The hotspot for EVs
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to several state treasures. Great surfing, the Golden Gate Bridge, the wacky streets, coffee, and Top Dog in Berkeley, redwoods in Oakland, and all the tech and EV companies coming out of Silicon Valley, like Lucid, ChargePoint, and Bollinger. One of those companies, of course, is Rivian, with its HQ established in the heart of Palo Alto. It originally started in Florida as Mainstream Motors but became Rivian after relocating to California. Since then, the company has flourished, with two key products: the R1T, an electric pickup truck, and the R1S, an EV “adventure” SUV.
There are four trims of each, with the separating factors being motor count and battery size. They both boast a respectable range regardless of AWD, a good amount of horsepower, excellent software, cargo space, and a wide price range to appeal to buyers within all sorts of tax brackets. I had the chance to review a 2026 Rivian R1S Quad Motor, and therefore, a chance to see if the $121,990 MSRP SUV was worth the money if most of my time in it is spent in traffic. After seven days with it, here are my thoughts.
The Advanced Highway Driving Assist is a game-changer
Even with one pedal driving, sitting in traffic sucks. You’re on, and off the accelerator pedal, it’s a strain on the eyes (especially since Bay Area traffic tends to get up to 45 mph, someone cuts someone off, and the entire lane halts to a quick stop because everyone tailgates), and after about 40 minutes and only going about five minutes, it’s mentally exhausting. There’s no joy in making sure you don’t crash your six-figure EV SUV into someone else’s expensive car.
A lot of manufacturers are coming out with their own versions of semi-autonomous cruise control systems, like GM’s Super Cruise, Ford’s Blue Cruise–you get the idea. Rivian has its own version of that, which is aptly named “Advanced Highway Driving Assist.” Clicking the steering wheel dongle (for lack of a better term, I’m sure there’s a smarter-sounding word for it) forward twice will activate it if there’s a light blue icon that looks like cartoon hands near a steering wheel. From there, you can set a maximum speed, and the R1S quite literally does the rest. You can adjust the following distance between the car in front of you; it’ll start and stop as traffic moves (or doesn’t), it’ll keep you in your lane so you don’t have to worry about steering, and the advanced radar and LiDAR systems will slow down if they detect a car moving in front of them, too.
The only thing that was a bit sketchy was how closely it follows, even when I set it to the maximum distance. When someone would cut in front of me, which felt like it happened about every 20 seconds, the R1S would slow down to make space, but barely–and it made me incredibly nervous. If the car in front of me slammed on its brakes, the R1S would have little to no time to react, and while I’m sure the LiDAR and radar systems have a much more reliable reaction time compared to mine, it was nerve-racking. So, near highway junctions or merge lanes that involved people cutting in front of me, I didn’t use it. In normal situations, though, I used it as often as I could and loved every second. I could fetch my screaming kids a snack, help them reach the water bottle that they dropped for the millionth time, navigate the screen to play their favorite song (K-pop Demon Hunters’ “Golden”), without worrying about crashing.
Using the lane change assist was easy, too. You just click the turn signal in the direction you want to change lanes twice, and the R1S will make the lane change when it’s safe and then center itself. It was scary with the Bay Area’s aggressive and horrible drivers, but it did it effortlessly. Feeling and seeing the behemoth move itself so smoothly was amazing, and it made keeping my kids quiet in traffic so much easier.
It has over 1,000 horsepower, but drives incredibly smoothly—unless you change the drive mode
The R1S Quad Motor doesn’t brag about the fact that it has five more horsepower than the famed Tesla Model S Plaid. It’s very subtle in its advertising, with just a Gear Guard badge on the rear door, and a very small “Quad Motor” badge just below the normal R1S badge. It has teal accents on the exterior badges, and the calipers are the same color, but otherwise, the only people who would be able to tell it apart from the base model R1S would be people who are privy to the R1S trim levels. No wide finders, no special wheels, no changes to the interior, no spoilers, none of that—from the inside and out, it looks like a regular ol’ SUV…