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As an American EV start-up, Rivian is routinely – and predictably – compared to Tesla. But even a cursory glance at their respective pick-up trucks indicates the vastly differing approaches of the two firms.

While the Tesla Cybertruck is unapologetically brash and wilfully confrontational, the Rivian R1T is infused with genuine warmth and charm. And while Elon Musk’s firm has delighted in disrupting the car industry, Rivian’s seemingly more conventional approach has attracted investment from the likes of Ford and Volkswagen.

But look closer, at either the R1T or Rivian itself, and both are more radical than they first appear. That’s why the Volkswagen Group signed a deal worth up to £4.6 billion to invest in Rivian, including creating a new joint-venture company.

You see, Rivian isn’t really a car firm at all: it’s a software company. A software company that makes some seriously impressive cars. “We see ourselves as a tech company that builds sustainable cars,” says Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s software chief and co-CEO of the Rivian-Volkswagen joint venture. “We have a lot of respect for Tesla, who disrupted the industry, but we also have respect for traditional auto makers.”

Bensaid is clear about what makes Rivian different: “Software is not an afterthought for us. The way we design the car is around software. Everything in the vehicle – from the way it drives to navigation, battery management, thermal management – it’s all run by software.”

A new type of pick-up

Rivian was founded in 2009 by RJ Scaringe and went through various names and funding rounds while it slowly built up expertise. It wasn’t always smooth, and the firm has burned through a lot of investment capital, but while most other EV start-ups failed, Rivian succeeded: the R1T was the first full-size US electric pick-up to reach the market.

It was launched in 2021, ahead of the Ford F-150 Lightning and when the Cybertruck seemed more the stuff of Musk’s dystopian fever dreams than an actual production vehicle.

Still, the R1T that awaits me outside the Rivian Service Center, located in a nondescript industrial district of Las Vegas’s drab, sprawling suburbs, looks positively fresh in terms of design. It’s softer than most big US trucks, and distinctive oval-shaped headlights, a full-width light bar and a blanked-off front end give it a slightly futuristic feel, but it’s recognisably a pick-up.

Parked next to ‘my’ R1T is an R1S SUV and seeing them together reinforces just how similar they are. They’re essentially the same machine: you just choose whether you want a flatbed or a big boot and more space in the back.

The R1T’s flatbed features a mechanically closing cover and there’s a huge storage tunnel behind the rear seats, which is accessed via hatches on each side of the truck’s body. The hatches fold down and can be used as seats, or a step to make it easier to reach into the flatbed. And, of course, there’s a really chunky frunk.

The R1T in front of me may look the same as when it was launched, but Rivian made enough changes late last year to label this a second-generation model. There are new built-in-house motors, reworked air suspension and new battery packs. It’s offered with two, three or four motors, all providing four-wheel drive.

Dual-motor models have 526bhp and the quad-motor set-up produces a bonkers 1011bhp, enough to give this three-tonne pick-up a Porsche 911 GT3-beating claimed 0-60mph time of less than 2.5sec. I’ll be making do with the tri-motor version (two motors on the rear axle, one up front), which has a mere 838bhp.

Probably enough. For the record, that’s nearly identical to the tri-motor Tesla Cyberbeast. A range of battery sizes is offered for the various powertrains: this R1T Tri uses a 141.5kWh unit for a range of 371 miles.

Part of the reason Rivian hasn’t altered the styling for this new model is because it’s really the only constant. The firm regularly improves cars already on the roads through over-the-air updates. For example, the second-gen model features a new infotainment interface, which will eventually be rolled out to existing cars.

“The defining feature of our cars is how they improve over time,” says Bensaid. “We have highly engaged owners and they are very vocal in wanting more features. If a month passes by and our customers don’t receive an update, I’ll get messages asking what’s happened.”

Those updates – and much of the work on the second-generation R1T hardware – was based on customer data. Updates have included everything from new locking sounds and a car wash mode to more tangible changes.

