Everything you need to see from the 2019 Rivian R1T and R1S Reveal at the L.A. Autoshow in 12 minutes.
Transcript[MUSIC PLAYING]
- Please welcome founder and CEO Rivian, RJ Scaringe.
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]
RJ SCARINGE: We are so excited to be here to show our products. After working on these for years, being very quiet, taking a very stealth approach, not showing the details, not showing what hundreds of people were coming together to work on-- hundreds of suppliers were coming together work on. Making thousands and thousands of decisions around a set of products that fundamentally deliver something that we don't see in the market today-- a set of products that combine the ability to have great performance on-road, great performance off-road, the ability to fit your family, your gear, your stuff into the car, and at the same time, deliver incredible efficiency.
So with that, I won't talk too much longer, but I'm very excited to show you what we mean by Electric Adventure.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
RJ SCARINGE: So here, this is our R1T. We showed this last night. There's now some pictures out on this vehicle. Then next to me is our R1S, a seven passenger, three row SUV. And these two vehicles are sharing the same platform, deliver exceptional performance-- 0 to 60 in three seconds, great on-road performance, great off-road performance, and a ton of utility.
What you're first seeing here as you look at these is a very unique front end-- a very unique face. And these vehicles share this same unique headlight graphic and unique-- what we call-- daytime running light running across the vehicle. And as you look at this-- this unique graphic-- it gives us something that's unlike anything else in the market. When you see it, you instantly recognize it. You know, seeing it out in the wild, whether that's on the road, whether that's in the mountains, whether that's, you know, on a trail-- it's something that you instantly remember.
And of course, in that, sort of the key element you're noticing is this headlight graphic. And we call this a stadium light, and it houses our high beams, our low beams. And that's flanked by this cross-car daytime running light. And it gives it a sense of strength, a sense of position. And we wanted to make sure that when we did this, we created a face that was unlike any other face we've seen on an adventure vehicle before. It needed to make sure it was making a statement that it was a different kind of vehicle underneath, but still very confident and strong.
Now, interestingly, in addition to providing that daytime running light, this center portion here in both the R1S and the R1T is your charge indicator. So we're showing here the vehicle fully charged, but as the vehicle is lower-- less charged, you'd see this. You'd actually give you the indication also on the rear of the vehicle.
Now, in addition to the very unique graphic we see here on the front, the rest of the vehicle-- the surfacing, the design-- really is working to communicate a sense of strength, a sense of purpose, a sense of utility and function, but simultaneously, a level of sophistication and intelligence. And you can see in the body graphics carrying around-- the sheer surfacing, the very clean line work-- it's intended to make a statement that this is a vehicle that you can use. You can get dirty, but it's still a very intelligent, thoughtful design.
So in both the vehicles, in the front of the vehicle, we have what we consider to be a very large storage compartment that's followed by a cabin that invites you to get into it. It's comfortable. It's large. And what we've done is we've combined materials in that cabin. We've put some classically premium materials and integrated those with some materials that are very durable-- that can get worn on. You can get them dirty. They're easy to clean. The kinds of things you'd see in a ski jacket-- the kinds of things you'd see in outdoor gear.
[? And put ?] a very large front trunk, or a frunk, with 330 liters of storage. And we're going to show you this trunk opening up, and it can fit all kinds of stuff, whether that's your cooler, your backpack, your full-sized suitcase, even a golf bag. And this is something that's easy to get into. Loading things-- it's easy to take things out of. And very importantly, not only does it power up, it powers down. So if you're pulling grocery bags out, it makes it easy to access that storage compartment.
Now, in addition to the front trunk, there's what we call a gear tunnel. It's a storage compartment that goes straight through the side of the vehicle, and it enables you to put, obviously, lots of very long things, whether that's a stroller, a golf bag, a snowboard-- even a surfboard can fit into this side compartment. Now, in addition to it storing all those things, that compartment and the door for that compartment acts as a wonderful step. It acts as an area to sit on. It allows you to prep.
Let's say you're going to the beach and throwing on a wet suit. Let's say you're putting on your boots before a big hike. It also acts as a way to, as Larry was just showing us stepping on it-- if you're loading something onto the roof. It makes it very easy access the roof. In fact, we want to have the easiest vehicle in the world to put things on the roof of.
Now, in both vehicles, we've integrated a host of features that when you get to that adventure, whether you need to plug in or air up your tires on your bike, we make that very easy. Both vehicles have an integrated compressed air package. It leverages the air suspension on the vehicle-- 110 volt outlets throughout the back of the vehicle. And then we have a racking system that's really elegant. It's very easy to use. It collapses. It fits into the frunk, but the same racking system works on our R1S on the roof or in the bed rails or within the bed or on the roof of the R1T.
We have what we call a skateboard architecture, where essentially, the whole lower half of the vehicle-- all below the wheels-- we carry all the core elements necessary to drive the vehicle. So your battery system, your drive system, your cooling system, the entirety of the suspension-- all of our digital network architecture carried in this thin skateboard platform. And what that allows us is to fit all those storage compartments. Allows us to fit the front trunk. Allows us to fit the gear tunnel. Allows us to fit under seat storage in the second row, which I haven't even talked about. And then, of course, the storage behind the rear of the vehicle.
