News
Rivian R1T and R1S: Top 10 hidden features that make an electric off-road vehicle
Rivian came out of the shadows this week with a bang, unveiling two impressive all-electric luxury adventure vehicles — the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV. While both vehicles are armed to the teeth with cutting-edge tech, the R1T and the R1S are true-blooded off-road machines that are as capable off the beaten path as they are on paved highways.
The R1T and the R1S share the same platform, and both vehicles carry the brand’s no-compromises approach to utility and storage. Inasmuch as details of the two electric vehicles have caught the eye of the auto community, though, it should be noted that Rivian’s pickup truck and SUV have a number of compelling, almost “hidden” features that are yet to be discussed. Here are ten of the most notable.
1. Dual LiDAR and front-facing cameras for semi-autonomous driving
Rivian notes that both the R1T and the R1S will eventually be capable of Level 3 Self-Driving on highways. To accomplish this, the company has equipped the R1T and the R1S with a suite of cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, high-precision GPS technologies, and LiDAR. Images taken by Teslarati reveal that two of the cameras are found behind the vehicles’ rearview mirror, while their two LiDAR units are situated below the pickup truck and the SUV’s “Stadium” headlights.
-
- (Photos: Rivian, Christian Prenzler)
-
- (Photo: Christian Prenzler)
2. USB-C Ports, 110v outlets, and air compressors
At the back of the Rivian R1T pickup truck bed lies a set of 3 USB-C and 3 110V outlets, which would be an invaluable feature for owners who love to camp outdoors (the feature pretty much makes the R1T into a giant power bank). The built-in air compressor will also be useful for owners who are transporting bikes and inflatables during trips.
-
- (Photo: Rivian)
-
- (Photo: Rivian)
3. R1T liftgate and truck bed tricks
Both the R1T’s liftgate and truck bed are electric-powered, which gives the vehicle some nifty tricks. With the touch of a button, owners could open the pickup’s liftgate in either a 90-degree or 180-degree angle, the former being incredibly useful for transporting long cargo and the latter being a perfect way to access items on the truck bed easily. The R1T is also capable of automatically deploying or retracting its bed covering, which protects cargo from dirt and rain, to name a few.
4. Removable Carbon Fiber Aero Wheel inserts
Rivian’s R1T pickup truck debuted with a set of wheels that featured what appeared to be carbon fiber Aero inserts. Such design elements maximize range and improve battery efficiency, as observed by Tesla Model 3 owners who tested their electric sedan’s consumption with and without Aero covers in place. Considering that Rivian’s vehicles are built for tough environments, optimizations such as Aero inserts could go a long way in ensuring that the vehicles get as much range as they can.
5. Rivian’s “Launch Edition Lunar Rock” variant
While Rivian is yet to announce if it would release a special trim for its first production vehicles, similar to Tesla’s “Founders Series” and Audi’s “Edition One” for the e-tron SUV, photos of the R1S that we captured show a distinct branding — “Riv Launch Edition Lunar Rock.” As such, early reservation holders of Rivian’s luxury electric vehicles would likely find themselves in a special edition vehicle.
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
6. Ventless HVAC
Both the Rivian R1T and the R1S feature vents with automated controls, with the pickup truck and SUV’s air conditioning being managed by the vehicles’ fully-automated “Ambient AC” system. If the EV community’s warm reception to the Model 3’s air vents is any indication, there is a good chance that customers would be fond of the R1T and R1S’ “Ambient AC” system as well.
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
-
7. “Gear Tunnel” compartments
A key feature of the Rivian R1T is its “Gear Tunnel,” a storage space that runs the entire width of the pickup truck and is optimized to store long items such as fishing rods and golf clubs. That’s not all, though, as even the Gear Tunnel’s covers have hidden storage in them, which could fit a small bag. Considering the potential of the storage space, perhaps Rivian could even introduce a sliding rail for the Gear Tunnel in the future, which would make retrieving items easier.
