Rivian R1T Electrifying the Outdoors, Leg 3 of 5: Bartlesville, OK to La Sal, UT

MotorTrend

“We only made it up. Now we gotta get down.” Sean Holman and Frank Markus may work on opposite sides of the business

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:02 Ringing.

00:16 Connecting.

00:20 There he is.

00:21 Cool.

00:22 Hey, what's up?

00:24 Hey, wow.

00:25 You guys look pretty high up.

00:26 Yeah, we got the camera here turned around

00:28 so you can see the lovely town of Telluride.

00:30 Yeah, we're probably 10,000.

00:31 10,500 feet or so.

00:33 Something like that.

00:34 Yeah, good for you, Telluride.

00:35 Had it in a rock crawl mode, and so far this leg's

00:38 been really smooth.

00:39 That's awesome.

00:40 Frank, I suck at mud ones.

00:42 Nah!

00:44 That scenery's gorgeous.

00:45 I'm excited to get back out there.

00:47 Wow, I'm very happy you guys made it.

00:51 I was a little worried.

00:52 We only made it up.

00:54 Now we got to get down.

00:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:02 Yeah, so I've heard that Motor Trend's been

01:13 working on a trip for a while.

01:14 Christian Seba was putting something together,

01:16 and the team reached out to me and said, hey,

01:19 we'd love for you to be a part of it

01:20 to get the 4x4 and off-road perspective.

01:23 And if you're free, we'd love to throw you

01:25 on a leg three, which has you going

01:27 through some really technical terrain.

01:28 I said, that sounds frickin' awesome.

01:30 So I said yes, and here I am.

01:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:35 We started in Bartlesville, Oklahoma,

01:40 home of the Price Tower, the Frank Lloyd Wright's

01:43 only skyscraper.

01:44 So I had a nice look at that before I met up

01:46 with the rest of the team.

01:48 And we have ended at LaSalle, Utah.

01:51 So we were the group that went over the Continental Divide.

01:55 I had no aversion to camping.

01:56 That was one of the things.

01:57 Johnny didn't want to camp, so he was originally

01:59 assigned to leg three and was kind of grousing about it.

02:02 So when the lift and shift happened,

02:03 I'm like, oh, I'll take the camping one.

02:06 And it really-- it was a vital part

02:08 of telling the story of the Rivian

02:10 as an adventure off-road vehicle.

02:12 My break away from the modern world

02:14 is to get out in the back country

02:16 and remember how it was 150 years ago before all this stuff

02:20 and immerse myself in some old structure, some old cave,

02:24 some petroglyph, some sort of historical area,

02:26 and remind myself to slow down a little bit.

02:28 To me, that's how I recharge my batteries, if you will.

02:31 Pun intended.

02:34 Frank and I kind of work on different sides of the business.

02:37 He's a technical guy for Motor Trend, big EV background,

02:40 former engineer.

02:41 I'm more of a content and creative guy

02:43 that has a lot of experience in trucking off-road.

02:46 And we both come at this from different directions.

02:51 In so many ways, we were yin and yang.

02:55 He was all about, let's just power through all these things.

02:58 And I was all about, let's see how much we can conserve

03:01 and how far-- how much gas we can have in the tank

03:04 when we arrive at the recharging stations

03:06 and that sort of thing.

03:08 Yeah, so I'm not a battery homer by any means.

03:11 I'm not-- I'd like to think I'm an early adopter.

03:13 But battery technology has been sort of a slow burn for me.

03:18 I wasn't sure if I would really like the technology.

03:20 I knew that there were some benefits-- 100% torque

03:23 at 0 RPM, things like that.

03:25 But all the things I've driven to this point

03:27 didn't have what it takes to do really

03:29 technical off-road driving.

03:31 There hasn't been a vehicle to date from a manufacturer that

03:34 really fills in this gap.

03:36 I think Frank is looking at it from the standpoint

03:39 of the tech and how things work and what

03:43 they put into the vehicle.

03:44 And for me personally, it's about

03:46 how do I relate the traditional 4x4

03:48 to a battery electric vehicle?

