2025 Rivian R1S Tri-Motor Max Pack Review – CleanTechnica Tested

Rivian emerged out of stealth with a mission to bring adventure to the world of electric vehicles in the form of a full sized electric truck and one of the very few 7-seater fully electric SUVs on the market. They designed both with premium materials that were at the same time rugged and ready to take on the outdoors.

We decided to put that to the test with a true off road test of Rivian’s second generation R1S SUV over the course of 8 days in the greater Sedona and Flagstaff, Arizona, area.

Disclaimer: Rivian provided the R1S tri motor with the max pack to the author for a full week for the purposes of this review. 

To access the vehicle, Rivian has their own smartphone app that serves as a digital key for the vehicle. At the same time, it provides access to a host of vehicle functions including climate, charging status, and much more. They also have key cards that can be used to access the vehicle and are great to have on hand in a wallet as a backup. For more adventure oriented owners, Rivian sells an optional carabiner key fob for $250 that can be clipped onto backpacks and more for safe keeping.

Driving the Rivian R1S Tri Motor with the Max pack feels like piloting a spaceship. It has more power than the vast majority of people on the planet could reasonably use and it is not shy about laying down that power with a combination of three motors and a sporty set of Pirelli Scorpion all season tires.

These three motors put out a combined 850 horsepower and they do so according to the software profile selected by the driver. This could be any one of Rivian’s on-road profiles as well as innumerable combinations of off-road preferences that let drivers tune the experience to their exact desires.

The Pirelli Scorpion all-season tires on the R1S we reviewed are designed to optimize range while on road while still offering a modicum of off-road performance. We’ve ripped them on the road and while they won’t set any records on your local trails, we’ve seen Cybertrucks shred in sand dunes with them so they’re definitely capable.

Powering the whole setup is Rivian’s 141 kWh Max pack battery. Thanks to the efficient tires, the Max pack on the Tri motor R1S translates to approximately 371 miles of range per charge. This drops to an estimated 329 miles of range per charge if you opt for the All Terrain Package from Rivian which comes with more aggressive off-road tires.

Off-Road

We took the R1S out into the deserts of Sedona, Arizona, starting with Schneebly Hill Road where we found the Rivian to be more than capable of the trail itself, including a lightweight variety of obstacles along the way. Unfortunately it was a bit too rocky for me to feel comfortable rolling around on 20-inch rims with all-season tires. After a few miles, I turned around in search of smoother pastures.

Up near Flagstaff, we found some muddy trails through the forest that were a blast to explore. The Rivian’s air suspension makes adjusting the height of the vehicle to suit the terrain a breeze, and with some extra care on a handful of rocky sections, we were able to put down about 30 miles of trails before finding camp for the night.

Along the way we took a few pit stops for lunch and coffee and it was really nice having a fully dustproof interior with all the comforts of home, including 110 volt AC outlets that made quick work of our electric, water, kettle and coffee setup.

The AC outlets also came in clutch for the food setup, powering my portable fridge for the duration of the trip. It was great to be able to reach into the back and pull out a cold kombucha or throw together a refreshing salad for a snack along the trail.

Camping

We found camp for the night in the National Forest and were eager to test out Camp Mode in the Rivian. Because it was just a loaner, I opted to throw an inflatable mattress in the back with some blankets and call that good for the trip.

Enabling Camp Mode allows the Rivian to maintain whatever temperature you set throughout the night. It also gives you the option to keep the outlets on which is nice if you want to keep a fridge running or charge your devices overnight. Doing so does come at a penalty as it requires the vehicle to keep the DC to AC inverter running. So just be aware of the additional range penalty of keeping the outlets on.

We tried it with both the climate control on and off and found it to be more than sufficient in both modes. It’s an extremely comfortable and spacious vehicle to camp in, and while I wouldn’t recommend a 6-inch air mattress as the ideal solution, it was more than up to the task for a quick week-long trip in the Arizona high desert in the spring.

Interior

Stepping into the 2025 Rivian R1S, it immediately felt like a premium vehicle. The vegan synthetic leather high quality stitched seams scream quality even before you get in. The real wood trim is beautifully sculpted and tastefully finished in a range of trims to suit a wide range of customer preferences.

Quality is everywhere you look and evident in everything you touch. They did a fantastic job of blending the synthetic leather with wood for an overall feel that just resonates with their core brand values.

