What's your dream EV?
Rivian is taking their new vehicles on the road and we had the opportunity to peer through the windows of the R2 and R3X this morning at San Jose's Santana Row. We had a great time talking to the friendly Rivian staff and chatting with them about what we've been working on. Staff were giving test drives, and we got to see one guy leave for his R1 drive and then return with that familiar goofy grin we still find ourselves sporting after driving our truck.
We have to say that the vehicles are clearly in the prototype phase. While they look great on camera, in person you can see some evidence that these cars are quite a ways from their production versions. The R2 seems more fully baked than the R3X they had on display. As many folks have already mentioned, the super cool tail end of the R3 will have to be redesigned as it lacks brake lights if the car were to be driven with the tailgate up. A rule that didn’t exist when the cars it takes its cues from were being made. That said, nearly every person at the event, both staff and attendees were clearly more enamored with the R3X than the R2, despite the lack of a projected release date.
We have a preorder for an R2 (that I hope we can convert to an R3X preorder). But we were really there to get ideas for future adventure products. Rivian asked us to look but not touch, and we left our tape measure at home, but we left with lots of ideas of how to bring camping fun and adventure to life in the new platforms. Matthew is already ordering bits and bobs to build out some new ideas that would work in any of the Rivian vehicles. In fact, they’d work in most any EV.
I’ve said before that we are truck people. We go camping and mountain biking regularly. The first week we had our R1T we hit the holy trinity of truck tasks (the hardware store, the city dump, and IKEA). But the kids are getting older and we’re hopefully done fixing up our San Francisco Victornian. We tend to keep our vehicles for a long time. That’s a good thing since I’m pretty sure the R3X is next. Let’s hope Rivian hits it out of the park like they did with the R1T that puts a grin on our face every time we get behind the wheel.
