It’s not just enough to build a new SUV or truck — you need some engineers who take things to the extreme.
Take a look around during your daily commute, and you’ll see some pretty average machines for the most part. Most folks want something practical, something sensible, and something straightforward to get them where they’re going and back. Nevertheless, it’s not enough to just make that kind of vehicle. And the engineers behind the scenes, by and large, aren’t content to just make your average runabout. They want to let their hair down, they want to go wild from time to time, and they want to push the limits. Most automakers have in-house performance divisions strictly for that purpose: Think your M divisions, your AMGs, your Ford Performance and so on. Well, Rivian just announced that it, too, is jumping into that fray with something RAD. More specifically, that’s the ‘Rivian Adventure Department.’
As an entity, Rivian has already been taking its EVs racing since hitting the market in 2022, and its R&D has been thinking big even before that. Originally operating as a skunkworks (much like many of the other well-known performance operations we know today), RAD is dedicated to pushing the limits of what the company’s vehicles can do. That’s a pretty remarkable and ambitious goal in itself, considering the “standard” Rivian R1S and R1T already push out an eye-popping 1,025 horsepower in their quad motor configurations.
Showing that the company is already thinking about performance and the RAD idea isn’t completely new as of this past weekend, the RAD Tuner has been a thing since last summer. That piece of software allows end users to tune their throttle responsiveness, brake regen, torque distribution, brake assist, damping and more to effectively create their own custom drive modes, tailoring their experience just so.
What does this mean for Rivian’s production models?
At the FAT Ice Race in Big Sky, Montana, Rivian just took its internal development ops and brought it out into the mainstream. That said, it’s unclear for the moment exactly what this will mean for the brand’s lineup in the imminent future. Will we get a Rivian R1S or R2 RAD with even more bonkers power outputs? Will we get the same lively liveries the company’s using here to advertise the division? Could it be a distinct model in each lineup or a package with extra bits (kind of like Honda’s HRC developments or Toyota’s TRD trims)?
Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s always fun when a company brings more of its badass side — or its engineers’ badass side — out of the shadows a bit.
