It’s not a secret that Rivian is testing their cars all over the world. Some of them were made earlier this year in South America. They had been off-roading in Argentina.
Rivian has released new information on its test program for the R1T electric pickup truck. They’ve also released a video of an R1T pickup prototype off-roading. After the fact, the company is sharing some exciting news about this trip.
“As beautiful as it may be, our time in South America isn’t designed to be a leisurely stroll. Spanning the course of months, our regimen consists of driving hundreds of miles every day across mixed terrain – from steep mountain inclines that last hours to washboard dirt roads that seemingly have no end. Along the way, these long-distance endurance drives are interrupted with hard bursts off-road. It’s the elite athlete’s equivalent of mixing marathon training with high-intensity interval sprints, without any rest in between.”
During this trip, the furthest a vehicle drove without being recharged was 314 miles with some juice still in the battery. Meaning that the car could’ve gone even further.
“South America’s mountain ranges offer the perfect opportunity to demonstrate quad-motor torque vectoring. To gain the most traction for a given driving scenario, such as exiting a corner at full throttle, the brain of the R1T is constantly optimizing power distribution. This ability to instantly – and independently – apply torque at each of the four corners, combined with the R1T’s chassis control systems and low center of mass, results in a vehicle that’s planted to the ground, even on loose-gravel hard turns like these.”
With the information and the video, we also got some stunning pictures of the trip. You can check Rivian’s blog post here.
This information comes five days prior to the release of Tesla’s Cybertruck. The fight for the best electric truck hasn’t even begun, and it’s already on fire.
South America | Rivian from Rivian on Vimeo.