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The only thing I really take issue with on this truck is that the spare tire is accessed through the top of the bed. There are two reasons you don't want to do

The only thing I really take issue with on this truck is that the spare tire is accessed through the top of the bed. There are two reasons you don't want to do this in a truck: 1.) The bed needs to be very strong because people routinely put weight on dunnage in the bed, and the door doesn't appear to be corrugated to withstand load. 2.) If you want to change your flat tire you need to unload everything in the bed, which will be a huge pain in the ass on the side of the road. Otherwise thank god someone is actually trying to capture this market. I really want one of these and can't wait until they're closer to market.

yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
>you need to unload everything in the bed, which will be a huge pain in the ass on the side of the road. Who says that’s even going to be possible? It sounds like a complete design flop to me.
- 15155 8y ago
  One could always place the spare in the cabin for situations where it will be less accessible. But yeah, major design problem.
  - yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
    That is a good point.
  - ianai 8y ago
    That’s a bad idea in itself, but maybe a necessity. It’s a safety hazard to have big or heavy things that can turn into projectiles or blunt forces in a cabin during an accident.
- chiph 8y ago
  Honda stores the spare in the in-bed trunk. But there's also a threaded insert in the front of the bed where you can attach the spare. Either because you needed all of the trunk room for tools/golf-bags, etc., or in case of getting a flat while you were hauling gravel and couldn't open the trunk.
Element_ 8y ago
I think the reason the spare tire isn't more easily accessible is because of the importance of aerodynamics in electric vehicles (It can't just be bolted underneath or to the back). Also the CEO mentioned in an interview that the spare tire can be removed to gain a large water proof storage compartment under the bed.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  It was fun watching car spares shift to mini-spares, and now many high-end cars don't have a spare.
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    In over forty years of driving I have had only one flat that wasn't just a slow leak. And the weather was so bad that I chose to slowly drive home, about fifteen miles, on the flat rather than change the wheel. The next day I drove another couple of miles to a tyre supply company and just had the tyre replaced. Not sure if I would be so quick to do it in a modern car with alloy wheels and an even mass distribution but the car in question was a tough old Volvo Amazon with steel wheels and the flat was on a back wheel; in the Amazon most of the weight of the car is over the front wheels so the flat really didn't stress the wheel much. That was about thirty five years ago.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      How many flats you get depends on where you drive more than anything. If you're only ever driving on well maintained roads that are free of debris then you will almost never get flats. Also just because a leak is slow doesn't mean you don't need the spare. If you had needed to be somewhere the following day (e.g. work) you would have put on the spare.
    - leetcrew 8y ago
      weird things happen sometimes. two weeks ago, I got a razorblade embedded in one of my tires exactly parallel to the tread. I think it happened while I was parking. I came out of the store only twenty minutes later to find my tire at 0 psi.
SteveCoast 8y ago
This is what the Honda Ridgeline does.
decasteve 8y ago
I agree. But the R1S is exactly the electric vehicle Tata-Jaguar-Land-Rover should have built. If somebody said this was the new Range Rover Classic it would be exactly what I’d expect. Elevate the roof at the rear end and change the window styling for the 3rd row of seats and it would be a new Discovery. Put the spare tire on the hood, extend the wheelbase, and call it a Defender.
leetcrew 8y ago
> If you want to change your flat tire you need to unload everything in the bed, which will be a huge pain in the ass on the side of the road. aren't you already supposed to unload your vehicle before you jack it up on one side? maybe it's different for "work vehicles", but my car comes with a puny little jack that's only strong enough to support the weight of the car when there are no people or heavy items inside. I suspect the hardpoint on the car itself isn't designed with much more headroom than the jack.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >aren't you already supposed to unload your vehicle before you jack it up on one side? Eh, maybe? You have to take the totality of circumstances into account. The jack (depending on the style, some are better than others) can probably take the weight in most circumstances. The vehicle can probably also tolerate the extra weight so long as it's not grossly overloaded or rusted. Whether you have any problems is going to depend more on the details of the location more than anything else. You could go on Reddit and score a bunch of virtue points for saying nobody should ever jack up a vehicle in less than perfect circumstances but I think in the overwhelming majority of real world situations you do not need to unload the vehicle.
- mikestew 8y ago
  The hard point of the car is part of the frame on every vehicle I can recall. And I recall a lot, because back when I was a mechanic I had to find those points to get the car on the hydraulic lift. One had to be careful of rusty VW Beetles as unibody as kind of a new thing, and a lift could punch a hole through the floor of a rusted Beetle if one wasn’t careful. Anyway, enough resume flouting. Yes, you should unload your truck before changing the tire. What if that 1000 lbs. is pea gravel? Still unloading it first, Dr. Safety First? If I had 1000 lbs. in the bed and I had a flat? I’d change it as is. It won’t be the smartest thing I do that week, and I am going to keep my hands out from breaking the vertical plane of the wheel well as much as possible. But I am confident that the solid point of the frame will hold it, and even the puny jack is likely stringer than it looks. But in reality, if I had a load, I’d just call AAA or a mobile truck service. They carry really nice heavy-duty jacks. Flat tires are such a rarity these days, I’d roll the dice on paying someone $200 to change my tire. In the end, if you’re that worried about it, do what we did when I was kid with our old ‘63 Chevy: throw the spare on top of the load when you’re done loading. Doesn’t fix the jacking problem, but at least the spare is accessible.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
What really annoys me is that the under-bed spare (or any "trunk in bed" type feature) makes having a proper drop in liner impossible. A drop in liner increases the durability of a pickup bed by an order of magnitude and is all but required for certain use cases if you don't want to tear up the bed in short order.
chewyland 8y ago
I'm surprised it even has a spare. Really surprised.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Why? To me this truck is like the Mercedes G Class, it isn't meant to be practical or realistic. It's a status symbol meant to perpetuate an image. It has to meet all of the expectations one would have of a pickup truck even though it will never be used like one.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    I would use the shit out of this thing as a pickup truck. It meets all my needs for something I can drive to a trailhead fully loaded with other hikers.
    - cptskippy 8y ago
      I'm not saying there isn't a market for electric trucks, I'm just saying that few people are in the market for an electric pickup truck in the $100k+ price range for off-roading. Judging by the specs on these things, I'd honestly be surprised if they could produce these for less than $125k.
      - yellowapple 8y ago
        Apparently the target starting price (for baseline) is at the mid-80k range for the large battery model and closer to 60k for the medium and small battery models: https://www.motortrend.com/news/2020-rivian-r1t-ev-first-look-electric-pickup-truck/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/2020-rivian-r1t-ev-first-loo... That might very well be ambitious, though, and even if they do meet those targets, that's still considerably more expensive than a Tacoma.
        cptskippy 8y ago
        I would really be surprised if they could meet that price point without making serious compromises in other areas. The battery pack cost alone is going to be a large percentage of total cost.

yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago

>you need to unload everything in the bed, which will be a huge pain in the ass on the side of the road. Who says that’s even going to be possible? It sounds like a complete design flop to me.

15155 8y ago
One could always place the spare in the cabin for situations where it will be less accessible. But yeah, major design problem.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
  That is a good point.
- ianai 8y ago
  That’s a bad idea in itself, but maybe a necessity. It’s a safety hazard to have big or heavy things that can turn into projectiles or blunt forces in a cabin during an accident.
chiph 8y ago
Honda stores the spare in the in-bed trunk. But there's also a threaded insert in the front of the bed where you can attach the spare. Either because you needed all of the trunk room for tools/golf-bags, etc., or in case of getting a flat while you were hauling gravel and couldn't open the trunk.

Element_ 8y ago

I think the reason the spare tire isn't more easily accessible is because of the importance of aerodynamics in electric vehicles (It can't just be bolted underneath or to the back). Also the CEO mentioned in an interview that the spare tire can be removed to gain a large water proof storage compartment under the bed.

greglindahl 8y ago
It was fun watching car spares shift to mini-spares, and now many high-end cars don't have a spare.
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  In over forty years of driving I have had only one flat that wasn't just a slow leak. And the weather was so bad that I chose to slowly drive home, about fifteen miles, on the flat rather than change the wheel. The next day I drove another couple of miles to a tyre supply company and just had the tyre replaced. Not sure if I would be so quick to do it in a modern car with alloy wheels and an even mass distribution but the car in question was a tough old Volvo Amazon with steel wheels and the flat was on a back wheel; in the Amazon most of the weight of the car is over the front wheels so the flat really didn't stress the wheel much. That was about thirty five years ago.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    How many flats you get depends on where you drive more than anything. If you're only ever driving on well maintained roads that are free of debris then you will almost never get flats. Also just because a leak is slow doesn't mean you don't need the spare. If you had needed to be somewhere the following day (e.g. work) you would have put on the spare.
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    weird things happen sometimes. two weeks ago, I got a razorblade embedded in one of my tires exactly parallel to the tread. I think it happened while I was parking. I came out of the store only twenty minutes later to find my tire at 0 psi.

