R1T Truck

Make
Rivian
Segment
Sports Car

Launching a boat with a traditional truck and trailer is hard enough for some boaters.

Speaking from experience, watching the average 'boat ramp champ' line up to attempt a boat launch is comical. The outstanding Rivian R1T doesn't have to play that game. Since this EV truck has no air intake or exhaust to worry about, it was seen in Idaho casually backing into a lake and launching a 23-foot boat without becoming a total flood loss.

If you take a Rivian out boating, all you need is the correct settings, a steely resolve, and a shallow-angle shoreline, and you can back a boat or jetski right in there. This move could have gone either way, but since it was a success, it sure looks like the Rivian can go much deeper than fuel-burning trucks.

Thanks to the quad-motor powertrain with one electric motor on each wheel, the Rivian R1T is incredible on all surfaces, and the 1,200-horsepower variant will be even crazier.

The EV truck's intelligent all-wheel-drive system has advanced torque vectoring, making it a total beast off-road and offshore.

Captured on video at Bear Lake, Idaho, the peaceful lake is perfect for leisure with a sandy coastline and gradual slope into the water. The geography also lends itself to driving into the lake with an EV truck until your boat is deep enough to float off the trailer. Any boater could have easily gone to the local boat launch ramp, but no one has time to wait for hours while other drivers figure out how to reverse a trailer.

It isn't the first time we've seen a truck launch a boat like this, but we are talking lifted rigs with snorkels to prevent hydro-locking the engine. This is an entirely stock Rivian R1T, and it appears the truck's owner did a bit of math before he became a YouTube hit for all the wrong reasons.

"Once I knew the [Rivian] R1T maximum water fording height was over 43 inches, I was instantly curious of whether I could launch my boat in Bear Lake," he stated on YouTube. "Deep Sand mode truly ended up being better for deep sand than just normal All Purpose mode. Specifically, it gave more power to the front wheels."

And considering, he was towing around 4,500 pounds, the traction is a concern, but so is the buoyancy of the R1T. At some point, the vehicle will start to float, and four-wheel drive traction isn't going to save it.

"I was most nervous about just losing traction and being able to pull the boat out because the R1T would float. But we didn't get close to that happening. The R1T always had plenty of traction even though I wanted to get it over as quickly as possible."

The owner didn't consider this successful launch a fluke and apparently tried it three or four more times. We're not sure this Rivian R1T feature was ever mentioned in marketing materials, but we're sure the engineers were more concerned with driving in sand versus towing boats into a lake.