In a conversation with Green Car Reports Tuesday, Rivian spokesman Michael McHale confirmed that the Rivian R1T will offer more than just a built-in kitchen for camping.
The truck’s “gear tunnel,” a cargo compartment that stretches the width of the truck underneath the floor of the bed, and just behind the cab, is designed to house a wide range of built-in accessories that the company is working to design.
The first of these was a built-in camping kitchen, which Rivian showed at the Overland Expo in Arizona last month.
The gear tunnel has doors at each end, on either side of the bed that fold down to make steps into the bed. The kitchen pulled out of one of the doors to create a space to stand and cook at a single induction burner powered by the truck’s big 180-kilowatt-hour traction battery.
Rivian intends to build personal-use trucks for outdoor adventures, rather than commodity contractor trucks. One can envision fishing tackle boxes, electric coolers, toolboxes, and more designed to tuck neatly into the space.
Rivian R1T electric pickup concept
McHale also confirmed that the company plans a range of smaller, more affordable models based on the truck’s skateboard architecture “at some point—but not yet.”
He confirmed that the company is working on technology to allow one Rivian to lend a charge to another, but did not elaborate on how successful those efforts have been or whether such a feature could reach production.
Similarly, he would not elaborate on the in-bed auxiliary battery packs for which the company has filed patents, and which company founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has confirmed are in the plans. It’s not clear whether buyers who opt for the short-range 130-kwh battery, for example, could extend their truck’s range with such an auxiliary battery pack. The development could run in parallel with truck-to-truck charging.
With global giants Ford and Amazon on board as investors, McHale also said that Scaringe has zealously guarded Rivian’s independence such that those investments represent a minority of the company’s stock.
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