-
- (Photo: Christian Prenzler)
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
8. Infotainment systems front and back
Both the Rivian R1T and the R1S are loaded to the teeth with tech. This is evident in the robust touchscreen interfaces on the vehicle, from the large center console in front to a smaller 6.8-inch touchscreen at the back, where passengers can set their preferences for features such as climate control.
-
- The Rivian R1S dashboard. [Credit: Rivian]
-
- (Photo: Christian Prenzler)
9. A cool, hidden flashlight
Being an adventure vehicle, the R1T and the R1S are fitted with a novel and very practical feature — a flashlight embedded on the vehicle’s front doors. Simple? Yes. Useful for the outdoors? Most certainly.
10. Eco-friendly flourishes
Rivian has made it a point to equip its vehicles with materials that are premium and eco-friendly at the same time. The floor mats, for example, are made from a thin, lightweight materials that almost feels like carbon fiber. The vehicles’ seats are covered in vegan-friendly materials as well. The company’s attention to detail is also notable, as evidenced by the subtle flourishes of the Rivian branding in areas such as the dashboard.
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
-
- Details of the Rivian R1T and the Rivian R1S. [Credit: Chistian Prenzler/Teslarati]
Reservations for the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV are now open. Interested customers can place a refundable $1,000 deposit for each of the vehicles here. Rivian expects to begin production of the R1T in 2020, followed by the R1S in 2021.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
-
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.
Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.
The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”
Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”
Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”
-
Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.
Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.
SpaceX’s massive investment in AI will make it a big winner, Argus Research said after the company’s successful earnings call last week.
The firm also upgraded shares to a Buy from Hold and set a $160 price target.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is currently recovering from its heavy AI infrastructure investments, as it spent nearly $16 billion in Q2 alone. The company did this primarily by monetizing high-demand GPU compute capacity at a much faster pace than traditional data center economics would suggest.
Company CFO Bret Johnsen said that SpaceX would be able to pay back anything on new deployments within a year.
There are plenty of ways the company can do this:
Leasing excess compute capacity through contracts
SpaceX has already built Colossus and Colossus II, largely for its own model training. However, much of that capacity is already rented out to third parties. It already has major deals with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI. These partnerships are adding billions per month to SpaceX’s spreadsheet.
-
High utilization driven by industry-wide scarcity
The demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity continues to exceed what is available for use. SpaceX can fill new racks quickly after they come online, so the capital deployed converts into revenue with minimal idle time.
Additionally, management and outside observers have described the new compute capital as behaving more like a cost-of-goods-sold than traditional multi-year capex, especially because of this rapid monetization pattern.
Capacity has already scaled from ~0.4 GW a year to 1.4 GW annually by the end of Q2. There are targets of more than 2 GW by year-end.
High incremental margins on the rental business once capacity is online
GPU cloud providers often operate at strong gross margins. SpaceX can monetize capacity that was already partially built or can be added efficiently. This means that incremental EBITDA margins on the rental revenue are usually high. This accelerates cash recovery relative to the gross capital outlay.
Parallel monetization of its own AI software and applications
Beyond pure infrastructure rental, SpaceX also generates revenue from Grok through subscriptions and usage, from X through ads, data, and other related services, enterprise APIs, and the planned integration of the Cursor coding tools acquisition.
These application layers ride on the same compute infrastructure and provide additional high-margin streams that could offset build-out costs. AI-segment revenue overall rose sharply to about $2.6 billion in Q2, according to Motley Fool. This was driven primarily by the infrastructure contracts, but the software side is also partially responsible.
Efficient, large-scale deployment and vertical integration advantages
SpaceX has emphasized the rapid construction of power and cooling infrastructure and favorable cost-per-megawatt economics relative to industry benchmarks in some disclosures.
-
Combined with its ability to scale capacity aggressively and the fact that many contracts start generating revenue within months of capacity coming online, the effective payback compresses dramatically compared with more conventional multi-year data-center projects.
SpaceX’s dominant near-term recovery path will turn the AI clusters into a hyperscale-style compute rental business for other leading AI companies while still using a portion for internal models.
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley
