2025 Rivian R1T Consumer Reviews

Cool Truck Let Down by Poor Build Quality

I have owned quite a few different cars over the past few years and the Rivian R1T was always high up on my list of cars to have. This is my second personal EV, I traded-in my Audi e-tron for this R1T. Before that I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee and still have my 2017 Ford F-350 for my landscaping side work and snow plowing. I have driven the truck for a few weeks now and experienced it enough to list my pros and cons: PROS: - Cool Design: I love how the R1T looks inside and out, especially the Forest Green paint color. It is the perfect-size truck, and I have gotten lots of compliments on it. The interior has a nice simplicity to it but looks modern and upscale. The materials they used are all high quality and have a nice touch to it (except for the door handles, more on that later). - Good Technology: the touchscreen is quick with an easy-to-use interface and nice graphics. The stylized car settings page is cool and shows very useful information, especially when changing things like the drive mode and air suspension height. CarPlay would be a nice addition but everything you need is available in the system plus Rivian is always releasing new software updates to add new features. They just need to add text messaging support. - Mobile App: the Rivian mobile app works great for pre-conditioning the cabin. - Comfortable Seats - Good Ride Quality (for a truck) - Quick Acceleration - Relatively Quiet on the Highway (on smooth pavement) - Decent Range (for an electric truck): I am mostly on the highway and drive around 72mph and am averaging 2.3 miles per kilowatt right now in the New England late winter/early spring season. The estimated driving range is not very accurate though. CONS: - Poor Build Quality (and this is my main gripe): Off the bat when I took delivery of the truck it had some minor panel misalignment with the rear passenger doors and the gear tunnel doors were missing paint along the edges. The service center assured me they will fix it, and I made an appointment which is almost two months out (a bit concerning). Unfortunately, that is the least of the build issues. The doors on this truck are built terribly! Every door rattles like crazy when going over uneven payment even at low speeds. The exterior handles when they pop out make a loud squeak noise if the temperature is over 50F. Luckily, I temporarily fixed this by spraying a dry lubricant into the mechanism, we will see how long it lasts. The interior door grab handles also creak when opening/closing the door. Everyone that has gotten into the truck has noticed that it does not matter how hard you grip the door handle, it will creak no matter what. It is crazy how Rivian could mess up the doors this badly given that this is meant to be an off-roading vehicle and should be durable and well put together. I can only imagine the amount of rattling when going off-road! - Terrible Premium Sound System: I paid for the upgraded audio system, and it is probably the worst sound system I have had in a car. Some songs sound okay at high volume, but others sound muddy, or the voices are not clear. The surround sound seems nonexistent despite the number of speakers, it just sounds like everything is coming from the center dash speaker despite changing balance/fade to the rear. I messed around the EQ a bit, but I will have to wait till Rivian releases another software update to hopefully improve it. - HVAC System: the heat pump on the Rivian is very loud when you are first stepping-in, and you can feel a slight vibration from it. It does not matter if its A/C or heat, you will hear it for the first few minutes of the drive. The heat on my R1T did stop working once halfway through my commute when it was 30F outside. When I restarted the truck for the drive home it worked fine, hoping that it was a one-time incident. The HVAC in the Audi e-tron was quiet and worked much better in the cold, this truck does not seem to blow out as much warm air. - Long Service Appointment Wait Times: As I mentioned at the beginning the service center appointment, I made was two months out for the build quality issues. I am a little worried if something major goes wrong with the truck or if it becomes undrivable that I will be without my R1T for a long time. - Rivian Autonomy Plus is Meh: the hands-free highway driving system at this time of my review is not that great. It turns off at random sections off the highway and does not drive very smoothly at stop and go traffic. I will barely use it now and will wait till they release an update that improves it. Disappointed as this was one feature I hoped to use a lot for my daily highway commute. VERDICT: It is a cool truck that drives nice for a truck, but the build quality issues really dampen the ownership experience. If the sound system were good, it would at least mask some of the interior rattles but sadly it is not. Rivian is still a new company, so I do not expect them to get everything right on the first try. I was hoping that the Gen2 version was going to be better hence why I finally took the plunge but I'm left somewhat disappointed. I honestly do not see myself keeping this R1T very long, I will probably go back to a legacy automaker as most of them know how to at least put together a good vehicle.