“One of the most successful updates we had was to the suspension,” says Bensaid. Real-world testing convinced Rivian’s engineers that the ride wasn’t performing as they had intended, so they reprogrammed how the adjustable air suspension balanced the ride over bumps.

“Customers could not believe we could change that through software,” says Bensaid. “It was mind-boggling. With a traditional car, when you drive it out of the dealership, that’s the ride quality that you have, but we can change suspension through software. That’s the magic we can bring.”

Inside the R1T

So is an R1T magic to drive? I’m keen to find out, but first I need to get into it. Rivian’s press car uses digital guest keys provided through the Rivian app, except it isn’t available in the Apple UK app store. Thankfully, the Rivian Service Center staff trust me with the actual credit card-style key.

There is a Tesla-esque feel to the interior, with minimal physical controls and a big, 15.6in touchscreen, although in Rivian’s case it sits horizontally. There are multifunction toggles on the steering wheel and a row of fixed buttons at the bottom of the screen gives access to essential functions.

The interior isn’t as stark as a Tesla’s: there’s a warmth to the materials, especially the ash wood-effect dashboard and deep plaid carpeting that, depending on your view, echoes either a Volkswagen Golf GTI or a 1970s chain hotel.

Overall, it’s light and bright, helped by a panoramic glass roof that features adjustable opacity. The rear seats are a bit upright, but then this is a pick-up and there’s plenty of room, as well as a rear touchscreen that gives access to the ventilation and infotainment controls.

Still, the experience is dominated by the touchscreen, which is used for everything from the infotainment to the steering wheel adjuster (then done using the steering wheel toggles) and drive modes.

It’s truly among the slickest systems you’ll find, both in terms of functionality and visual splendour, with stylised comic-book-style graphics. There’s no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto but it’s so good you don’t miss them.

Most key features require just a press or two, but there’s no skimping on information: the off-road mode page shows off a mind-boggling amount of data. There’s fun too: Gear Guard security mode originally introduced a friendly bear to watch over your belongings and he now appears on several other function screens.

“We’re extremely intentional in what we put on the screen,” says Bensaid. “We want it to be a very intuitive experience, because we know touchscreens can be a barrier. We want our drivers to have fun and we have internal debates about every single pixel that goes on the screen.”

Driving the future of pick-ups

With an R1T for a day, the question is where to head. From the Service Center, I can see the gaudy skyline of the Las Vegas strip a few miles south, but that doesn’t feel like the R1T’s natural home. Too brash, too showy. Cybertruck territory, basically. So with the Rivian’s outdoorsy vibes, I head north-west towards the tranquillity of Nevada’s Spring Mountains.

On the urban roads and interstates that I traverse to get there, the R1T is pleasingly amiable, especially because its hefty size isn’t an issue in this wide, open space. Like many pick-ups, the high ride height, chunky tyres and raised suspension – not to mention my test car’s 22in tyres – mean it’s not the most planted of vehicles, but standard air suspension soaks up bumps and it’s really very comfortable.

It’s predictably quick too: a three-tonne kerb weight is no match for three electric motors. Once I’ve escaped the city limits and found a straight and empty road, I have a play with the launch control, egged on by the Gear Guard bear on screen (clearly a bad influence).

The novelty of a fast-accelerating EV has long worn off, but there’s still amusement in experiencing such astounding pick-up in a pick-up.

But launch control is a distracting party piece. The R1T’s core skills are the genuine multi-terrain and towing capability it offers. It’s a car for the great outdoors. Once I’ve escaped the Vegas valley, the road starts rising and winding.

Up here, the R1T is no slouch and it’s able to power out of hairpins with aplomb. It’s fun rather than thrilling in corners but you wouldn’t really expect a heavy pick-up to offer much more.

It’s a cold winter day in Nevada and a bracing wind makes it truly bitter in the mountains. Not ideal conditions for an EV, and on the outbound trip I’ve used more of the R1T’s charge than I expected.

