For example, I doubt Rivian ever gets the Varsity app to listen to college sports games. The internet radio app powered by iHeartRadio had a decent selection of stations but certainly not everything; for example, one stream of Atlanta's public radio station (WABE) is available but their .2 and .3 streams weren't, and the statewide public radio station (GPB) wasn't there. Once they have SiriusXM and YouTube Music native that would cover most of my listening at least. I found the sound system overall to be perfectly serviceable, but I'm hardly an audiophile.

The route navigation seemed to work well but had some interesting quirks; sitting in the demo car I tried a few long-distance routes and it seemed to fail at charging planning when you got further than Las Vegas or so; it would give me a route to Sacramento or Vancouver but no charging stops, after thinking about it a long time. I assume they're still using Google route planning and then trying to add stops rather than using ABRP fully on the backend. Nothing that would affect daily use but I was curious how effectively it would work for edge cases. It also seemed to not want to offer alternative routes after a route with stops was planned, although between picking an initial route and adding charging stops it did show alternatives briefly. I assume fuller ABRP integration is coming later to address some of these issues.

Really the only two things I could see as potential deal-breakers for someone considering something like a RAV4 instead would be the limited media app selection (and lack of Android Auto/CarPlay to offset that) and the lack of a two-pedal setting; I get why Rivian doesn't want to offer AA/CP and two-pedal and they're not deal-breakers for me but it seems like once they get done working through the reservation list those are the kinds of things that they'll need to go fully mass-market and differentiate themselves from other EV brands.

Overall I'm pretty sold on the car and really don't see the competitors out there in my price range as strong alternatives for my needs and interests; I have a November-December order date on my reservation now so I don't expect to be able to get one before early next year. Might go back up to Atlanta in a few weeks and test drive at the Atlanta location to get more of a feel for how it drives in more urban traffic, although frankly my Alpharetta drive on a Sunday was probably more comparable to weekday traffic down around here in Macon/Warner Robins anyway.

 

[NinjaWrap]

Hard pass. I rarely ever touch the HVAC controls in my car, other than to turn them off if it's a nice day. Auto climate control has worked great on every car I've had for the past 26 years.

I’ve used auto exclusively in Model 3, Model Y and now Cybertruck. In summer I keep it at 67-69 and winter 70-71 and I’ve always been perfectly comfortable. When I get in the car with someone else who has it on manual and has to keep changing settings I just don’t get it.

 

[rogunenode]

The iX3 is not available for test drive yet. I drove it in the ultimate driving experience here in Raleigh.

Thanks for your thoughts on the ix3. I will be making sure to test drive one before I place my R2 order. I spec'd one out online at ~70k. With an add'l 100 miles of range and faster charging than the R2, I am interested.

BMW dealer and parts network is superior to Rivian in my experience. One thing I found odd is that you can't get ventilated seats in any of the current ix3 configurations. Every car has trade-offs. I hope the ix3 is more engaging to drive.

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