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Rivian R1T’s new tailgate patent makes for effortless loading and unloading
Electric car startup Rivian has submitted a patent for a “Swing and Drop Tailgate” door that would allow for easier access to the bed of the R1T pickup truck.
Rivian’s patent was inspired by a traditional truck’s tailgate door, which tends to restrict access to the bed of a pickup. The new design for the tailgate door utilizes multiple hinges, allowing several different trajectories of movement and multiple resting positions. The idea behind this patent is to improve upon the traditional truck bed door design, a concept Rivian feels has drawbacks.
“One drawback to this motion is that the tailgate now protrudes rearward of the vehicle, blocking the user from standing closer to the vehicle,” the patent states.
Other truck manufacturers have seen this traditional door as a drawback and have utilized a door that opens from the side with a hinge, a setup that’s pretty much identical to a regular door that’s used in homes or buildings.
However, Rivian argues that this idea also has its issues, citing the need for excessive amounts of space to open the side-hinged door. “Other motions of a tailgate, such as a side-hinged tailgate that opens to the side may allow a user to stand closer to the vehicle, but this motion requires significant clearance and does not allow the increased horizontal space that the dropped down tailgate provides. It would be desirable for a tailgate to be capable of more than one motion, along more than one trajectory, to more conveniently adapt to a user’s needs,” the patent’s description added.
Illustrations of the new tailgate patent from Rivian show the door having the ability to open much like a traditional tailgate, but also the ability to swing down behind the rear of the vehicle. This would give a person trying to gain access to the bed the ability to get closer to the truck, allowing for easier loading and unloading of items on the R1T’s primary cargo area.
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- Credit: YouTube/Auto INTERIOR
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- Rivian’s illustration for a “Swing and Drop Tailgate” design. (Credit: Rivian)
Rivian’s “Swing and Drop Tailgate” design ultimately allows the R1T’s tailgate to move in multiple different ranges of motion. This design brings several advantages, with its different movements and trajectories allowing users to not worry about the space available around them. Rivian discusses these advantages further in its patent.
“A swing and drop tailgate assembly is configured to undergo more than one motion to provide access to cargo space, for example. For example, a tailgate assembly may be arranged at a boundary of the cargo space (e.g., the rear of a vehicle bed), and is configured to undergo more than one motion to allow access to the cargo space,” the patent description says.
The initial production dates of the Rivian R1T pickup are scheduled for late 2020 or early 2021 according to RJ Scaringe, the company’s CEO. The truck has been available for viewing at a number of Rivian’s reservation holder events and will also be on location at the Fully Charged event in Texas in February 2020. The electric pickup sports an impressive 750 horsepower, three feet of wading depth, 0-60 MPH in three seconds, and a 400+ mile range on its highest-tier variant.
Tesla flexed one incredible Robotaxi metric during the Q2 Earnings Call that skeptics have to hate to hear. The company’s platform has already driven more than 380,000 miles of unsupervised ride-hailing across several states with no notable incidents.
During the company’s Q2 Earnings Call on Wednesday, Vice President of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said:
“First of all, I’d like to state that the Robotaxi program has been operating extremely well. Especially in terms of safety, the program has had an impeccable safety record. We have driven more than 380,000 miles of unsupervised Robotaxi, now across six cities in two different states. We have had zero notable incidents. Any reports have been of other actors impacting us when we were stationary. I like to emphasize how safe the operation has been so far. Zero notable incidents over 380,000 miles.”
Elluswamy’s claim over Robotaxi miles is a significant milestone for Tesla in the grand scheme, especially considering this is a sizeable number of miles without any incident.
0 notable incidents across over 380,000 miles traveled by Robotaxi
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla’s self-driving approach is much different than that of other companies. Tesla has maintained that vision is the only thing needed to have a solid and effective self-driving suite. Many self-driving companies utilize things like LiDAR, sensors, and other elements to improve performance, but Elluswamy sent a jab at those who believe it’s needed.
“Historically, the so-called experts have always claimed that you need LiDARs, radars, HD maps, and the entire kitchen sink to drive safely. Here we show that such is not true. You can have safe, comfortable, and affordable autonomy with just cameras. This record should be a huge validation of Tesla’s entire AI approach.”
The feat of accumulating this many miles without any driver behind the wheel is impressive. The thing is, Tesla is also doing this across several different locations, with varying traffic rules, pedestrian levels, weather patterns, and other important factors.
While Tesla is not ready to roll out an unsupervised platform completely, it is a slow but steady indication that the company is well on its way to figuring things out.
The company’s attitude toward expansion is slow, safe, and controlled, and despite this huge milestone, it will still be some time until we see Tesla truly unleash unsupervised rides more aggressively.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla flexes incredible Robotaxi metric that skeptics will hate
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