But after playing with the regen and drive modes, and learning how best to use the truck’s weight, it fares far better on the return leg and I arrive back at the Service Center having averaged around 2mpkWh. Not impressive in isolation but reasonable for this size of vehicle.

The Volkswagen tie-up

The R1T is an impressive thing. It certainly doesn’t feel like the first product from an EV start-up. It’s well conceived and well built, with a real maturity to the driving experience and powertrain. I’ve yet to drive a Cybertruck, but when editor Mark Tisshaw tried one recently, he found himself liking it in spite of the thing. 

By contrast, the R1T is so endearing that you want to like it. I fear I’d have upset the Gear Guard bear if I didn’t.

It echoes Bensaid’s comments about Rivian’s relationship with its customers. “They now have very different expectations of what they want,” he says. “They don’t want a traditional car that has an electric powertrain. They want a different type of end-to-end product. That’s the big difference between traditional car firms and us.”

And that, ironically, is why the Volkswagen Group is so interested – and now invested – in Rivian. Legacy car firms have spent vast sums of money trying to master the art of making software-defined vehicles and they’re still struggling. After its own struggles, the VW Group has clearly decided the best way to get that knowledge is to work with a firm that has it.

“It’s great recognition for everything that the team has achieved,” says Bensaid, who performs his role as co-CEO of the new joint venture alongside the Volkswagen Group’s Carsten Helbing. And he notes that the deal isn’t a one-way street.

“We have complementary strengths,” says Bensaid. “We’re coming with a clean-sheet software stack and electric architecture, and a passionate team that wants to make an impact. The Volkswagen Group brings experience and scale, and a broad portfolio of brands. It’s a fantastic opportunity for our engineers to make a much bigger impact.”

Details of the joint venture are still being finalised, but it will involve both firms developing vehicles on a new software-based platform, which builds on Rivian’s current architecture. The first Volkswagen Group model to use the new software will be the production version of the new ID Every1 in 2027. 

“We’re learning how we work together,” says Bensaid. “Something extremely important to us was the willingness of Volkswagen leadership to keep the same agile and nimble culture that Rivian has and to use the joint venture as a change agent to bring that agility and ambitious spirit to the VW Group.”

Perhaps, then, while their approaches contrast wildly, Rivian and Tesla are pretty similar after all: both could act as agents of change in a car industry that remains in a state of flux. 

Cosworth became famous the world over in the late 1960s as its Ford-funded ‘DFV’ V8 engine totally dominated Formula 1 – something it would continue to do throughout the 1970s.

In fact, its final grand prix win didn’t come until 1983. It’s one of the most admirable of the many ‘blokes in a shed beat all the car industry giants’ stories Britain produced in the last century. It’s not well known, though, that Cosworth at this time created not only its own F1 engine but its own F1 car – and a highly unconventional one at that.

This unnamed racer was dreamed up by Cosworth co-founders Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, both former Lotus engineers, and Robin Herd, who started his career as a design engineer on Concorde, and then designed McLaren’s first-ever grand prix winner.

“It is something entirely new in single-seater aerodynamics, structure and the detail arrangement of the transmission,” we reported on its July 1969 unveiling.

The Cosworth was far from alone in using four-wheel drive. The potential of a 4WD system had been shown as long ago as 1961, when Stirling Moss had won a non-championship race in an F1 car created by British tractor company Ferguson (which had then in 1966 contributed the first 4WD system for a road car, the Jensen FF), and it was an obvious solution when F1 engines became so powerful (with more than 400bhp) that cars started to struggle to put it all down.

Lotus had seemed to prove the theory by almost winning the 1969 Indianapolis 500 with a gas-turbine 4WD car, and Matra’s Jackie Stewart told us: “There isn’t a tail slide and there isn’t a lot of understeer; you can balance the car much better and therefore you can get out of corners quicker, and if you do that, you get down the straights quicker.”

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Working on 4WD were Cosworth, BRM, Lotus, Matra, McLaren and Ferrari. Most integrated Ferguson’s proven system into existing chassis, but Northampton went its own way.

