Rivian is getting plenty of attention in the car space these days, thanks largely to its modern-looking vehicles with excellent software, as well as the fact that it has announced an exciting road map for the future. Rivian vehicles in general, however, are packed with features, and not everything about them makes headlines. Of course, that makes sense, but after driving a second-generation Rivian R1S for the past week, I’ve found a variety of features that don’t get the attention they deserve.
There are dozens of little software features and buttons that make the experience of driving a Rivian that much better. Here’s a look at some of my favorite Rivian features that don’t get enough attention.
Driver presets
One of the advantages of a car like a Rivian is the fact that it’s incredibly reliant on software, and everything inside the car is motorized and controlled by software. That, of course, has its downsides, but there are also plenty of benefits to this.
The most obvious of these benefits is the fact that you can set the car up to be exactly how you like it, every time you get in it. If you’re the only person driving the car, that’s not all that groundbreaking — your car is always the way you like it. But if multiple people in your family drive the same car, this can have some serious benefits. Modern Rivian vehicles use phone keys to detect who is driving and can adjust things like seats, drive modes, and even the positioning of the fans based on the person in the driver’s seat.
The downsides are obvious — it can be a pain to constantly have to dig through software to adjust climate controls instead of turning a knob. But if everything is set the way you want it, you may not have to adjust things much anyway.
Kneel mode
I don’t think she would mind me saying this (she doesn’t read my work anyway), but my wife is short. Whenever I’m reviewing an SUV, she commonly describes getting in it as climbing. But while the Rivian R1S can’t get around physics, it can make the experience of getting in and out slightly easier for people like my wife.
That’s largely thanks to the Rivian’s air suspension technology, coupled with settings like kneel mode. With this mode active, when you put the vehicle in park, it’ll lower the suspension to the lowest setting, making it easier to get in and out.
Rivian goes a step further with this tech too, with features like Camp mode that will use air suspension to level the vehicle as much as possible, making camping inside it more comfortable. Camp mode also optimizes your car’s energy while it’s parked and powering camping accessories.
The iPhone widget
Modern car software doesn’t just relate to the software built into a car’s infotainment system. It also relates to how a vehicle integrates with your other devices. Rivian doesn’t use CarPlay, but it has made a big effort to ensure solid integration with your other devices. While using the second-gen Rivian R1S, I particularly appreciated the iPhone widget.
This widget allows you to quickly control settings like locking and unlocking, and opening and closing the tailgate and front trunk. To be fair, I did find that these settings sometimes didn’t work straight from the widget itself, but I’m also running an iOS 18 beta, and it’s entirely possible that had an impact. And even when that did happen, tapping on the widget quickly brought me to the right place in the Rivian app to control the setting I was looking for. In general, I found the app to be relatively well-designed and easy to use, and it offered access to all the settings I needed. Plus, it was nice to not have to carry around keys. Your phone is your key.
Built-in garage door opener
This one perhaps doesn’t get much attention because it’s not really that big of a deal, but Rivian has made an effort to make it that much easier to open and close your garage door when you get home. You can program garage door remotes directly into your vehicle, then tap the button at the top of the interface when you arrive home to activate it. It’s a small feature to be sure, but it avoids having to use those old-school remotes that clip onto your sun visor. I’ve seen commentary from Rivian users online who particularly love this feature, including the fact that it allows for the programming of multiple garage doors. It also works well, rarely, if ever, failing to open or close the garage door.
Charging status light bar
This one is specific to the second-generation model of the R1S and R1T. For these models, Rivian has added a segmented LED light bar at the front of the vehicles that can be used to indicate the status of the vehicle. The most helpful use case for this is when charging, as it essentially highlights how charged up your vehicle is without you having to check manually. Sure, it’s not hard to check in the app, especially if you have the iPhone widget on your home screen, which will tell you how charged your car is, but it can come in handy to be able to check your car’s charge at a glance.
After driving the R1S for a week, I feel like I only scratched the surface of all the features and toggles available for the vehicle. If you end up purchasing one, I recommend spending the hours necessary to dive through each and every menu, both in the app and in the car itself. Save your presets to your profile and help anyone else driving the vehicle to save presets to their profile. This will allow you to take full advantage of the powerful software on offer by Rivian cars.
