The first time a manufacturer loaned me a vehicle so that I could review it for a publication was in 2005. Since that time, I haven’t driven every pickup truck manufactured, but I’ve driven many of them.
The 2025 Rivian R1T offers the best driving experience I’ve ever encountered in a pickup truck.
It’s also among the most frustrating I’ve ever driven.
The frustrations of living with it are all things you’d grow accustomed to if you owned it. None would make you hate your truck. If the R1T interests you, you should test drive one with an open mind. You might love it.
After a week of driving it, I think I loved it. But I loved it the way you love a brilliant teenager who still makes bafflingly bad decisions (I’ve had more than one of those, too). You can’t shake the sense that this thing could be amazing someday … but it has to learn a few alarmingly basic things.
With a few simple changes, Rivian could have a historically great truck on its hands. It doesn’t yet, but it does have one you might enjoy.
My tester was a pricey luxury truck. This Tri Max edition boasts 850 horsepower, 371 miles of range, a 0-60 mph time of 2.9 seconds, and an asking price of $107,650 (including $1,800 for delivery). It came in a beautiful Forest Green with an interior scheme Rivian calls Driftwood, full of muted grays, subtle bronzes, and plaid floor mats that felt unexpected and cool. It’s the best-looking interior I’ve ever seen in a pickup.
Classic-But-Updated Look
Designers have given the R1T a fantastic classic pickup silhouette and updated it for the electric era.
There’s nothing outlandish about the look — truck designers have perfected the shape that gets most work done reasonably well, and Rivian has kept to it. But rounded edges and a subtle inverted swoosh to the rear doors make it unique.
Rivian’s signature tall oval headlights tell everyone in traffic what you’re driving without looking, well, “cyber.” My tester’s Forest Green is a shade truckmakers badly needed to rescue from the 1990s, and I’m so happy to see it back.
A Cabin With Personality
Inside, the driftwood theme shows real attention to artistic detail. Even the backs of the seats are textured elegantly, but designed not to attract mud.
Rivian is committed to a vibe of upscale personalization. Plenty of luxury cars these days let you select ambient lighting colors. But in the R1T, you don’t choose green, orange, or purple. You choose Glacier Fog, Pacific Sunset, or Twilight Trail, named like interior house paints.
But the effect works. Perhaps the most delightful this-is-not-particularly-important feature is the cartoon graphics of the touchscreen interface, which show a playfulness you won’t get in a Ford F-150 Lightning.
A Container Store’s Worth of Storage
The R1T features a 54-inch bed that is a perfect rectangular prism — there are no obstructions to prevent carrying plywood flat. It also features two standard household power outlets and a compressor nozzle, plus four useful fold-away tie-down points.
Under the bed is a usable trunk space designed for a full-size spare if you choose one. The frunk (front trunk) is large enough for a weekend’s worth of luggage, with space beneath set aside for the charging cord.
There is wasted space in every modern pickup truck except this one. Near the junction where the cab meets the bed, there is a roughly trapezoidal void enclosed in the bodywork. Rivian turned it into a storage tunnel accessible via doors from either side — a brilliant feature I’m astonished no one has built before. This gear tunnel is like a truck trunk, separate from the bed.
Bizarrely, there’s no way to open it with the key fob. There’s no key fob. Rivian’s credit card key has no buttons, requiring you to open the gear tunnel from the touchscreen or buttons on the bed rail. The touchscreen function is particularly frustrating. To find it, you tap a truck-shaped icon (because everyone knows the truck icon in a truck opens doors), then select an icon shaped like the door you want to open. The charging door is nearly the same shape, so you have only a 2-in-3 chance of getting this right.
The bed rail buttons are a better option, but other automakers put a button to open the vehicle in your pocket. The cheapest vehicle for sale in America today, the Nissan Versa S, comes with a key fob with a button that opens its trunk. This $100,000-plus truck does not.
The worst Silicon Valley design treats all change as improvement. In its quest to feel fresh and high-tech, Rivian has made key fobs worse.
A Fantastic Driving Experience in Every Mode
Most vehicles capable of any off-roading have a drive mode or two that works very well and a few that are unsatisfying. In the R1T, they all feel great.
The day-to-day mode Rivian calls “all-purpose” is crisp, with a medium suspension setting that Goldilocks would love. You could leave the truck in its default settings most of the time and enjoy driving it.
Better yet, changes felt like real changes. In so many modern vehicles, drive modes are nearly all the same. But “Sport” here makes you want to challenge Porsches on track day. “Conserve” stretches the range (to 405 miles, Rivian claims) without feeling unpleasant. A mid-Atlantic snowstorm let me test it on unplowed roads, and the truck felt sure-footed.
I didn’t get the chance to test the four off-road settings. I did adjust the suspension, finding “Firm” to be genuinely sporty while “Soft” is good for dirt roads without any of that marshmallowy wallow many off-roaders get in their softest settings.
Steering was the most direct and crisp I’ve ever felt in a pickup. And, with a faster 0-60 mph time than several Porsche 911 trim levels, hammering the accelerator feels like going to warp. That’s completely unnecessary — feel free to settle for two motors instead of three — but Rivian has proven its point. Once you’re underway, this may be the best-riding truck on the road today.
One note for the old-fashioned: There is no way to turn off one-pedal driving in the R1T. Rivian’s one-pedal driving system is pleasant. But if you prefer to use two pedals all the time, this truck will force you to unlearn that.
Some Baffling Decisions
The sentence above starting with “once you’re underway,” does so for a reason. Because before you’re underway, the R1T is a bit of a Silicon Valley mess.
Adjusting the mirrors? You’ll need to find the right touchscreen mirror to turn that function on. Then, two nondescript buttons on the steering wheel become mirror adjustment settings. This is in no way better than having mirror adjustment buttons.
Adjusting the steering wheel position? Same. Even starting the car isn’t obvious — your key is a card that must be placed in the phone charging tray to start the vehicle. Even budget cars tend to come with a key fob that can be anywhere in the car. Rivian’s system is far more finicky.
Before you drive a Rivian, a representative teaches you how to use the basic controls and hands you a written cheat sheet lest you forget.
That shouldn’t be necessary.
What’s Wrong Is Easy to Fix
The Rivian R1T is the most pleasant-driving pickup I’ve ever encountered. It’s full of delightful bits of personality and innovative storage ideas.
It also falls victim to the worst excesses of current tech design. I can’t help but wonder if, with a few years of user feedback, the next edition of this truck won’t get rid of those and allow it to live up to its full potential.
A key fob with a few buttons on it could solve all of this. Most automakers build those even on economy cars. If Rivian adopts that simple idea, this could easily be the best truck on the market, though its price will keep it out of reach for most.
Cox Automotive, the parent company of Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader, is a minority investor in Rivian.