We reported: “Drive is taken from the engine, which is installed with the flywheel end forward, to a two-shaft gearbox with Hewland gears to give a wide choice of ratios.

An extra gear, mounted on the end of the second motion shaft, takes the drive sideways to an angled bevel differential from which it is taken to the front and rear final drives. The torque-split ratio is likely to be about 40:60 front to rear, with further adjustment possible by altering front and rear wheel diameters.

“The rear drive passes under the right-hand cylinder bank of the engine and is then taken sideways across the back of the engine by a pair of spur wheels, suitably cased, to the rear differential.

“The front driveshaft –which, like the rear, is a solid shaft with Hooke joints – is taken through a guard tube directly to the front differential, side-step gears being unnecessary [here].

“Two points in the layout of this drive stand out. One is that by arranging the fore-and-aft drive lines on the right-hand side of the car (Lotus and McLaren have theirs on the left), it has been possible to eliminate an idler wheel between the gearbox and the centre differential. This is necessary in the other designs to match the rotation of the engine and transmission. 

The other is that it is believed that free differentials, without anti-spin mechanisms, are used in the front and rear final drives as well as in the centre differential.” Lotus entered its 4WD 63 at Zandvoort – but not with its lead driver Jochen Rindt at the wheel, as he hated it so much in testing that he refused to race it! Also in that race was Matra’s 4WD MS80, later labelled by a driver simply as “undrivable”.

And after racing his own team’s 4WD M9A at Silverstone, Bruce McLaren apparently said it was like “signing your name with someone pushing your hand along”. Little wonder, then, that Cosworth’s 4WD contender never graced a grid.

“4WD in F1 has been something of an anti-climax,” we concluded in August 1969, and bar a single 1971 appearance of an experimental Lotus powered by a gas turbine, it has never again been tried.

Photo Credit: Lothar Spurzem

Fortunately, the interior handle and door card on the driver’s side of Scott Chivers’ left-hook Testarossa spider is secure. Pull the handle on the passenger side and it comes off.

I am driving Ratarossa, a Ferrari Testarossa well-known by the internet. The car derives its name from the ‘recycled automotive transport’ exemplified by rusty Type 2 VWs and is the ultimate expression of Scott’s philosophy.

Its grey body is rough. The engine cover is barely secure, it’s been hit hard with the lowering stick. But the car’s original flat-12 engine and five-speed manual ‘box remain.

Scott bought it from a chap in California who was intending to restore it, but just never got round to it. All in - car, shipping, taxes - this Testarossa cost just £16,000.

It’s an amazing thing. And quite intimidating to get into. Nevertheless I make it into the driver’s seat, wearing the stringbacks Scott thinks are total Don Johnson. 

I’m about to turn the ignition key but, first, let us pray. Down on my right is the famous Ferrari gate. I can’t wait. Reverse is down and forward; first, straight back. Better get those two right. I fire up the flat-12. 

There’s a cacophony of mechanical gnashing and a delicious intake howl when you dare to blip the throttle. No wonder Scott’s elderly neighbour complained to the council.

The pedal box is for Formula 1 drivers in Sparco slippers. I’m wearing motorcycle boots. I practise telling my B from my A. C, the clutch, weighs a ton. So do the front wheels. I can barely operate the steering.

Pulling away is surprisingly smooth. First to second gear and beyond is a deliberate operation, although there is some spring bias to help tee the selector for each slot. 

There’s no lag or hesitancy as the engine accepts the next cog. The temperature looks good and the blue smoke on start-up has cleared.

Given that its body has been stiffened with the equivalent of a garden gate, the Ratarossa feels surprisingly taut, at least at 40mph. 

The brakes are firm but progressive too. The steering has lightened up but it’s not what you’d call quick. You have to wind on the lock nice and early to avoid ploughing straight on.

And is that petrol I can smell? “A small leak,” explains my co-pilot.

Whatever its niggles, the Ratarossa is wonderful and unique. The looks of fellow drivers alone tell you that.