The Leading Edge

A behind the scenes look at the people, gear, and ideas shaping our world.

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1. THE TOOLS

YOUR TRUCK GETS ELECTRIFIED

RIVIAN IS BUILDING RIGS TO APPEAL TO THE GREEN CROWD AND OVERLANDERS ALIKE

BY WILL EGENSTEINER

Though the electric-vehicle startup Rivian was founded ten years ago, the company intentionally flew under the radar until 2018, when it pulled back the curtain on the R1T pickup at the L.A. Auto Show. Why spend nearly a decade avoiding the limelight? Founder and MIT mechanical-engineering grad R.J. Scaringe and his team were quietly developing a battery system that could hold enough power to get you far off the beaten path and was sufficiently rugged to withstand the bumps along the way. The result? The world’s first full-featured electric truck.

“There wasn’t really someone making a vehicle that catered to the outdoor adventurer and that was also conscious of the environment,” says Jeff Hammoud, Rivian’s vice president of design. “It’s amazing to see how many people have a Prius or a Tesla as a daily driver, and then when they go on adventures, they’ve got a Jeep or a Tacoma.”

The midrange R1T runs on a 135-kilowatt-hour battery pack—good for up to 300 miles— integrated into the floor of the cab. The four-wheel-drive version has four motors that sit above the wheels, providing 750 horsepower. But the rig’s defining feature is what it doesn’t have: an internal combustion engine. The big compartment where a normal truck would have an engine is an 11.7-cubic-foot space called the frunk. Where the truck bed meets the cab, there’s a gear tunnel big enough to accommodate a snowboard.