In rainy Seattle this week, Rivian unveiled what it's calling the "Second Generation" of its R1 line with a suite of mostly under-the-hood software and hardware updates that increase range, power, and efficiency while simultaneously lowering the cost of production for the company. While it's common for automotive manufacturers to do some light refreshes after about four model years, Rivian has almost completely retooled the underpinnings of its popular R1S SUV and R1T pickup just two years after the vehicles made their debut.
"Overdelivering on the product is one of our core values," Wassym Bensaid, the chief software officer at Rivian, told a select group of journalists at the event on Monday night, "and customer feedback has been one of the key inspirations for us."
For these updates, Rivian changed more than half the hardware components in the R1 platform, retooled its drive units to offer new tri- and quad-motor options (with more horsepower), updated the suspension tuning, deleted 1.6 miles (2.6 km) of wiring, reduced the number of ECUs, increased the number of cameras and sensors around the vehicle, changed the battery packs, and added some visual options that better aligned with customizations that owners were making to their vehicles, among other things. Rivian is also leaning harder into AI and ML tools with the aim of bringing limited hands-free driver-assistance systems to their owners toward the end of the year.
While many of these changes have simplified manufacturing for Rivian, which as of Q1 of this year lost a whopping $38,000 on every vehicle it sold, the company has continued to close the gap with the likes of BMW and Mercedes in terms of ride, handling, comfort, and efficiency.
On the road in the new R1
We drove a new second-gen dual-motor 665 hp (496 kW), 829 lb-ft (1,124 Nm) R1S Performance, which gets up to 410 miles (660 km) of range with the new Max Pack battery, out to DirtFish Rally School in Snoqualmie in typically rainy Seattle weather. On the road, the new platform, with its revised suspension and shocks, felt much more comfortable than it did in our first experience with an R1S in New York in 2022.
They fixed the ride with a software update about 9 months ago. My R1S went from porpoising all the time to very smooth and comfortable after the update. I believe it was 2023.34.0