Connect with us

Lifestyle

Rivian’s door flashlight uses the same 2170 battery as its car batteries, and that’s cool

Published

7 years ago

on

The New York International Auto Show is somewhat local to me (i.e., three hours via driving/train combo), so I was able to conveniently pop in for a bit during their media days last week and have a look around. That said, first on my list of automakers to find was Rivian with the goal of stocking up on plenty of great photos and learning a bit more than what I knew already from writing about their outdoor adventure vehicles.

Brian Gase, Body Engineering Director for the company, was kind enough to answer all my questions once I arrived at Rivian’s booth, and he even showed me the battery for the flashlight inside the R1T and R1S driver doors. It’s the same 2170 cell the company uses for its vehicles’ battery packs that are estimated to achieve about 400 miles of range.

In order to meet a 135 kWh capacity (the size of the R1S on the floor), Rivian’s batteries will contain 7,776 of the 2170 cells. If you include the extra battery in the flashlight, that makes a strong poker hand of quad 7’s (7,777) for total count. Pretty cool, right? (Thanks again, Brian for pointing that out to me.)

https://twitter.com/PrincessDeixa/status/1118957811285811200

Rivian R1S SUV at New York Auto Show 2019. | Image: Dacia J. Ferris/Teslarati
Rivian R1S SUV at New York Auto Show 2019. | Image: Dacia J. Ferris/Teslarati

Admittedly, I know there are plenty of very thought out features included in Rivian’s truck and SUV designs that should be given as much if not more accolades than the flashlight. For one, there’s the gear tunnel in the R1T that gets plenty of attention. While I was at the show, I overheard someone asking what could be stored in the long storage area behind the passengers that spans the width of the truck.

I thought Rivian’s answer to that was pretty creative, just like the tunnel itself. They had benches made into the shape of the gear tunnel with glass sides, all full with different types of gear one could fit inside. Funny enough, one of them was being used the entire time I was trying to take pictures (annoying, but no big deal and expected), so I came back later when they were all clear of resting show attendees. When I explained this to someone later, it was suggested to me that having a person on the bench was good for size referencing.

That’s true, actually. You can really see how much stuff can fit in the R1T gear tunnel once there’s a human providing proper perspective.

The gear tunnel in the R1T is both unique and a testament to one of the many advantages provided by battery electric vehicles, meaning there’s plenty of extra space to work with, and Rivian has taken full advantage in their designs.

Advertisement
-
-

The cabin of both vehicles is very spacious with plenty of legroom for passengers, storage is available underneath the back seats in the R1T, both frunks have impressive capacity, and there’s even a storage tray under the front seats of the R1S (not sure of the R1T), which I don’t think I’d seen before going to the show. Back at the gear tunnel, there’s another compartment in the door that can hold smaller items (like dog treats). The doors to the gear tunnel can additionally function as seats or stools to help load gear on the roof.

Rivian R1S SUV at New York Auto Show 2019. | Image: Dacia J. Ferris/Teslarati

I was also happy to learn what the Flexible Crossbar System feature was all about. I mean, it’s one thing to read that feature listed on their website, but quite another to see what it does. Essentially, the cargo rack is expandable/collapsable, and it locks into specially designed places on the roof and truck bed. In all, there’s a place to stand while you plug in the easy-to-install luggage rack. Admittedly, I’m a bit lazy about using the roof of my car for road trip luggage space because it’s such a pain, and I know I’m not alone in my sentiments. From the look of it, it seems Rivian’s designers have met a few people like me, too.

My time at the Rivian booth of the New York International Auto Show was enjoyable and productive, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the company develops. Here are a few of my favorite shots of the R1T truck and R1S SUV.

More about the other electric/hybrid vehicles that were at the show coming soon!

Related Topics:

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

Advertisement
Comments

Firmware

Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond

Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.

Published

23 hours ago

on

July 29, 2026

By

tesla-zoom-meetings

Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.

The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.

Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.

Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features

The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.

Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.

With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.

Advertisement
-
-
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific

Published

7 days ago

on

July 23, 2026

By

Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”

In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.


When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”

The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”

Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.

Advertisement
-
-
Continue Reading

Cybertruck

Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love

Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.

Published

1 week ago

on

July 22, 2026

By

Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.

The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”

The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.

The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

Advertisement
-
-

It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.

Continue Reading