SteveCoast 8y ago

This is what the Honda Ridgeline does.

decasteve 8y ago

I agree. But the R1S is exactly the electric vehicle Tata-Jaguar-Land-Rover should have built. If somebody said this was the new Range Rover Classic it would be exactly what I’d expect. Elevate the roof at the rear end and change the window styling for the 3rd row of seats and it would be a new Discovery. Put the spare tire on the hood, extend the wheelbase, and call it a Defender.

leetcrew 8y ago

> If you want to change your flat tire you need to unload everything in the bed, which will be a huge pain in the ass on the side of the road. aren't you already supposed to unload your vehicle before you jack it up on one side? maybe it's different for "work vehicles", but my car comes with a puny little jack that's only strong enough to support the weight of the car when there are no people or heavy items inside. I suspect the hardpoint on the car itself isn't designed with much more headroom than the jack.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>aren't you already supposed to unload your vehicle before you jack it up on one side? Eh, maybe? You have to take the totality of circumstances into account. The jack (depending on the style, some are better than others) can probably take the weight in most circumstances. The vehicle can probably also tolerate the extra weight so long as it's not grossly overloaded or rusted. Whether you have any problems is going to depend more on the details of the location more than anything else. You could go on Reddit and score a bunch of virtue points for saying nobody should ever jack up a vehicle in less than perfect circumstances but I think in the overwhelming majority of real world situations you do not need to unload the vehicle.
mikestew 8y ago
The hard point of the car is part of the frame on every vehicle I can recall. And I recall a lot, because back when I was a mechanic I had to find those points to get the car on the hydraulic lift. One had to be careful of rusty VW Beetles as unibody as kind of a new thing, and a lift could punch a hole through the floor of a rusted Beetle if one wasn’t careful. Anyway, enough resume flouting. Yes, you should unload your truck before changing the tire. What if that 1000 lbs. is pea gravel? Still unloading it first, Dr. Safety First? If I had 1000 lbs. in the bed and I had a flat? I’d change it as is. It won’t be the smartest thing I do that week, and I am going to keep my hands out from breaking the vertical plane of the wheel well as much as possible. But I am confident that the solid point of the frame will hold it, and even the puny jack is likely stringer than it looks. But in reality, if I had a load, I’d just call AAA or a mobile truck service. They carry really nice heavy-duty jacks. Flat tires are such a rarity these days, I’d roll the dice on paying someone $200 to change my tire. In the end, if you’re that worried about it, do what we did when I was kid with our old ‘63 Chevy: throw the spare on top of the load when you’re done loading. Doesn’t fix the jacking problem, but at least the spare is accessible.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

What really annoys me is that the under-bed spare (or any "trunk in bed" type feature) makes having a proper drop in liner impossible. A drop in liner increases the durability of a pickup bed by an order of magnitude and is all but required for certain use cases if you don't want to tear up the bed in short order.

chewyland 8y ago

I'm surprised it even has a spare. Really surprised.

cptskippy 8y ago
Why? To me this truck is like the Mercedes G Class, it isn't meant to be practical or realistic. It's a status symbol meant to perpetuate an image. It has to meet all of the expectations one would have of a pickup truck even though it will never be used like one.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  I would use the shit out of this thing as a pickup truck. It meets all my needs for something I can drive to a trailhead fully loaded with other hikers.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    I'm not saying there isn't a market for electric trucks, I'm just saying that few people are in the market for an electric pickup truck in the $100k+ price range for off-roading. Judging by the specs on these things, I'd honestly be surprised if they could produce these for less than $125k.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      Apparently the target starting price (for baseline) is at the mid-80k range for the large battery model and closer to 60k for the medium and small battery models: https://www.motortrend.com/news/2020-rivian-r1t-ev-first-look-electric-pickup-truck/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/2020-rivian-r1t-ev-first-loo... That might very well be ambitious, though, and even if they do meet those targets, that's still considerably more expensive than a Tacoma.
      - cptskippy 8y ago
        I would really be surprised if they could meet that price point without making serious compromises in other areas. The battery pack cost alone is going to be a large percentage of total cost.