Video: 2025 Rivian R1T Dual-Motor Review: Significant Updates, Similar Style

Now Rivian says that they've made a number of changes to this thing for the 2025 model year, but to look at it, it looks pretty much the same to me. What has Rivian changed for '25? Is it enough to call it a second gen model? Well, let me take you through the changes. So yeah, it really doesn't look all of that different than the 2024 model, but there are a couple of subtle changes. The biggest one are upfront and have to do with the lighting. There's a new RGB LED light bar up front that when you plug your R1T in, acts as an external charge indicator to let you know how full the battery is and if it's actually charging. But the headlights are also new for 2025. These are the adaptive drive beam headlights. They're LED units. And what they're able to do is they enable you to keep the automatic high beams engaged all the time. And if there's oncoming traffic or a car in front of you, it can actually eliminate one of the LEDs in the assembly and darken that specific portion of the headlights coverage. So you have much better illumination at night, but you're not blinding oncoming traffic or people that you're following and it works really quite well. It enables you to have a lot better visibility at night. Now the other thing that's new, there's a new wheel for 2025, a 22-inch AERO wheel, which unfortunately this one doesn't have because this model has the All-Terrain package, and you don't really want the All-Terrain package. This has 20 inch wheels with Pirelli Scorpion All Terrain tires. And they're great for off-road, but I'll get into why you don't necessarily want the All-Terrain package in just a few minutes. The bigger changes to the new R1T actually are the things you can't see. See, Rivian has redone the electrical architecture for the R1 platform. That's the R1T pickup and R1S SUV. They've been able to drop the number of body control computers from 17 to just 7, eliminating 10 onboard computers and 1.6 miles of wiring. Now that enables a simpler build, a lighter vehicle, and a more profitable vehicle as well. And you as a consumer, that's not stuff you necessarily care about, but Rivian certainly cares about it because if they can make a more profitable vehicle, well, that makes their future as a going concern just a little bit more secure. And that is something that you should care about if you're looking to buy a Rivian truck or SUV. But the things that Rivian has changed for 2025 are actually some things you can see on the interior, that is the multimedia system. It's now a completely redone user interface using Epic's Unreal Engine graphics. And it is really cool, very slick, very easy to operate. Everything is very bright, very high definition. And there's some really slick animations when you're choosing between drive modes. Now it's not perfect. I mean, the thing about Rivian is that they've put everything into the touch screen. So things like climate control, vent movement, steering wheel adjustments, mirror adjustments, all of that is in the touchscreen and that is not something we generally enjoy. But in the Rivian models, they actually are fairly easy to use. They're not difficult to find, it's not buried in menus. So a lot of this new multimedia system and a lot of the controls for a lot of these ancillary systems are actually fairly easy to use, bright, clear, no problems there. You've also got cameras, a lot of cameras. This has the new Rivian Autonomy Platform+. And it enables you to have a bit more semi-autonomous control of the vehicle but not quite to the levels that we see in some competitors. Now there are 11 cameras on the new R1T, five radar sensing units, and enhanced artificial intelligence unit, which helps with things like distance-keeping cruise control and highway driving assist software. It's not a hands-free system, however. This is not like General Motor's Super Cruise or Tesla's Full Self-Driving. You have to keep a hand on the steering wheel. Now it still works fairly well, and it does have things like lane change assist where you can turn the turn signal on and it'll help you move from one lane to the other. But it does not have the level of autonomous or semi-autonomous hands-free driving that we've seen in a number of competitors. So that whole Autonomy Platform+ thing, that might be coming eventually, but it's not quite there yet. Rivian has also made some changes to the powertrains and output for the R1T for 2025. You can still get it in three versions, dual motor, tri-motor or quad-motor. And they can also be had with three different battery packs. You can also boost output by opting for the Performance pack as well. Now horsepower ranges from 533 horsepower for the dual motor model to 1,025 for the quad-motor. And range also varies from 258 miles on the lower end to 420 miles for a dual motor with the Max Pack Battery. Now the one we're driving now is a dual motor with 533 horsepower and 610 pounds feet of torque. But it features the Max Battery, giving it a predicted potential range of 420 miles. Now being winter in Michigan, it's not gonna get that much range given that cold conditions generally sap range from EVs 'cause you're right on the heater. But it's