The 2025 Rivian R1T and R1S Quietly Evolve Into Massively Powerful Electric Monsters
They look essentially the same, but lots of tweaks and improvements should make for better EV truck and SUV experiences.
There’s a sweet spot for when, exactly, to update the look of a vehicle. Tesla’s on one end of the spectrum, with an aging lineup that’s lost some of the zest it had when those vehicles were basically the only premium EV game in town. Rivian, meanwhile, is a fresh face with a unique aesthetic that is basically the fever dream of a car-interested REI super-fan. Its signature ovoid headlight lamps trisecting a thin monolamp still give the R1S and R1T (and the upcoming R2 models) a defining, instantly recognizable visage. That’s why, whether smartly, conservatively, or frugally (or, more likely, all three), Rivian hasn’t changed the look of its “second-generation” 2025 Rivian R1T pickup and R1S SUV much. Maybe it didn’t have a choice; burning through cash, the company needs to gin up sales and cut costs—and this heavy mid-cycle refresh appears to do the latter and has a good chance of helping with the former.
0:00 / 0:00
Rivian claims there are 600 individual hardware, software, and aesthetic changes between the two generations, and only a few of them are visible from the outside. We spent a day in the vehicles in the Pacific Northwest—the spiritual nexus of the Rivian schtick—to see how the second-gen R1S SUV and R1T truck have changed.
Tricky Lights, Hi-Fi Vibes
Without parking a 2025 R1 near a previous model-year vehicle, it’s hard to discern the changes, but they’re there. Small tweaks, like moving the turn signals out of the oval DRL modules to where the fog lights used to be—the fog lights are now redundant because of the pattern and flexibility of the new matrix LED headlight lamps. Adaptive Drive Beam—LED matrix tech—hardware is on board but the software to make it function won’t be activated until later this year. The large light bar on the front and rear now includes animations in hazard mode, with the option to have a sequential series of lights indicate which way a driver would like approaching cars to move around a stopped Rivian. The company will also use the lamps’ RGB function later to enhance the company’s cute special display modes, such as its Easter-egg-ish Halloween mode.
More useful (and impressive) is the implementation of Dolby Atmos, an advanced surround sound system that we’ve already heard in the Lucid Air. No vehicle is an ideal soundstage, but Rivan’s implementation Atmos-enhanced premium sound system is stunningly immersive—think IMAX for your ears. Add in the new Connect+ subscription service and you can enable Google Cast functionality as well as getting a native Apple Music implementation ad-free. With enough hotspot bandwidth, it seems like a pretty good way to pass the time at charging stops. Rivian hasn’t announced pricing yet, but the standard connectivity package (including OTA updates, navigation, digital key, and so forth) is gratis. Also note that the 2025 Rivians will utilize ultra-wide-band digital key tech, for improved key recognition and also to support Apple Wallet, Apple Watch, and (some) Google Pixel devices.
Also welcome are some new interior tweaks, like some touch-and-feel stuff (better and more stitching on panels and parts), new ambient lighting themes, and some new interior colorways. The palettes, materials, and vibe are all still “technical outerwear,” and the R1 interiors are still an impressive and upscale place to spend time. And the new 22-inch low-drag aero wheels look awesome, too.
Simplify and Reduce Heaviness
The R1S and R1T are not lightweight vehicles, but they are EVs, and that means pulling mass out creates benefits all around. And sometimes, less weight also equates to less outlay. Rivian desperately needs to cut per-vehicle costs, so while the various reductions in component weight and production complexity aren’t necessarily interesting to potential buyers, they’re of existential importance to this young automaker.
Take the electronics. The first-generation R1s utilized 17 separate ECUs, each requiring connectors (time on the line plugging things in) and the wiring to hook it all together. You know how much copper costs these days? Rivian says it pulled 44 pounds of wiring—1.6 miles of length—out of the vehicles, and reduced the ECU count to seven. The ECUs now put processes that need to share information on the same board, rather than on separate ECUs communicating through wiring. The result is a substantial increase in speed, and therefore, processing power, in addition to reduced complexity and weight.
