Rivian RAD: Inside the Adventure Team Behind Its Toughest EV Testing

Despite its status as a relatively new and untested EV-only brand, Rivian has never backed down from a challenge. It drove its Rivian R1T truck to the southernmost tip of South America and joined MotorTrend on a multi-day torture test along the TransAmerica Trail. It’s competed in the Rebelle Rally, Pikes Peak, and the FAT International Big Sky Ice Race in Montana. In an effort to help make sure its vehicles not only survived but thrived during all those hardcore events and adventures, Rivian formed an internal support team, but it never had a name. Until now.

That team is now officially known as the Rivian Adventure Department, or RAD, a group whose primary job it is to take the lessons learned from those experiences and apply them to the current crop of Rivian vehicles as well as those coming soon.

No RAD-Branded Rivian, Yet

We spoke to Rivian chief design officer Jeff Hammoud about the future of RAD, what it’s doing to make Rivians better, and what we could see in the future. But let’s get the bad news out of the way first: There won’t be a “Raptor fighter” or “Trailhunter competitor” coming from RAD. Not yet, anyway.

“I mean, I can't talk about how we'll apply RAD in future products,” said Hammoud, “But you could definitely see it at some point, it will be part of our future product line and our nomenclature.”

Although it isn’t committing to a RAD-badged vehicle anytime soon, if and when it does, Hammoud made it clear that it would have to be something meaningful and more than just a cosmetic exercise.

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“If you look at some of the brands that have done things really well—and especially as they have these more performance-oriented sort of sub-brands within their companies—for it to be successful, I think it really needs to be rooted in something that's real and not just a badge or something you slap onto it,” said Hammoud.

What RAD Is Up To

While it might feel like it was created overnight, RAD has always been around at Rivian, with the engineers and drivers that take the vehicles into the true unknown selected from within the company. “We just applied an actual formal name to it to activate it in a larger way,” said Hammoud.

The first event where Rivian chose to showcase RAD was at the FAT International Big Sky Ice Race, an event that Rivian has participated at in the past and will continue to in the future. The automotive culture that surrounds the event is one that fits with what RAD is all about.

Predictably, to date RAD has been off-road focused given its rugged R1-branded models, but it won’t limit itself to just playing in the dirt. “Think of it as like an adventure motorsports division,” Hammoud said. “We’ll do something that’s cool and relates to vehicles, but those experiences are not limited to one sort of sport.”

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As an example, Hammoud pointed out that although the R1S and R1T are both fully capable off-road, they could just as easily roll up to a quarter-mile drag race and clock a 10-second ET. “And that's the flexibility of our brand, and we use RAD to tune an R1 depending on either of those variables,” he said.

The RAD Recipe

The primary plan for the RAD team at present is to continue to develop software through the lessons learned so far in off-road racing and trail driving. Then, thanks to Rivian’s software-focused design and over-the-air (OTA) updates, these enhancements will be quickly applied to current and previous-generation models. An example of this is the RAD Tuner for the Gen 2 Quad R1S and R1T that was added last year. This software allows drivers to change over 10 powertrain and suspension variables to make driving more fun or tuned for the environment they are driving in.

As far as future places RAD will go to test and race Rivians, that’s up in the air. While it could easily look towards the American Rally Association series or contest the Mint 400, there aren’t any immediate plans for either. “RAD could,” said Hammoud, “but we haven’t decided on any of that yet, so I can't confirm or deny that we will.”

Wherever RAD ends up competing and whatever it does around a potential sub-brand, from CEO RJ Scaringe on down to those assembling the upcoming R2 and R3, there’s a pioneering, gearhead spirit at Rivian that permeates the company, one that RAD helps represent. “I think that shows up in how we develop our products, and even the products themselves,” Hammoud said. “That’s why RAD encapsulates that culture and mindset.”

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