still predicting well over 370 miles on a full charge, so that's not too shabby. And the fact that you can now recharge Rivian from both CCS and Tesla-type fast chargers, if you have the right adapter, means that you can put energy back into the battery pretty quickly going from 10% to 80% and anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes depending on the size of your battery. And while this might not be the most powerful version of the R1T, with 533 horsepower, I mean, that's still nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, it's a vehicle where you can option it up to over a thousand horsepower, but we starting to lose sight of the fact that 500 horsepower is still quite a lot, even in a vehicle that's a little bit heavier than a normal full size pickup truck because of the heavy battery. And the delivery is just glass smooth, like an EV should be. It's just effortless, instant power. And the regen works very well. It's three different levels of regen if you want. And I keep it on the standard mode because I think that's the best balance between bringing you to stop and still maintaining some regenerative capability. But the driving experience in an R1T is just fantastic. Now this one has the All-Terrain package, and as I said earlier, I don't advise the All-Terrain package unless you are going to be taking your pickup truck routinely off-road. The compromises for the All-Terrain I think are just too great. These 20-inch Pirelli scorpion All Terrain tires are loud, they're off-road knobby tires. And they do send up a lot more road noise in the R1T than you would get with the Performance pack. And it's on-road tires and 22-inch wheels. Having driven a tri-motor version of this vehicle out in California recently, that is absolutely the setup to get. Unless you're going off-road, stick with the on-road tires, stick with the Performance package. It's just a better experience all around. It also improves the handling of the R1T. This is very good, but you are riding on some fairly balloony off-road tires, so the steering inputs aren't quite as sharp. The feedback isn't quite as good, but it does do good things for the ride. I will give them that. But it's not just the off-road tires that have improved the ride and the R1T. They have actually retuned the suspension as well. One of the major customer complaints for the Rivian R1T was that it rode kind of stiff, and it actually did. The new one does not. Yeah, you have an adjustable suspension here where you can tune the ride feel. I have it in soft, but I'm also driving through Detroit, and the roads here are less than stellar. But it has been retuned for comfort, and it is considerably more comfortable than it used to be. I guess really the only other complaint I would have about the R1T, and I don't have many of them, but this is one of them, is the new for 2025 heat pump, which is part of the climate control system, it is very loud and it does send up a lot of vibrations through the steering wheel and the seats. It doesn't feel as premium as the rest of the vehicle does, but, you know, you need it because you're not getting any heat from the vehicle itself. You don't have an internal combustion engine, so you need something to actually generate heat for a Michigan winter like this. The heat pump is new, it is more efficient than previous systems, but it does send up more noise than I would generally expect to find in a vehicle this expensive. And it's even more accentuated by the fact that the powertrain doesn't make any noise, so it's a naturally quiet vehicle. And if you live somewhere where you don't necessarily need the heat or air conditioning all that often, you just open the windows and enjoy the nice silent electric operation of the Rivian R1T. Pricing for the 2025 Rivian R1T really isn't all that different from it was in 2024. The dual motor with the standard battery will start at about $70,000. This one is a dual motor with the Max Battery and the All-Train package and a couple of other goodies, and its stickers at $98,100. Now if you want a tri-motor, that starts at $100,000. And if you want a quad-motor, well, we don't know how much that one costs yet because they haven't yet announced the pricing or a number of other specs for that either. However, is that expensive? Yeah, that is pretty pricey. But is it worth it? Yeah, actually, I kind of think it is. The thing about the Rivians is that when you're inside them, when you're using them, when you're driving them, when you're sitting in them, you're never really wondering why is this thing so expensive, because it actually does feel like $100,000 luxury vehicle, which is not something you can necessarily say when you're sitting at a GMC Hummer EV, which looks cool, but doesn't feel very expensive. It certainly doesn't feel as good as this. Now, the fact that this is so expensive is why Rivian is currently rushing to get the R2 and R3 SUVs into production as quickly as possible. Those will be less expensive, and they're coming in the next couple of years. But until then, the changes that they've made for the R1T have kept it a pretty fantastic machine. If you'd like to learn more about the new Rivian R1T, you can look everything up at cars.com/news.