What happened
Shares of would-be Tesla killer Rivian (RIVN 2.84%) jumped out of the gate Monday, rising more than 6% in early trading before giving back about half those gains.
As of 10:30 a.m. ET, though, Rivian stock was still up 2.7%.
Image source: Rivian.
So what
You can thank car industry publication MotorTrend for the boost.
Echoing the famous Consumer Reports issue that scored Tesla's then-new Model S as the "best car" it had ever tested, MotorTrend had already declared the 2022 Rivian R1T electric truck "the most remarkable pickup truck we've ever driven." Today, the magazine went a step further, anointing the R1T the 2022 MotorTrend Truck of the Year.
Electric vehicle (EV) start-up Rivian is "rethinking how a pickup truck can be built, how it can be propelled, how it can drive, how its spaces might be used, how we could interact with it, and how to expand its target demographic," gushed MotorTrend. The truck's headlights "scream in your face" while its interior quietly boasts a "modern, minimalist EV aesthetic." R1T offers drivers "instantaneous torque vectoring" that "digs through sand, sloshes through mud, and climbs over rocks."
The truck's "unitized cab and pickup box ... opens up new design opportunities" such as a "transverse gear tunnel" that The Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil quips, "teenagers [will] love to crawl through." More practically, the R1T offers "314 miles of range, far more than enough for most road trips and off-road adventures."
Now what
Not all today's Rivian news is great, however. In a more nuanced review that appeared over the weekend, WSJ's Neil warned that the R1T is massively overweight at 7,000 pounds. In real world conditions, an R1T tasked with towing a heavy load in cold weather could find its range cut to 140 miles or less.
Despite it boasting "stupefying power and torque figures," Neil warns that the preproduction R1T he reviewed "was a [quality control] shambles, a real bed soiling," suffering from a motorized tonneau cover that "jammed in its tracks," a touch screen control system that required "hard reboots" -- twice -- and "misaligned body panels," to name just a few complaints.
Those quibbles may be the reason Rivian stock wasn't able to hold onto all of its early gains today. That being said, despite all the caveats, Neil ended up basically agreeing with MotorTrend that R1T "does [about a] zillion things ... better" than conventional pickup trucks, and that ultimately, "consumer demand is real" for this and other electric vehicles.
When you get right down to it, this was the news that Rivian investors wanted to hear.
