The Sports-Car Driver’s Off-Roader

A. With the effor tless, overwhelming thrust available, we can’t imagine ever achieving the Plaid’s 396mile estimated range. something like the Kia K5 strikes a better balance than either.

All of those concerns vanish as the Plaid finds a road where it can open up. The 0–60 time is a standard reference, but it’s the acceleration from, say, 50 to 120 mph that’s breathtaking. And that’s not some Muskian hyperbole; the torque strangulation is so intense that autonomic respiration becomes impossible. You have to remember to breathe.

With batteries lining its floor, the Model S carries its weight low, and that helps with flat cornering. Steering feel at speed is excellent. The brakes could stop the entropic dissolution of the universe, and the ride quality is firm. Of course it’s quiet. It is, after all, an electric car.

Tesla has pared the 2022 Model S down to two models: The $89,900 Long Range puts out 670 hp and has a claimed 405mile range; the Plaid will supposedly go 396 miles between charges. Yeah, there’s no way anyone driving the Plaid will go that far without giddily indulging in some battery draining wackiness. Taking the Plaid out of its most ripping mode is blanching the flavor out of the fruit.

Lunacy, though, isn’t why the Model S matters. The importance lies in the notion that the Model S has validated electric vehicles in the minds of millions, only a tiny fraction of whom can afford one. The Model S is the first electric car in more than a century to capture the imagination of people who have never cared about electric cars before. It’s an object of desire. That makes it, so far, the most important car of the 21st century and the most likely harbinger of the future.

And the Plaid is the Model S with psychotropic enhancements.

A

SPECIFICATIONS 2022 Tesla Model S Plaid

PRICE: $131,190 (base)

MOTORS: 3 electric motors

OUTPUT: 1020 hp 1050 lb-ft

TRANSMISSION: direct-drive

B C

D o n ’ t t h i n k o f R i v i a n as a truck company. Sure, the brand’s first production vehicle, the R1T you see here, is a four-door pickup truck. And next to launch will be the R1S, a three-row SUV based on the R1T. And then there’s the cartoonish RPV, an electric delivery van with up to 900 cubic feet of cargo space. Amazon hopes to have 100,000 of these rigs in service by 2030.

Trucks, all of them. But when founder RJ Scaringe launched his company—in 2009, in his twenties, having just finished engineering school— his dream was to build a mid-engine hybrid sports car. And if you want to understand Rivian, you have to think of it as a sports-car company.

The evidence sits snug on the centerline of the R1T’s chassis: four electric motors, one driving each wheel. The Rivian is the first mass-produced four-motor EV—even Tesla’s top-tier Model S Plaid has just one motor for the front axle. With each wheel driven independently, the Rivian can do legit torque vectoring, with all the instant adjustability and response that make electric motors so tantalizing. It’s what you’d build if your drivetrain department were run by club racers and rally hoons.

It’s also a great way to put immense power to the ground. Right now Rivian offers one drivetrain setup: 415 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque at the front axle, plus 420 hp and 495 lb-ft at the rear. Factor in the reduction gearing inside each motor (a roughly 12:1 ratio), and that comes out to well over 10,000 lb-ft of torque at the tires, good for a claimed 3.0-second 0–60 time and a governed top speed of 110 mph. The 135-kWh battery provides an EPA-estimated 314 miles of range, and Rivian says the rig can tow up to 11,000 pounds.

At Rivian’s launch event in Breckenridge, Colorado, those numbers were easily believable. The R1T weighs 6950 pounds but accelerates ferociously, with no wheelspin, even on 34-inch Pirelli all-terrain tires. The truck rides on height-adjustable air suspension; even its lowest ride height still offers nearly 10 inches of ground clearance.

And it corners dead flat. The R1T tackles sweeping mountain back roads like a sport sedan. The battery weight is all underneath your feet and between the axles for an enviably low center of gravity. But the real magic is in the adaptive dampers. They’re hydraulically linked across the axles: When you go around a left-hand curve, the passenger-side dampers compress, forcing fluid into the bottom of the driver-side dampers, compressing the suspension on the inside wheels to counteract body roll. This eliminates the need for conventional anti-roll bars. Roll stiffness is controlled via the valves and accumulators that link the dampers, adjusted on the fly based on the driving mode you choose. It’s similar to what’s in McLaren’s most advanced supercars. Coincidentally, Rivian employs a few McLaren veterans.

So there’s no anti-roll bar to disconnect when you’re headed for the trail. You simply engage offroad mode—which raises the rig to nearly 15 inches of ground clearance—and go. Rivian’s demonstration route had us spending most of the day on a steep, technical trail that took us above the tree line past 12,000 feet of elevation, a narrow path we traversed at mostly single-digit speeds.

The R1T has four-wheel independent suspension with upper and lower control arms. The inboard motor placement keeps driveshaft angles to a minimum. The motors themselves are barricaded behind the truck’s perfectly flat belly, the full length of it clad in bashproof panels. Hard-learned habits suddenly become irrelevant: You don’t have to worry about smacking your front differential or snagging a crossmember on a rock or a stump.

The shortcomings of internal combustion are most apparent when you’re rock-crawling. A gas-burning engine needs a brace of gear ratios

A. The R1T’s interior is gorgeously finished, with huge swaths of contoured wood. But nearly ever y control is operated by touchscreen, a strange choice in a vehicle meant to get dir ty. B. The dashboard vents are beautifully designed, but you change their aim via the touchscreen, a maddening overcomplication. C. The Rivian logo is meant to evoke the four points of a compass. D. With the R1T’s no-joke off-road capability and zero tailpipe emissions,

Rivian hopes to attract affluent, eco-conscious outdoorsy types.

D