The R1S does a fantastic job of packaging, allowing customers to seat up to seven people with the ability to fold down the rear seats into a fully flat platform for additional storage.

As an adventure vehicle though, the premium interior almost feels a bit too nice to be taking out into the mud, dirt, and grime of real overlanding and off-roading trips where dust, mud, snow, and grime add their own special seasoning to the experience. Of course, the R1S SUV and R1T Truck are Rivian’s premium vehicles with more affordable offerings at more affordable price points like the upcoming Rivian R2 and R3 coming over the next few years.

Driving Experience

Getting onto the freeway in the R1S was a breeze. Its three motors and max pack battery translated to plenty of power to accelerate into traffic and to do whatever you needed to do once you get there. The suspension kept it tight and comfortable, allowing the driver to adjust the height of the vehicle if you want a little more visibility than you’re getting from the current setting, thanks to the R1S’s air struts.

For longer drives like my first leg of the drive from Ventura, California, out to Flagstaff, Arizona, I only had to drop the destination into the navigation. From there, Rivian’s onboard computer then calculated charging stops and I was on my way. With Rivian’s CCS to NACS adapter, you’re able to charge at Tesla’s NACS-enabled superchargers as well as the ever-growing array of public CCS fast chargers, including Rivian’s own Rivian Adventure Network fast chargers.

Enhanced Highway Assist

Hopping on the freeway unlocks Rivian’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). On pre-mapped highways and freeways, Rivian’s Enhanced Highway Assist (EHA) maintains a safe distance from the car ahead and takes over steering duty. The driver still needs to pay attention and be ready to takeover but when active, it does most of the heavy lifting.

Much like with Tesla’s autopilot, you activate the system by pulling the right steering wheel stalk back towards you twice and the system gives a small chime along with a visual alert on the gauge cluster screen to let you know it’s active. The driver can then change the set speed and simply monitor the vehicle as it slips into the flow of traffic.

As it stands today, Rivian’s Enhanced Highway Assist is less capable than Tesla’s current Full Self Driving solution as it’s not able to change lanes on the highway. Rivian has made lane changes easier than Tesla does, however, allowing the driver to initiate a manual lane change with the turn signals at which point the R1S temporarily pauses EHA. As soon as you get into the new lane, EHA picks up where it left off which is a really nice feature and makes the overall experience much more pleasant.

To ensure you don’t get complacent, EHA is constantly monitoring the driver to ensure they are paying attention  their eyes on the road and a hand on the steering wheel when necessary. If it loses confidence in what it’s seeing or moves out of its geofenced area of operation, it flashes panicked red warnings at the driver, asking them to take over. This happened 6 times on our 1,375 miles of driving, of which ~1,000 were freeway miles.

Overall, EHA does a fantastic job of doing most of the driving on freeways with the exception of lane changes and freeway interchanges. It has a full suite of sensors and Rivian has stated that they are targeting the end of 2026 for the release of their own fully autonomous driving solution for its vehicles. Time will tell whether they will need additional hardware or sensor upgrades to make that happen.

Exterior

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while that is true, the Rivian just looks like a streamlined high-end SUV on the outside. Its rounded corners, the boxy shape, wrapped in tasteful, adventurous colors that call you out into nature when your eyes land on it. Up front, a playfully designed set of headlights accents a wide light bar that have become a key design feature of Rivian’s brand.

They managed to pack all of that utility into a footprint that while still a large vehicle, the R1S still feels like it fits in urban environments. Many trucks and SUVs are maximizing the size of the vehicle just to have a larger presence on the road with EVs.

Rivian did a fantastic job of keeping the frontal area to a minimum, optimizing the R1S for aerodynamics and interior cargo space at the same time. The benefit of the hard work they put into optimizing engineering and design is immediately apparent as Rivian has managed to squeeze out a significant amount of range for each of its various pack sizes.

Hoppping outside the Rivian R1S, you get to see the air suspension in action. Drivers are able to choose from four different height settings depending on how they want to tackle the day’s adventures. Keeping the vehicle low optimizes for aerodynamics and easy entry. That can be stepped all the way on up to low, medium, and high suspension settings depending on what you’re doing. For our steep driveway and for off roading, I kept it in high and had no issues with any parts of the vehicle scraping.

Rivian offers a number of different wheel and tire combinations with the popular addition of all terrain tires. This maximizes traction off-road but comes a with a trade-off in the form of reduced range.

