If we had to rank all the upcoming electric vehicles in terms of how excited we are about them, the Rivian R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV would be at or near the top of the list. Sure, Porsche’s soft-roader Taycan wagon will surely be dynamite and Cadillac’s handmade Bentley-esque super-sedan delightful, but Rivian is moving the EV ball forward in ways like no one else, bar Tesla. Their vehicles promise not only sports car acceleration and truck-spec off-road capability, but innovative ideas like tank turns, multipurpose tailgates and pop-out kitchens that could leave other trucks feeling inadequate. (Y’know, if trucks had feelings.)

But you can’t make good on those promises without lots and lots of testing. As with every carmaker, the Rivian engineers have to torture the crap out of their prototypes to see when, where and how they’ll break…and then improve upon those limits. And as it turns out, that makes for some pretty compelling video — which Rivian recently posted to YouTube for all to see.

The video shows the R1T kicking rocks and taking names in the hot desert of Arizona: crawling up and down steep slopes, launching with four-wheel-drive vigor in the thick dust, and barreling down dirt roads at speeds that make us sad we haven’t had the chance to do any high-speed desert driving in ages.

The coronavirus pandemic has led Rivian to push production of the R1T back to the 2021 calendar year, but as long as the carmaker keeps on putting out snackable content like this for us to gaze upon, we don’t mind. At least, not too much.

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