So the beauty, as I said before, of a clean sheet is you can do all these things. And you can leverage the benefits of a platform to put storage, put occupant comfort into a vehicle a way that we haven't seen before.
Now, in addition to all those packaging benefits, talk a little about the performance of the vehicle. At the core of the skateboard is our battery system. And our battery system-- the largest configuration-- largest battery pack-- delivers over 180 kilowatt hours of energy-- 180 kilowatt hours. And that allows the R1T to go more than 400 miles in range. And then R1S, with a little bit better aerodynamics, slightly further on a single charge.
And what that battery system is made up of is a series of modules. And you see this module here blown apart. That module carries 15 kilowatt hours of energy, and our biggest pack combines 12 of those-- 12 of those 15 kilowatt hour modules for a total of 180. And the way we're able to fit so much energy capacity in the floor of this vehicle is we packaged the cells very efficiently and managed the temperature of those cells with a very sophisticated thermal control system. And the battery management system, which we've designed and developed completely in-house, is very intelligent. In fact, it learns your behavior. It learns how you drive, and very importantly, it learns how you charge.
And sitting on the outside of both-- in the front and the rear of the vehicle-- we have what we call a quad-drive system. And that quad-drive system delivers 147 kilowatts of power per wheel. Each wheel is controlled individually by a single motor. And what that allows us to do is to very precisely send torque to any wheel in any direction instantaneously.
We can do things like torque vectoring. So if you're at a high-speed condition, the vehicle can feel very agile. If you're in a very slippery surface-- let's say you're off road. Let's say you're rock crawling. Let's say you're in the mud. Let's say you're on a dirt trail. We can send torque instantaneously wherever it needs to go. And we're sending close to 800 horsepower to the ground-- 14,000 newt meters of torque.
And what that allows-- in addition to this beautiful dynamic performance and the ability to place torque where you need it-- allows very brisk acceleration. So I mentioned before, 0 to 60 in three seconds. The vehicle goes fully up to 100 in under seven seconds. Top speed on the vehicles-- this is 125 for these vehicles. We didn't think that they needed to go much faster than 125. But the vehicles are very quick on the way to get there.
Now, when we look at the drive units, we see this very elegant quad-motor setup. What that also enables is a suspension architecture-- very importantly, a drive shaft architecture-- that gives us the kind of articulation that you won't find in any other vehicle, in terms of suspension articulation. And what enables that are these long half shafts-- these half shafts that extend essentially from the center line of the vehicle out to the wheel. And they allow you to have significant amount of wheel travel and enable the suspension system, which has an air suspension, active role control, and adaptive damping, to have a lot of adjustability.
So if you're off road, these vehicles can raise up to over 360 millimeters of ground clearance. Here they're sitting at about 280, so quite a bit of additional ground clearance. Now, if you're on a highway, and you want better aerodynamics, they can tuck down to about 230 millimeters of ground clearance, about 50 lower than what you see here. And if you're getting out of the-- in and out of the vehicle-- they can go into a new kneel making it very easy to get in-out with about 200 millimeters of ground clearance. So that broad range of suspension adjustability is all enabled because of the way the drive shafts are set up and this multi-link suspension in the rear and a double A-arm in the front.
Now, as we start to think about all those features that come together, it's important that we recognize it also enables this broad capability. And we talked about acceleration. We've talked about wheel articulation. We talked about center of gravity being very low with the battery pack being in the middle of the vehicle. What that drives is an approach angle and a departure angle that's very aggressive. So 34 degree approach angle, 30 degree departure angle, and in the case of the R1T, 26 degree break over. In the case of the R1S, a 30 degree break over because the wheelbase is shorter.
This also allows the vehicle to go up very steep gradients. It allows it to tow quite a bit. The R1T tows over 11,000 pounds, that;s 5,000 kilograms. In terms of its ability to climb, this is a vehicle that can go up a 45 degree gradient or down to a 45 degree gradient. That center of gravity really helps. The torque and the torque control really help with that.
--water. So the vehicle can wade through over a meter of water, which puts the water up to about here. We've also designed the interior and the digital experience to be very intuitive and to enable you to go on those adventures. So let's find the adventure, find the location, make it very easy to use the vehicle, make it easy to interact with the vehicle.
So we have a tile-based system on our center touch screen. It allows you to quickly move through applications. It allows you an easy in-vehicle portal into our cloud-based architecture. And that, as I said, connects into the self-driving platform, as well, which enables you to, really, as you get out there, get on the highway, take your hands off the wheel, eyes off the road, and relax.
The vehicles are available in the second half of 2020, so we're coming up-- we're getting very close to production. What you see here is what will be on the market. We've spent a lot of time-- thousands and thousands of decisions, as I said. Hundreds of people putting this together to make sure all the pieces are lined up-- the technology, the organization, the supply chain, the manufacturing system, our financial structure-- to make sure we can deliver these vehicles.
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