Still one of the quickest pickups you can buyfall within the electric pickup’s assortment of powertrain options? Until recently, choices were limited to Dual-Motor AWD and Quad-Motor AWD and either the Standard, Standard+, or Large battery pack. Now, Rivian has tossed one more $10,000 upgrade into the ring—the Max battery pack.
The Max battery is structurally identical to the 135-kWh Large pack, differing only in its chemical makeup. The updated cell chemistry is said to yield a 149-kWh capacity without adding any mass to the vehicle. The Max battery is only available in the Dual-Motor R1T .. Upgrading to the Max battery brings no physical changes to the truck, but does this $10,000 bump in battery capacity equate to any differences in speed, handling, or highway range? Let’s dig in.
Our testing reveals that the Ford F-150 Lightning needed 4.1 seconds and the Tesla Cybertruck Dual-Motor Foundation Series needed 3.8 to reach 60 mph. Only the 835-hp Quad-Motor Rivian R1T and the 1,000-hp GMC Hummer EV 3X threw down quicker acceleration times than this two-motor R1T. TL;DR: Spending that extra 10 grand on the Max battery doesn’t make your R1T any quicker.figure-eight test—which measures acceleration, braking, and handling in one evaluation—are within tenths of a second between the Large and Max battery Rivian R1T trucks . Both trucks exhibited identical lateral acceleration numbers of 0.84 g, too.
During our test, the Rivian R1T Dual-Motor Performance with the Max battery gave us a 264-mile Road-Trip Range, which makes it the longest-traveling Rivian we’ve tested. The Quad-Motor R1T with all-season tires covered 243 miles before needing to be recharged, and the R1T with 21-inch wheels and beefier all-terrain rubber covered 228. The Hummer EV 3X is at the front of the electric truck range race, squeezing 310 road-trip miles out of its massive 205-kWh battery.