That processing power will enable, eventually, hands-free driver assistance in certain situations (i.e., pre-mapped divided freeways, mainly, in appropriate conditions). The hardware’s already there, including a heated front radar element and higher-resolution cameras. Lane change assist will be available when the vehicles go on sale and Enhanced Highway Assist will be available later this year. Rivian says its driver assistance hardware now has 10 times the total processing power as it did before, and it will also leverage on-chip machine learning to improve the system’s fidelity as owners drive.
More trimming occurred at the battery pack enclosures—massive trays, essentially, that house the battery modules and are a structural component of the chassis. Instead of an expensive extrusion-heavy enclosure, Rivian’s reached the scale and maturity to invest in high-pressure die-casting for part of the enclosure. This shaved 55 pounds off the regular pack enclosure, and a whopping 154 pounds off the off-road pack, and reduced costs. Those are big numbers.
Likewise, the electric motors on the three distinct powertrains—dual-, tri-, and quad-motor—are now all in-house designs, and oil-cooled. The oil-cooling allows the company to either dial up the performance of a same-sized, same-spec motor without thermal issues, or use less expensive magnets. Both equate to cost savings, and benefit from modularity and efficiencies of scale.
As a whole, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told MotorTrend in a prior visit, the production optimization should result in a 35-percent reduction in materials costs for the base-model vehicles with the lower-cost lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery packs, for example.
Rivian’s also fitted a heat pump to the trucks, an efficient heating setup that uses less juice to warm and cool the cabin, and what has been up until now a somewhat surprising omission. Speaking of heating, the large glass roof panel finally gets an electrochromatic tint function, something we (and no small number of owners) have been loudly clamoring for. This will significantly improve comfort and cooling loads whenever the sun’s out. We couldn’t speak to that in the saturated, overcast day we spent in it.
About Those Motors
Electric motors are all generally very efficient, torquey, admirable things, but the rate of evolution is staggering—and the knowledge engineers are gaining from the reams of data pulled from the customer fleet supercharges that process. Here’s an example: the new Tri-Motor powertrain, with 850 hp and 1,103 lb-ft, essentially outperforms the old Quad-Motor (835 hp and 908 lb-ft of torque ) while crushing its maximum range figure.
With data gleaned from the old Quad-Motor, Rivian rebalanced the power delivery a bit, determining the front drive unit (shared with the Dual-Motor) didn’t need to be so powerful to provide the requisite performance. The juiced twin e-motors from the Quad out back also utilize integrated mechanical disconnects, so when they’re not needed, the second-gen R1 Tri-Motors are essentially front-wheel-drive vehicles, with serious efficiency benefits. Rivian estimates that, in Conserve Mode—yes, that Conserve Mode—the Tri-Motor could eke out a full 410 miles of range. Compare that to the first-gen Quad Motor, which only managed 328 miles. The Tri-Motor should be quicker to 60 mph, too, with Rivian estimating a 2.9-second run—our best in a Quad-Motor was 3.1 seconds.
Nor is the Dual-Motor a slouch. The base vehicle uses the less expensive, less power-dense LFP battery, but still delivers 533 hp, 610 lb-ft, and a 4.5-sec estimated 0–60 time. For $5,000 more, the Dual-Motor Performance jazzes that up to 665 hp, 823 lb-ft, and a 3.4-sec 0–60 time, plus as much as 420 miles with the largest battery pack. The Dual-Motor Performance feels awfully potent out on a windy two-lane road. Hunker it down in Sport and set the suspension to firm, and while there’s less corner-to-corner “warping” to it than a Tri-Motor, there is no lack of torque or fun.
By the way, Rivian doesn’t talk about battery capacity, but we expect them to be 105 kWh, 135 kWh, and 180 kWh—all on the enormous side.
So What Does This Mean for the New Quad-Motor?
It means it’s nuts. For one, this is now a thousand-plus-horsepower, seven-thousand-plus-pound vehicle clocking in with 1,025 hp and 1,198 lb-ft. Rivian claims it’ll hit 60 mph in 2.5 seconds, matching the less powerful Tesla Cybertruck Beast’s figures in our testing, and do the quarter in 10.5—which would nip the Beast by half a second.
