How is one of the newest and most exciting SUVs going to be abandoned in front of God and everyone? Off-road driving should never be taken lightly. A little mud and sand can turn a six-figure SUV into a lawn ornament in no time. No matter how expensive and capable the Rivian R1S is, it still got stuck in the mud, froze up, and eventually gave up.
The Rivian R1S took years to arrive, and only minutes to go
Rivian has had its ups and downs, but its only two models, the Rivian R1T and R1S, remain two of the most anticipated and exciting vehicles on the market. Rivians are not cheap. In fact, price increases and demand make them exclusive to the upper class. As expensive as they are, they are first and foremost SUVs.
The unknown owner of this luxury SUV used his Rivian exactly as it was intended to be used. However, the driver bit off more than the R1S could chew.
According to CarScoopsThere isn’t much information to go along with this wild off-road photo. The Rivian reportedly met its cold and gritty end on Christmas Eve. The user who posted this photo on Reddit says it was sent to him by a friend who is a state trooper. According to the post’s caption, the “owner attempted to drive across the shores of a lake” and “has been frozen there ever since.”
No matter how strong the Rivian R1S is, there’s little you can do when a vehicle sinks into wet sand. The photo shows that the Rivian’s rear wheels are almost completely sunken. Not only is a buy hard to come by when the wheels are so sunken in, but the R1S’s chassis is also one with the mud. This creates countless friction points and pockets for suction to occur. It’s not clear how this happened, but the rear window also appears to be broken. Oh.
This seems like a miscalculation
Again, we don’t have much information here, but it appears the driver underestimated the condition of the sand. The heavy Rivian R1S seems to have sunk like a stone through the air into the smoothness of the lake bed.
It could also have been a very common miscalculation in off-road driving where the driver failed to account for the incoming tide. The sand might have been walkable while the tide was out and treacherous once wet.
Would you give up your Rivian?
The craziest part is that the Reddit user claims the Rivian froze in the mud once it got stuck, and temperatures dropped when the record-breaking cold front swept the nation around Christmas. This, as the poster claims, caused the owner to dump the nearly six-figure truck. Imagine going to the lake at Christmas and finding a new (if a little haggard) Rivian R1S.