A Deep Dive Into Gen 1 vs Gen 2 Differences

[mpshizzle]

When I was about to order my gen 2 vehicle there were A LOT of questions about details that nobody had the answer to. So here's a deep dive.

I recently picked up my new Gen 2 R1S. But before I did, I drove a Gen 1 loaner R1S for about 2.5 weeks, and I did 700 miles in that time. If you want the back story, you can check out this thread.

Thanks to the large amount of time spent back to back, I noticed a lot of differences between generations. Many of which have never been talked about online. So here’s my list of differences between the 2. I’m sure I’m missing some, so if you know of any more, let’s add them to the thread!

Physical Components

Suspension

• Within a few minutes of getting in the Gen 1, I could tell why people complain about R1S suspension. Not rough, but very rebound happy and bouncy for lack of a better description. That being said, it wasn’t enough to ruin the experience for me. I did have a passenger in the 3rd row get motion sick from it, though.
• The Gen 2 is noticeably smoother. The primary vibrations and bumps are much more smoothed out, and the rebound/bounciness is much reduced. Still feels like a Rivian, but very much more controlled, smooth, and steady.

Stalks

• Highway assist on Gen 2 is activated by pulling the stalk towards you instead of pushing down. I don’t have a preference either way.
• The buttons on the end of the turn signal stock (used for washer fluid and turning on the rear wiper) have an added tactile indentation on gen 2, to help you find the correct button by feel.
• The stocks in gen 2 feel notchier. Not sure if they have a firmer mechanism or if they just feel different in the gen 2 because it’s new.

Heat Pump

• Temperatures have started to drop here in Utah, instead of 90s -100s we are now in the 80s - so keep that in mind with my comments.
• The new heat pump compressor seems to generally run at a lower RPM than the gen 1 compressor. So it’s slightly more rumbly. On the inside of the cabin it’s slightly less audible than gen 1, but only slightly.
• If the goal was to make the compressor less noticeable from the inside of the cabin, I’d say Rivian failed. Now instead of vibrating the floor, it vibrates the steering wheel. The noise level inside the cabin is almost the same, just with a lower frequency “buzzing”. I would like to point out, however, that relative to other EVs the vibration and noise are not extraordinary. Every heat pump tesla, and ford EV I’ve driven vibrate and buzz in a similar way - so it’s not like Rivian did this worse than everyone else.
• Most of the hubbub around compressor noise on either gen seems overblown to me for 2 reasons. 1 - it’s not anything substantially different from other EVs (at least in my experience). 2 - you really only ever feel/hear the compressor for the first few minutes of the drive when it’s cooling the cabin to start, or when you’re fast charging.
• The larger complaint with the new system seems to be the exterior noise level. So I did some semi-scientific testing. Both tests were on days in the 80s, with the AC set to “Lo” in manual mode with the fan maxed out. The Gen 1 had more compressor sound, the Gen 2 had more fan sound. Gen 2 was maybe a couple decibels louder, but nothing significant. Whatever issue they were having with early build Gen 2s and unbalanced fans, they seem to have figured out.

Heat Pump Video

Door Handles

• While the exterior electronic door handles do feel less premium than the gen 1 mechanical ones, they do not by any means feel cheap. They are nicely weighted, and do not squeak like the early builds. In fact, I had multiple passengers that didn’t realize that it was an electronic handle until I pointed it out.
• The interior buttons likewise do not feel cheap. They have a decent amount of throw, along with a nice tactile bump in the travel. Much more premium feeling than Tesla’s door buttons
• Along with the new electronic latches you can now toggle the child locks from the screen.
• Gen 1 made a nice “Ca Chunk” door lock sound, but it appears that the new electronic gen 2 latches did away with that

Door Lock Video

Wind/Road noise

• This is one of those areas that is noticeably better, but also not a massive change. Definitely less road noise in gen 2, but not a huge deal

Lighting

Segmented Light Bars

• This has been talked about a lot so I won’t spend much time here. They have some cool animations, very smooth, can’t wait to see what else they do with them in the future.
• They seem adequately bright, though not blinding. Visible in the day, but not bright by any means

Headlights

• Both generations seem to have very similar light output from the headlights. Very bright, no complaints
• The gen 2 matrix functionality is AMAZING. When the high beams come on, they animate on with a barn door effect. The dynamic matrix “cutouts” around other vehicles works very well. The pixels are a bit on the large side, so the cutouts aren’t super precise, but they do work very well. Because it has the ability to cut out other vehicles, I do find it turns on the high beams in places where gen 1 would not.

Turn Signals

• The gen 2 front turn signals have moved from the “stadium light” down to where the fogs used to be on gen 1. I appreciate this, since this means the light bar doesn’t have to dim when the turn signals come on. The new turn signals have a nice “sweep” animation.

Lift Gate Lights

• The cargo lights on the underside of the lift gate are touch sensitive on gen 2 so you can turn them on/off like the interior dome lights

Tech

UI Sounds

• The UI sounds changed slightly between Gen 1 and Gen 2. The seatbelt chime is more “traditional” in gen 1 and more “futuristic” in gen 2:

Seatbelt Chime Video

• The “What do you think I am, a Tesla? You can’t activate Highway Assist wherever you want!” sound, and cruise deactivation sounds are also different. Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Gen 1, but this is what it sounds like now:

Highway Assist Video

• The turn signal sound has also changed slightly. To my ear it almost sounds as if they put a low pass filter on the same audio file. As a result, Gen 2 sounds slightly more muted, and doesn’t have the faint static noise that Gen 1 has on the turn signal sound. In the recordings the difference is VERY subtle, you may need headphones to tell them apart. In person it was much more obvious to my ear.

Turn Signal Video

Autonomy

• The driver’s screen visualizations are hilariously bad on gen 1. It vaguely resembles what’s happening in the real world.
• Gen 2 is a bit better. It can see a greater number of vehicles, the visuals are more stable and representative of reality, and it works in 360 degrees. But Tesla visuals are by far and away better than either. Hoping they can play catch up here.

• As it stands now Highway assist performs very similarly between the 2. I notice almost no difference in lane keeping ability.
• Gen 2 can change lanes. It does so extremely competently and quickly. It does not, however speed match and find a gap. You have to time it correctly for a gap to appear, or it won’t move.
• For those of you who doubted, yes, there IS a driver monitoring system in the mirror. It does not appear to be active yet.

Cameras

• I was perfectly happy with the gen 1 cameras, they do their job just fine. Even the blind spot camera views. But comparison is the thief of joy
• Gen 2 cameras are noticeably brighter, clearer, and higher frame rate. While I do appreciate the improvements, I wasn’t dissatisfied with the gen 1 cameras

Wireless Charging Pad

• I found that the gen 1 charging pad worked decently well for me… as long as I wasn’t driving. The moment I started moving my phone slid ALL over the place. Sometimes it would still figure it out and keep charging, but that wasn’t often.
• Gen 2 helps significantly. The phone will still slide forward and back, but my phone will generally continue charging after it has slid forward
• Big Caveat here. I suspect that MagSafe is making Rivian’s poor design perform even worse. In my experience, phones with Magsafe magnets tend to be a bit pickier with alignment on charging surfaces… So iPhone users and Android users with magsafe cases will likely get little to no use out of these.

Sound System

• Dolby Atmos music is life changing. Why have we not had this sooner!?? Songs that take advantage of it are AMAZING, though a lot of the Dolby Atmos mixes on Apple Music are lazy and barely take advantage of the spatial-ness
• This one is going to be polarizing. My loaner had the Rivian Elevation Audio. I thought it was great. Certainly not a flat response curve, but I found it to be decently full sounding with a strong, crisp base. No complaints whatsoever. (Mind you this was on version 2024.27, which I’ve heard greatly improved the system)
• My gen 2 vehicle has the new Rivian Premium audio. I’ll have to give a more detailed review later, once it’s broken in, but on initial impression it performs very comparably to the elevation audio

Overall both vehicles are EXCELLENT. I fell in love almost immediately. While there were a few areas where Rivian did some cost cutting for Gen 2, on the whole I don’t feel that it’s any less premium. It’s got a lot of great improvements across the board.
If you have any questions about gen 2 that you’d like me to document or comment on, let me know!

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[racekarl]

Stalks, not stocks, FYI.

 

[mpshizzle]

Stalks, not stocks, FYI.

Lol bound to be a typo somewhere. Thanks for catching that

 

[racekarl]

Really appreciate the detailed write up - wanted to add that so my post wasn't just a complaint, but you replied too quickly!

Interesting that the sounds are different, I never would have expected them to be, given that I imagine Rivian could easily update the Gen 1 sounds if they thought the new versions were better.

 

[mpshizzle]

Really appreciate the detailed write up - wanted to add that so my post wasn't just a complaint, but you replied too quickly!

Interesting that the sounds are different, I never would have expected them to be, given that I imagine Rivian could easily update the Gen 1 sounds if they thought the new versions were better.

Yeah I was suprised by that as well - not really sure why they changed all of them. I first caught on when I heard the chime in the background of a review on the original Gen 2 Launch. But someone was talking over it, so I couldn't quite tell for sure if it was different.

As far as I'm concerned the only sound that really needed attention was the turn signal, because of the noise in the background. Other than that, they were fine. Only reason I can think of is they wanted to differentiate generations? Because you're right, it seems like changing them in Gen 1 would be trivial

 

[DuoRivians]

IMO, Gen 2 Premium Audio is unfortunately a lot worse than Gen 1 Elevation. I think Rivian still has fine tuning to do for Gen 2

 

[krb1183]

When I was about to order my gen 2 vehicle there were A LOT of questions about details that nobody had the answer to. So here's a deep dive.

I recently picked up my new Gen 2 R1S. But before I did, I drove a Gen 1 loaner R1S for about 2.5 weeks, and I did 700 miles in that time. If you want the back story, you can check out this thread.

Thanks to the large amount of time spent back to back, I noticed a lot of differences between generations. Many of which have never been talked about online. So here’s my list of differences between the 2. I’m sure I’m missing some, so if you know of any more, let’s add them to the thread!

Physical Components

Suspension

• Within a few minutes of getting in the Gen 1, I could tell why people complain about R1S suspension. Not rough, but very rebound happy and bouncy for lack of a better description. That being said, it wasn’t enough to ruin the experience for me. I did have a passenger in the 3rd row get motion sick from it, though.
• The Gen 2 is noticeably smoother. The primary vibrations and bumps are much more smoothed out, and the rebound/bounciness is much reduced. Still feels like a Rivian, but very much more controlled, smooth, and steady.

Stalks

• Highway assist on Gen 2 is activated by pulling the stalk towards you instead of pushing down. I don’t have a preference either way.
• The buttons on the end of the turn signal stock (used for washer fluid and turning on the rear wiper) have an added tactile indentation on gen 2, to help you find the correct button by feel.
• The stocks in gen 2 feel notchier. Not sure if they have a firmer mechanism or if they just feel different in the gen 2 because it’s new.

Heat Pump

• Temperatures have started to drop here in Utah, instead of 90s -100s we are now in the 80s - so keep that in mind with my comments.
• The new heat pump compressor seems to generally run at a lower RPM than the gen 1 compressor. So it’s slightly more rumbly. On the inside of the cabin it’s slightly less audible than gen 1, but only slightly.
• If the goal was to make the compressor less noticeable from the inside of the cabin, I’d say Rivian failed. Now instead of vibrating the floor, it vibrates the steering wheel. The noise level inside the cabin is almost the same, just with a lower frequency “buzzing”. I would like to point out, however, that relative to other EVs the vibration and noise are not extraordinary. Every heat pump tesla, and ford EV I’ve driven vibrate and buzz in a similar way - so it’s not like Rivian did this worse than everyone else.
• Most of the hubbub around compressor noise on either gen seems overblown to me for 2 reasons. 1 - it’s not anything substantially different from other EVs (at least in my experience). 2 - you really only ever feel/hear the compressor for the first few minutes of the drive when it’s cooling the cabin to start, or when you’re fast charging.
• The larger complaint with the new system seems to be the exterior noise level. So I did some semi-scientific testing. Both tests were on days in the 80s, with the AC set to “Lo” in manual mode with the fan maxed out. The Gen 1 had more compressor sound, the Gen 2 had more fan sound. Gen 2 was maybe a couple decibels louder, but nothing significant. Whatever issue they were having with early build Gen 2s and unbalanced fans, they seem to have figured out.

Heat Pump Video

Door Handles

• While the exterior electronic door handles do feel less premium than the gen 1 mechanical ones, they do not by any means feel cheap. They are nicely weighted, and do not squeak like the early builds. In fact, I had multiple passengers that didn’t realize that it was an electronic handle until I pointed it out.
• The interior buttons likewise do not feel cheap. They have a decent amount of throw, along with a nice tactile bump in the travel. Much more premium feeling than Tesla’s door buttons
• Along with the new electronic latches you can now toggle the child locks from the screen.
• Gen 1 made a nice “Ca Chunk” door lock sound, but it appears that the new electronic gen 2 latches did away with that

Door Lock Video

Wind/Road noise

• This is one of those areas that is noticeably better, but also not a massive change. Definitely less road noise in gen 2, but not a huge deal

Lighting

Segmented Light Bars

• This has been talked about a lot so I won’t spend much time here. They have some cool animations, very smooth, can’t wait to see what else they do with them in the future.
• They seem adequately bright, though not blinding. Visible in the day, but not bright by any means

Headlights

• Both generations seem to have very similar light output from the headlights. Very bright, no complaints
• The gen 2 matrix functionality is AMAZING. When the high beams come on, they animate on with a barn door effect. The dynamic matrix “cutouts” around other vehicles works very well. The pixels are a bit on the large side, so the cutouts aren’t super precise, but they do work very well. Because it has the ability to cut out other vehicles, I do find it turns on the high beams in places where gen 1 would not.

Turn Signals

• The gen 2 front turn signals have moved from the “stadium light” down to where the fogs used to be on gen 1. I appreciate this, since this means the light bar doesn’t have to dim when the turn signals come on. The new turn signals have a nice “sweep” animation.

Lift Gate Lights

• The cargo lights on the underside of the lift gate are touch sensitive on gen 2 so you can turn them on/off like the interior dome lights

Tech

UI Sounds

• The UI sounds changed slightly between Gen 1 and Gen 2. The seatbelt chime is more “traditional” in gen 1 and more “futuristic” in gen 2:

Seatbelt Chime Video

• The “What do you think I am, a Tesla? You can’t activate Highway Assist wherever you want!” sound, and cruise deactivation sounds are also different. Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Gen 1, but this is what it sounds like now:

Highway Assist Video

• The turn signal sound has also changed slightly. To my ear it almost sounds as if they put a low pass filter on the same audio file. As a result, Gen 2 sounds slightly more muted, and doesn’t have the faint static noise that Gen 1 has on the turn signal sound. In the recordings the difference is VERY subtle, you may need headphones to tell them apart. In person it was much more obvious to my ear.

Turn Signal Video

Autonomy

• The driver’s screen visualizations are hilariously bad on gen 1. It vaguely resembles what’s happening in the real world.
• Gen 2 is a bit better. It can see a greater number of vehicles, the visuals are more stable and representative of reality, and it works in 360 degrees. But Tesla visuals are by far and away better than either. Hoping they can play catch up here.

• As it stands now Highway assist performs very similarly between the 2. I notice almost no difference in lane keeping ability.
• Gen 2 can change lanes. It does so extremely competently and quickly. It does not, however speed match and find a gap. You have to time it correctly for a gap to appear, or it won’t move.
• For those of you who doubted, yes, there IS a driver monitoring system in the mirror. It does not appear to be active yet.

Cameras

• I was perfectly happy with the gen 1 cameras, they do their job just fine. Even the blind spot camera views. But comparison is the thief of joy
• Gen 2 cameras are noticeably brighter, clearer, and higher frame rate. While I do appreciate the improvements, I wasn’t dissatisfied with the gen 1 cameras

Wireless Charging Pad

• I found that the gen 1 charging pad worked decently well for me… as long as I wasn’t driving. The moment I started moving my phone slid ALL over the place. Sometimes it would still figure it out and keep charging, but that wasn’t often.
• Gen 2 helps significantly. The phone will still slide forward and back, but my phone will generally continue charging after it has slid forward
• Big Caveat here. I suspect that MagSafe is making Rivian’s poor design perform even worse. In my experience, phones with Magsafe magnets tend to be a bit pickier with alignment on charging surfaces… So iPhone users and Android users with magsafe cases will likely get little to no use out of these.

