PFBZ Perspective: R1T Owner Summary: Incredible!

[pfbz]

Thought I would start a thread to comment and discuss my new R1T!

2022 R1T
Adventure Package
Quad Motor AWD
Large (150kW) Battery pack
El Cap Granite exterior
Black Mountain interior
21” Road wheels
Power Tonneau Cover

Reservation Date: 11/2/21
Delivery Date: 6/25/22

So a week into ownership, what is the one-word summary of my thoughts?

Incredible!

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[pfbz]

Delivery Glitch:

The Rivian delivery process is pretty awesome... Even though I am only about 25 minutes from our local Service Center, they did a home delivery.

The delivery didn't go quite as planned. There was definitely a bit of a glitch, but how they responded impressed the heck out of me! Sitting in my driveway, hadn't even rolled a foot in it, Rivian delivery guide in the vehicle and a loud POP followed by a disctinct sinking feeling (as in actual sinking). I knew instantly what had happened, an air bag had an early life (infant mortality) failure. Just to be fair, this is a Tenneco/Ohlins part, and sometimes stuff fails right after manufacture.

But how Rivian responded impressed me greatly... Within minutes, I was haded the phone and was talking with the head service guy at the center explaining what would happen, and they lived up to their promise. The truck went back, they overnighted a part, installed it on a Saturday morning, did full testing on it and all the other airbags, and had it back in my driveway 23 hours later!

All manufacturers have issues and things that go wrong, but how they respond to an unexpected event is what separates the poor or average from the best, and Rivian scored big time in my book with how this was handled...

 

[pfbz]

Friday Morning Twisties:
(cross post from Rivian FB group)

I often run some mountain twisties on Friday mornings with some of my sports-car buddies... Today I took the R1T instead of the 911 Turbo. WOW, just amazing and was a blast!

800HP and zero power loss at 10,000' doesn't hurt, but what blew me away was the handling. It likes just a touch of 'throttle' at the apex and the torque vectoring just pulls you through the corner while the cross-link suspension keeps you flat. Again, just wow...

 

[pfbz]

My (realistic) wish list:
(this will be amended as things move forward)

Most of these are software improvements that could likely be implemented without any hardware enhancements.

• An "Off" switch on the console! I hate just walking away from the truck waiting for the phone to be out of range and shut things down. Or even if I'm just sitting in the truck, parked in the garage... I want a quick way to at least put to sleep the screens, AC, etc.
• Better "no cell coverage" behavior of infotainment. This is a Rivian self-proclaimed 'adventure vehicle'. Many (if not most?) adventures in my book are either in marginal or zero cell coverage areas. Improve no-network defaults and behavior for the mapping system. Allow pre-downloading and/or predictive downloading of map data in advance. Allow downloading of spotify songs (just like the apps running on IOS and android) so music can be interrupted.
• If not Carplay, then a richer set of "Rivian" apps... I'd love Carplay, but can understand there might be issues why that isn't likely. If Rivian is going to do there own thing, at least provide a richer set of apps for us than just a so-so nav system, spotify, and tune-in... Waze is the holy grail for many, often the ONLY reason they really want carplay. In additon, an off-road navigation app (there are several IOS carplay compatible ones for instance), a weather app, a messaging app (whatsapp would be awesome)
• More info displayed/available to driver/owner. I'd love to see displays showing torque vectoring to each wheel, far more info/data on power consumption, etc.

 

[Attesan997]

My (realistic) wish list:
(this will be amended as things move forward)

Most of these are software improvements that could likely be implemented without any hardware enhancements.

• An "Off" switch on the console! I hate just walking away from the truck waiting for the phone to be out of range and shut things down. Or even if I'm just sitting in the truck, parked in the garage... I want a quick way to at least put to sleep the screens, AC, etc.
• Better "no cell coverage" behavior of infotainment. This is a Rivian self-proclaimed 'adventure vehicle'. Many (if not most?) adventures in my book are either in marginal or zero cell coverage areas. Improve no-network defaults and behavior for the mapping system. Allow pre-downloading and/or predictive downloading of map data in advance. Allow downloading of spotify songs (just like the apps running on IOS and android) so music can be interrupted.
• If not Carplay, then a richer set of "Rivian" apps... I'd love Carplay, but can understand there might be issues why that isn't likely. If Rivian is going to do there own thing, at least provide a richer set of apps for us than just a so-so nav system, spotify, and tune-in... Waze is the holy grail for many, often the ONLY reason they really want carplay. In additon, an off-road navigation app (there are several IOS carplay compatible ones for instance), a weather app, a messaging app (whatsapp would be awesome)
• More info displayed/available to driver/owner. I'd love to see displays showing torque vectoring to each wheel, far more info/data on power consumption, etc.

Respectfully disagree with an off button. Having owned a Tesla I can’t recall a time where I left the vehicle only to come back to it “on”. This is with my phone at times being no more than 10-15 feet away from the vehicle for extended periods of time. Your example of staying in the vehicle (or entering) while keeping the screens off I could see some use for, it could be a persistent setting.

This has been covered more than enough but seeing as I don’t current have CarPlay I can’t say that I’ll miss it.

More drive data would be helpful, hopefully the latest software changes signal this.

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