To whet our appetite, Rivian put a pre-pro R1T and R1S Quad-Motor on a quaint drag strip south of Seattle— and it’d been saturated the night before, and the track had barely warmed up and dried out. Even with a prepped surface and electric tire blankets, both vehicles scrambled for grip as the Michelins bled out heat in the early morning air.
Even so, after a stuttery tire chirp and the manic whiz of four e-motors going full send, the R1T did a solid 2.8 to 60 mph, pulling 1.23 g (as measured onboard), and that’s with at least 25 feet of scramble as the Rivian attempted to find some grip. Pretty quick, and very entertaining, for such imperfect conditions. A run in an R1S was a bit slower, with some more lateral squirm and a little fore-aft rocking as the truck tried to sort out how to best put down the juice, at 3.28 seconds with just 1.02 g—again, stupendously quick for a three-row electric SUV, undeniably, but off the pace.
We will, of course, put the Quad-Motor and Tri-Motor to the test when the time comes, under better conditions and with our own highly precise testing equipment. The Quad’s numbers should put the Beast off its lunch.
Ride and Handling
It’s no secret that the first-generation Rivian R1S’s suspension setup was a compromise, working better in the longer-wheelbase R1T. Chalk it up to the mad dash to get two ground-up new vehicles out the door. Rivian’s gone back and retuned the suspension to better match the R1S. Since no R1s use steel coils or traditional stabilizer bars—instead using air springs and a hydraulic roll-control system—this was a mix of hardware and calibration. New damper units and new air springs with rejiggered rates were matched up with revised bushings and a reworked roll-control system.
And it all works. In our limited off-road and on-road experiences, neither the Dual- or Tri-Motor R1Ss felt poorly controlled, even during enthusiastic driving in the softest suspension setting. After 40 minutes in the second row on a mild but jouncy trail, we were no worse for wear, and that’s a tough thing to say about any heavy vehicle dropping a wheel suddenly into a muddy rut. Head-toss is remarkably well controlled, and we think the upgraded active roll control system plays a big part. It’ll take our full battery of handling tests to quantify the improvements, however.
Highway comfort in the R1S also is more than adequate from the rear seat, even in firmer modes. Rivian’s built the compliance into the rear suspension of the three-row SUV that it always should have had, and there’s more than enough bandwidth in the highly computerized suspension to control both body and wheel motion when the road throws a ragged construction zone at it. The bottom line is the R1S finally rides like the premium SUV it is.
The Nickels and Dimes
Just because Rivian’s cut costs from the second-gen R1 line doesn’t mean discounts for shoppers. Remember, the name of the game here is losing less money per unit, not racing for the bottom.
The least expensive 2025 Rivian R1 is the Dual-Motor, standard pack R1T, which comes in at $71,700—its R1S counterpart is $77,700—and there’s no change in price here from the 2024s. The Tri-Motors start at $101,700 and $107,700 respectively—significantly more than the 2024 R1T Adventure Quad-Motor, which was $88,800 to start. 2025 Quad-Motors? No information yet, but the new 2025 Quad-Motor is available only on the Ascend trim, and should come in somewhere in the $120,000 range—right in the neighborhood of the tri-motor Cybertruck Beast—with the R1S likely $6,000 more than the R1T version.
Not cheap, certainly, and the substantial updates under the skin and the significant performance increases in the two higher-powered models make the second-gen R1s more superlative even if they’re not highlighted by a significant exterior makeover. Will it be enough? We hope so, for Rivian’s sake.
Like a lot of the other staffers here, Alex Kierstein took the hard way to get to car writing. Although he always loved cars, he wasn’t sure a career in automotive media could possibly pan out. So, after an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Washington, he headed to law school. To be clear, it sucked. After a lot of false starts, and with little else to lose, he got a job at Turn 10 Studios supporting the Forza 4 and Forza Horizon 1 launches. The friendships made there led to a job at a major automotive publication in Michigan, and after a few years to MotorTrend. He lives in the Seattle area with a small but scruffy fleet of great vehicles, including a V-8 4Runner and a C5 Corvette, and he also dabbles in scruffy vintage watches and film cameras.
Read More
