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.
Lifestyle
Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley
Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.
Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.
Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.
Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:
“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”
Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.
The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
A public service announcement. https://t.co/NYa1IpKwBX
— Jason Oppenheim (@OppenheimJason) October 4, 2026
Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.
Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.
Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.
In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”
The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.
Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.
The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.
It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”
The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
News
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.
Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.
Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.
A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.
Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.
Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.
Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.
The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.
The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.
