03:49 And how can I equate things like lockers and differentials

03:54 and low range crawling gear sets that an electric vehicle

03:57 doesn't need to do the same terrain?

03:59 And basically, distill that down to the enthusiast

04:03 or an off-roader in a way that they

04:04 can understand the differences, but also what's the same.

04:06 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:10 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:13 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:17 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:20 Got a little goat parade going on here.

04:24 Quite a lot of dirt on the windshield as well.

04:27 Hey, I'll just use the road, too.

04:29 Hey, we got a lot of goats.

04:34 I kid you not.

04:36 Cutest thing I've seen all day.

04:37 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:41 I kid you not.

04:42 There's a lot of goats up here.

04:43 Sometimes getting out there, you see nature.

04:45 You see things you weren't able to see.

04:47 On this trip, it was really fascinating

04:48 because of how quiet it was.

04:50 We saw bighorn sheep.

04:51 We saw deer.

04:52 We saw antelope.

04:53 We saw birds.

04:55 We saw groundhogs and prairie dogs and squirrels.

04:59 And it's almost like they hear the crush of the gravel

05:02 under the tires.

05:03 And that crush of gravel sounds like hoofs of another animal.

05:05 They don't care.

05:06 So when you have an internal combustion engine,

05:08 that's the noise that they fear.

05:09 So we ended up just driving, even at speed,

05:12 right up on these guys.

05:13 And they didn't seem to care, which

05:14 got us really close to nature.

05:15 And I think that's another part of it,

05:17 is getting out of the city and reminding yourself,

05:19 kind of slow it down.

05:20 Enjoy the simple life a little bit.

05:22 The part that's been not surprising, but really

05:26 kind of heartwarming in a way, is

05:27 getting to see the reactions from people as we've been out.

05:31 I mean, I've only been here a couple of days.

05:34 Getting to see the people's smiles,

05:36 the folks that actually know the brand already,

05:39 in a grassroots kind of way.

05:41 Folks that know it's something different,

05:44 and they're curious about it.

05:45 When they hear that it's a new American EV truck brand,

05:50 they're actually super stoked.

05:51 They have tons of questions.

05:53 Really, really cool to get to see those reactions in person.

05:56 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:58 Hey.

05:58 Hi.

05:59 Hey.

05:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:01 See that?

06:02 See how excited people are?

06:03 Right there behind you?

06:04 This is one of those things where

06:05 when you have a new vehicle like this,

06:08 you basically get to see the joy in people's eyes.

06:11 And everywhere we go, they just light up when they see the R1T.

06:14 It's pretty cool.

06:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:18 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:43 Right.

06:44 Here we are.

06:45 Day five.

06:46 Grumpy old man.

06:48 I think today was the fifth.

06:49 Tomorrow's the sixth.

06:50 Are you sure?

06:51 I think.

06:51 But--

06:52 Is it the nighttime?

06:52 That's what I wrote down, anyway.

06:54 I don't even know what day it is.

06:56 Oh my gosh.

06:57 Tomorrow is the day we tackle Black Bear Pass.

07:00 And that's going to be one of the most epic parts

07:03 of this entire adventure.

07:04 I think Frank and I are super lucky,

07:06 and we feel super blessed that we were chosen to be the pair

07:09 that get to do the best part of the trail.

07:11 There's a lot of other cool stuff going on.

07:12 But man, when you get to tackle Black Bear in a vehicle that's

07:14 never done it before, that nobody's ever seen before,

07:17 that's not even on sale yet, as part of your cross-country

07:20 first battery electric vehicle to go coast to coast off road,

07:24 that's a pretty awesome honor.

07:26 With that said, tomorrow's going to be awesome.

07:28 Let's go to bed.

07:29 Peace out.

07:30 Well, here we are at Black Bear Pass, 12,840 feet.

07:38 So for those of you who don't know, Black Bear is one

07:41 of the most epic drives, period, in all of North America.

07:44 And very, very challenging.

