Rivian’s New Kick Turn Feature Is More Than a Party Trick
Rivian‘s new Gen 2 R1 Quad-Motor all-electric trucks are the next iteration of the EV company’s flagship vehicle and come with a host of upgrades, many of them you can’t see from the outside.
The upgrade that will turn most heads is Kick Turn, a low-degree turning feature that is in many ways a response to the GMC Hummer’s CrabWalk. But while CrabWalk is mostly a party trick — it makes parallel parking easier, but it’s likely GMC Hummer do much of that — Kick Turn is intended to have some real-world use. Particularly: Low-degree turns on the trail, when drivers are off-road and working with limited real estate at a hairpin. There, the R1T or R1S can spin its four wheels to turn like a tank, eliminating the need for a three-point turn or, indeed, reversing at all.
It looks like this:
On a recent media drive in Tahoe, Rivian engineers explained that the feature has some limitations, mainly that it can’t be used above 15 mph and only on “certain types of terrain,” meaning dirt, ideally.
To activate it, drivers use the infotainment screen and encounter Gear Guard, the brand’s mascot, before using a touchscreen slider. Then, from either a full stop or a slow running start, drivers press two buttons on the steering wheel to tell the car which way to move, then press the accelerator. What happens next is startling at first — the truck excitedly spins itself right or left, depending on your command — and takes some getting used to. But, when mastered, can be used to navigate hairpins slickly or slalom one’s way down a twisty road.
One can also do a 360, or multiple 360s, in place, which could be used simply to reorient the truck, but, also, depending on the terrain, kicks up quite a bit of dust in the process. It’s not something a driver would want to do near a campsite, for example, which is the party-trick element, though Rivian engineers insisted it is not a party trick.
“It’s not a party trick,” they said at the media event, eager, perhaps, to stay on message for a brand and vehicle that strives to be explicitly useful. It’s also only available in the R1 Quad-Motor, so customers will already need to be getting the best of what RIvian can do.
Authors
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Erik Shilling
