Please Do Not Launch Your Rivian R1T Backwards

Earlier this year, I got the chance to
go backside the wheel Rivian’south 2 large, fast trucks. The R1S and R1T are the fastest-accelerating vehicles I’ve ever driven, with enough power and grip to fuse your spine and ribcage to those comfortable leather seats. Just at present, I hear y’all’re all out there
flooring these things in reverse for shits and giggles. And so I come to you lot, on my knees, with a apprehensive request: Please finish this.

Yes, I’chiliad sure it’s fun. Information technology’southward a slap-up party play tricks when you lot desire to become all

Baby Driver

on your friends, fooling them into thinking you’ll go one direction and then actually speeding off in the other. But information technology’south also a bad idea, and I tin explain why with math. Also, just, basic logic.

Allow’s start with the math. In instrumented testing, a
Rivian R1S
or
R1T
hits lx miles an hour in iii.1 seconds. Assuming that acceleration is consistent, we’re looking at a rate of acceleration of 28.iv feet per second squared. That means that, for every second your pes stays planted on the skinny pedal, your Rivian is accelerating 28.4 feet per second faster than the final second. Make sense?

But, according to owners, your big fancy EV
tops out at xvi miles an hr in reverse. At that calculated rate of acceleration, it’ll take you but over three quarters of a second to hit that maximum speed. It’ll be a
terrifying
three quarters of a 2nd, if you idea you were in Bulldoze rather than Contrary, but at to the lowest degree it won’t terminal that long.

In that time, however, you’ll have traveled nearly 10 feet. Remember that objects in your mirror are ever closer than they appear, and now they’re coming at you more speedily than you may have expected — and
more rapidly than you can accurately perceive and respond to. That’south where the logic role of this comes into play: C’mon, really? You’re at the helm of over 7,000 lbs of metal here, you desire to floor it in the one direction your eyes physically can’t see?

Please, end this. Launch your trucks forwards, in the same direction your eyes get. Yous’ll take more fun, feel the acceleration for more time, and stand less of a chance of running over your kid’s Large Bike in the procedure. I cannot believe I have to ask this.