"Teardown titan" Sandy Munro and his wife Sue have been the happy owners of a Rivian R1T for almost a year now.
With the one-year anniversary of owning their R1T nearing, Sue – the COO of Munro & Associates – and Sandy released a video in which they offer their thoughts on the vehicle's strong and weak points, and the ownership experience in general.
Since taking delivery of their Rivian R1T, the Munros have put 8,500 miles on the electric truck, with Sue doing most of the driving – Sandy says he drives the truck occasionally but he's more frequently behind the wheel of the Ford F-150 Lightning and Tesla Model 3.
Starting with Sue's impressions, she says she loves the R1T and finds it an amazing vehicle that drives like a dream. She likes how the truck handles Michigan winters, noting that Snow mode is a lifesaver on slippery roads as it keeps the R1T glued to the road.
Sue is also a fan of the over-the-air (OTA) software updates Rivian is pushing almost every month, with one example being the Kneel Mode added in October 2022 (see video at the bottom of this page). This feature significantly facilitates ingress and egress, and is useful to have on a tall vehicle like the R1T.
Also useful is the gear tunnel, which Sue typically uses to store groceries because the bags don't roll around as they normally would in the bed. Speaking of which, Sandy says the Rivian R1T offers a ton of storage and that he has used every bit of space to the max.
That said, he doesn't recommend using the Rivian as a work truck and says the F-150 Lightning is better suited for that; the R1T works like a charm as an everyday truck, though.
Sandy Munro's wife says another strong point for the Rivian is the automatically retractable tonneau cover. Despite complaints from many owners and reviewers about the bed cover, Sue and Sandy are perfectly happy with the way it works.
You can probably see where this is going: these owners are very happy with their R1T. They only mention minor niggles, such as the lack of inductive charging for smartphones (solved neatly with an aftermarket solution), lack of AM radio, a parking sensor virtual button that can be easily mistaken for being turned on when it's in fact off, and other small things.
This brings us to Sandy reiterating his belief after tearing the R1T down that Rivian isn't making any money with this product. They paid around $74,000 for their R1T, but he says it's worth every penny of $120,000.
