SEATTLE — On Nov. 26, 2018, Rivian — a company almost no one had heard of — shocked the L.A. Auto Show audience with the battery-electric R1T pickup. The claims were 400 miles of range or more, a 3-second 0-60 time and 11,000 pounds of towing capacity. The next day, Rivian did the same with its R1S. Now, that same company is introducing its first round of updates to its flagship models with the 2025 Rivian R1T and R1S.
Remember, the only battery-electric vehicles with more than 200 miles of range in 2018 were Tesla products or the Chevrolet Bolt. A full-size pickup and SUV with real room and traditional interfaces was outlandish.
And huzzah, the hype was real, even when we finally drove the pickup three years later. In 2021, we crowed, “The R1T has us utterly convinced that electric off-roading is the way to go.” In our R1S First Drive in 2022, we said, “The SUV version of Rivian’s off-roading electric vehicle is just as impressive as the truck.”
A line from each of those reviews speaks to what Rivian’s done with the refreshed R1T and R1S. In our R1T piece, that line was, “Overall, it’s hard not to be excited about the Rivian R1T’s fundamentals after spending a long day pushing it on all kinds of terrain.” About the R1S, it was, “While the cost for a 2022 Rivian R1S is high, the range, capability, comfort and space are worth it, especially if you’re looking for a vehicle from a company that appears to be really trying to both offer unique, thoughtful, functional features in the all-electric space, and inspire people to have more adventures both on and off the beaten path.”
You could wager some passerby of an R1T bed full of groceries to spot three differences between the pre- and post-refresh models; you’d win against anyone but an owner or brand fan (comparison above, refreshed model on the left). The 2025 R1 models are all about fundamentals and thoughtfulness born of simplification under the skin. Overhauling more than 60% of the software and hardware components underbody has saved space and weight, can make repairs easier and less costly, and will help Rivian achieve its target of a full-year profit.
Engineers rebuilt the R1 models’ electrical architecture. A new circuit board bearing Nvidia Drive Orin chips operates at 10 times the previous processing speed, now capable of 250 trillion operations per second. The 17 ECUs in the first-gen R1 models have been culled to seven. A new zone-based electrical architecture localizes…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Autoblog…