Sound System

• Dolby Atmos music is life changing. Why have we not had this sooner!?? Songs that take advantage of it are AMAZING, though a lot of the Dolby Atmos mixes on Apple Music are lazy and barely take advantage of the spatial-ness
• This one is going to be polarizing. My loaner had the Rivian Elevation Audio. I thought it was great. Certainly not a flat response curve, but I found it to be decently full sounding with a strong, crisp base. No complaints whatsoever. (Mind you this was on version 2024.27, which I’ve heard greatly improved the system)
• My gen 2 vehicle has the new Rivian Premium audio. I’ll have to give a more detailed review later, once it’s broken in, but on initial impression it performs very comparably to the elevation audio

Overall both vehicles are EXCELLENT. I fell in love almost immediately. While there were a few areas where Rivian did some cost cutting for Gen 2, on the whole I don’t feel that it’s any less premium. It’s got a lot of great improvements across the board.
If you have any questions about gen 2 that you’d like me to document or comment on, let me know!

This is great, my Gen 2 R1S is getting a radar replaced at the service center so now I have an early vin launch edition R1T loaner so I've been able to notice your differences as well. One other thing I wonder if you've noticed is in regards to the night time ambient lighting in the cabin. In my R1S (Gen 2) the colors appear deeper and more even. In the older Gen1 T they don't seem as vibrant and aren't as 'smooth' or even (like there are more LEDs in the Gen2).
Obviously not a huge thing and I would probably have not noticed if I hadn't just been driving my Gen2 for a month.
Still love the acceleration and the Gen1 vehicle overall.

 

[cpucrazy]

• Gen 1 made a nice “Ca Chunk” door lock sound, but it appears that the new electronic gen 2 latches did away with that

thanks for including the video to articulate that. I didn't really understand why they would do away with the manual actuation for locks and door latches, but now that I see the video, Im like ohhhhhhh yeah that makes sense.

 

[mpshizzle]

thanks for including the video to articulate that. I didn't really understand why they would do away with the manual actuation for locks and door latches, but now that I see the video, Im like ohhhhhhh yeah that makes sense.

Glad it helped! I'm all about the examples and demos

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

• Most of the hubbub around compressor noise on either gen seems overblown to me for 2 reasons. 1 - it’s not anything substantially different from other EVs (at least in my experience). 2 - you really only ever feel/hear the compressor for the first few minutes of the drive when it’s cooling the cabin to start, or when you’re fast charging.

And for many this is their first EV. They are now experiencing things they've always had in their past ICE cars, but never noticed—in part because the EV is much quieter overall (no masking of things that are inherently noisy) and in part because this is their first venture into something new (and associated insecurities, just like the freak out over cabin temp when parked in the sun).

Besides Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, what else do you all recommend to really demo Atmos? I've listened to that track a few times and am still not hugely impressed.

 

[mpshizzle]

And for many this is their first EV. They are now experiencing things they've always had in their past ICE cars, but never noticed—in part because the EV is much quieter overall (no masking of things that are inherently noisy) and in part because this is their first venture into something new (and associated insecurities, just like the freak out over cabin temp when parked in the sun).

Besides Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, what else do you all recommend to really demo Atmos? I've listened to that track a few times and am still now blown away.

Yeah - unfortunately I've found that many Dolby Atmos tracks in Apple Music are barely spatial. In my opinion I still do appreciate even the basic spatial mixes but they are indeed quite subtle.

"Boom" by Tiesto is a GREAT demo for spatial audio (thanks @cpucrazy for sharing that one with me). That one is extremely spatial and has things happening everywhere. Very fun as a demo piece, but if every song was mixed like that it would be extremely fatiguing.

As a side note, the spatial audio effect is much better in the back seat. You notice a lot more of the subtleties of the mix sitting in the center of the vehicle rather than the driver's seat

 

[Rividiculous]

Amen regarding the headlights! I love the Gen2 brights and the way they cut out for oncoming traffic while still giving me more light (and visibility) all around said oncoming traffic.

In my experience, the Gen2 headlights offer incredible performance and are also fun to watch in action. In other words, pure Rivian.

 

[kozak79]

Door Handle sound on Gen1 is perfect. Should have kept it the same on Gen2.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

Great write up! As a Gen 1 owner I appreciate that the refresh wasn't so substantial that I feel like I've been left out in the cold, but was enough to remedy some user concerns while also tossing some added features in.

Cheers from my Rivian road trip!

 

[rutiger]

Appreciate the write up.

I love how the opinions on the internet of the sound system range from complete pile trash to it's the most amazing sound system on the planet.

As long as it's somewhere in the ballpark of my current Meridian surround in my Defender I'll be happy. Hopefully I'll have my Tri Max in the next 60 days.

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