Infotainment

The Rivian R1S Gen 2 carries forward the dual display arrangement from the first generation R1 vehicles. It’s nice to have a central display behind the steering wheel again and it consistently provided helpful data around speed, navigation, and Rivian’s ADAS system.

Moving to the center display. It’s well molded into the center, with the lower wooden trim tucking around the display, protecting it from any erroneous bumps on the corner or bottom edge. At the center of the display it’s floating which I’m sure lends to better cooling of the high power high usage display with a nice wooden trim flanking the display up top.

The aesthetics of the displays and surrounds are beautiful. The graphics have a very polished, premium, and crisp feel with animated vehicles that make you want to play. These fun little touches give the user interface a whimsical feel that fits right in with Rivian’s ethos. They are playful, but polished. They take their vehicles and technology seriously, but know when it’s time to just cut loose and have a good time out in nature.

The R1S feels purpose built to support any sport, trail, or activity that you might imagine when wandering the halls of REI and helps make them a reality. It’s not instantly going to turn you into John Muir or let you do a through hike of the Pacific Crest Trail but it will do its best to get you to the trailhead.

When it come time to use the display, the operating system feels like a polished Android system. It’s not as intuitive as Apple’s iOS devices, but it comes close enough that most drivers will feel comfortable with it. Icons are easy to read and after a few minutes of feeling your way through the overall layout of the system, it’s easy to find the climate control or navigation display with little more than a glance to confirm the button’s location.

We did notice occasional latency when navigating between some of the different screens on the display but this was addressed in an over the air software update since our testing.

Charging

Rivian’s new vehicles ship with a CCS1 fast charging port which thrusts owners into the wild west of fast charging. With a wide array of fast charging networks and varying degrees of reliability and use, Rivian took it upon themselves to create a ranking system for public fast chargers. It takes a number of factors into account and Rivian’s navigation uses this ranking system to select chargers for your journey.

Unfortunately, even with Rivian’s software helping to streamline public fast charging for longer journeys, the results still leave a bit to be desired. The first fast charger Rivian’s navigation chose for me was a Tesla Supercharger.

Rivian’s charging port on the R1S is on the front driver’s side so I needed an extra stall to park in to charge. That wasn’t an option so after a few minutes of waiting, I moved on and eventually found a Chargepoint station a few miles down the road with a cable designed to be used with a range of EVs.

As Rivian continues to build out their Rivian Adventure Network the situation will improve, but the public fast charging landscape seems likely to continue to be a challenge until charging network operators and vehicle builders flip the switch to NACS. Until then, the lack of a robust public DC fast charging networks continues to be a barrier to adoption for any EV using the CCS1 standard, whether they have an adapter or not.

Overall

Rivian has built the R1S SUV to be an extremely capable, flexible vehicle that is equally comfortable running the kids to school or picking up a full load of youngins from soccer practice as it is out on the trails. It can be kitted out with some of the most capable off-road tires transforming it into a serious off-roading in rock crawling vehicle.

The interior space is thoughtfully designed with finishes that are durable yet classy for when it’s time to polish out the scuff marks and wipe the dust off the interior for a nice night out on the town.

As tested, the Rivian R1S tri-motor max pack hits the bank account especially hard at around $119,000 but you can get the R1S at a range of price points starting at $75,900. There are also a range of options to make it easy for new owners to customize their vehicle to their hearts content.

It’s not a budget vehicle, and that’s okay because Rivian is working to bring more affordable options to the market as we speak. The Rivian R2 and R3 were teased at a launch event a few months ago with the R2 expected to launch in 2026.

Everybody has a different vision for what they want their off-roading, outdoor, mountain biking, hiking, exploring, camping experience to look like when they head out into the outdoors. After running it through the wringer on our own adventures, we found the Rivian R1S to be extremely capable in a wide range of areas that make it a fantastic platform for whatever adventures you want it to take you to.

The Rivian R1S has been well equipped with thoughtful accessories like electrochromatic glass roof (optional) and a built-in air compressor (optional) that makes it easy to air up tires after a long day on the trails or fill up some basketballs before practice. Rivian’s mastery of software lets the driver customize the vehicle ride height, power outlets, camp mode in just about anything else you can imagine for exactly their needs.

All told, the Rivian R1S is the ultimate Swiss army knife for modern urban adventures. It can take you over the river and through the woods or through the river and over the woods to Grandma’s house depending on how you’re feeling that day. And we love it for that.

For more information about the Rivian R1S in any of its variants, head over to their website.