07:47 So the fact that we're up here with the R1Ts,

07:50 and we're going to complete it, is

07:51 going to show just how capable these guys are off road.

07:54 And I, for one, am looking forward to it.

07:56 So again, 12,840 feet.

07:58 How many switchbacks?

07:59 A lot.

08:00 117.

08:01 That many.

08:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]

08:05 My highlight was just yesterday, actually.

08:17 We were at Black Bear Pass, which

08:20 is at about 12,000 elevation.

08:23 And we actually went down it all the way into Telluride.

08:27 That was probably the most exciting, amazing, terrifying,

08:32 awesome thing that I've experienced in an R1T,

08:37 and off-roading.

08:39 Black Bear Pass is not the most difficult trail in the world,

08:43 but it is one of the most demanding,

08:44 in terms of skill level, and driver concentration,

08:47 and understanding vehicle dynamics, and things like that.

08:50 I thought this R1T acquitted itself quite well.

08:53 It rode really well.

08:54 It had enough articulation, even with wheels in the air.

08:56 The motors would turn at the same speeds,

08:58 sort of simulating a locker.

09:00 Throttle tip-in was really good.

09:02 The cool thing about it is, instead of a crawler gear,

09:04 you have regenerative braking.

09:05 You put that on maximum, and it'll hold you on a downhill.

09:09 And because you're going all downhill on the trail,

09:12 we actually gained tens of miles by the end

09:14 of the trail in our battery range.

09:16 So it was kind of cool to see that we were creating energy

09:19 going down.

09:20 You really want to be able to move an off-roader inch

09:24 by inch, not foot by foot, or half tire rotation

09:28 by half tire rotation.

09:30 You really want to be able to just walk over things

09:33 as nice and easy as possible.

09:35 And you go into this thinking, oh, there's only one.

09:39 There's no gearing.

09:40 There's no low range.

09:42 There's no levers to pull or buttons to push, hardly.

09:46 But you come off of Black Bear Pass, or Cinnamon Pass,

09:49 and California Path, the ones that I drove over,

09:53 and you start to think, maybe this

09:55 is the natural off-roading.

09:58 This is the way they should be.

09:59 And all of these gearings and low ranges and buttons

10:04 and so forth are elaborate Band-Aids for a powertrain

10:08 that isn't designed to go inch by inch.

10:10 You have to gear it way down to make it do that,

10:13 whereas an electric machine that makes peak torque at zero RPM

10:17 is ready to do that right off the bat.

10:26 There's been thousands of people over the last 10 years

10:30 and the last several years, actually,

10:32 that have really gone into getting the vehicle to where

10:35 it is right now, to the point where we're almost

10:38 ready to share it out with the rest of the world.

10:42 And I think if they were out here,

10:43 their smiles would be as big as ours.

10:45 It's been interesting for me is I

10:53 came into this trip with an open mind,

10:55 because I'm definitely curious about the technology.

10:57 And I want to be able to talk intelligently about it.

10:59 And I was blown away.

11:01 It doesn't feel like a science project.

11:03 It's a complete vehicle that feels

11:05 like it could have come from any manufacturer.

11:07 In fact, some of the weirdness that

11:08 exists in other EVs and the starkness of the interiors

11:11 and things like that, the Rivian feels warmth

11:13 and has a soul to it.

11:15 It's not this cold machine that doesn't want human interaction.

11:19 What they're making is a vehicle that people can willingly

11:22 embrace and be proud of and go, you know what?

11:24 This is me.

11:24 I can take it to the next level.

11:26 It's not for everybody.

11:27 And I get that.

11:28 It's something that's going to be a slow burn

11:30 as different generations come online.

11:32 But if you're an early adopter and you're

11:34 ready to take the plunge, I think

11:35 you can be really surprised with just how good it is.

11:38 Got some janky old snacks in here.

11:51 Let's see.

11:52 Ah, a Clif Bar, a super dusty Dust Ruffle.

11:57 Oh, these nacho cheese Doritos look good.

12:02 I bet they're not broken hardly at all.

12:04 What's your pleasure, Sean?

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