Tackling the Trans-America Trail--a route of interconnected
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (soft music)
00:02 - Dan, we can put you right here.
00:04 - Ah, look at that.
00:06 - Wow.
00:07 I first pitched this story, I think, 2017.
00:11 It's 2021.
00:12 I am in my 30s now.
00:15 A lot of time has passed.
00:16 - Hello, we're invading your space already.
00:19 We have to come check out the trucks.
00:21 - RJ, the founder and CEO of Rivian,
00:23 he came to our offices to show us the R1T virtually.
00:28 Him and one of his guys gave me a VR headset.
00:32 I put it on and all of a sudden in front of me
00:34 was this really cool pickup truck
00:36 that I've never seen before.
00:38 - You look like a Rivian's giving birth to you.
00:40 - So many people at that time, a few years ago,
00:43 were just making electric vehicles
00:44 that were commuter cars like the Chevy Bolt,
00:46 which is a great car, but not particularly interesting.
00:48 And here was someone with a vision to make a car
00:51 that people actually wanna buy,
00:52 a pickup that people actually wanna buy.
00:53 Something that can go off road,
00:54 but it'll be as luxurious as a Range Rover
00:56 and as fun to drive as a sports car.
00:58 - 24 year career, I have never seen a press car
01:01 that had its own can opener or a knife.
01:03 - Most automakers know not to give journalists knives.
01:05 - Yeah.
01:06 - I immediately started thinking of story ideas for that
01:08 and I was really into overlanding, still am,
01:11 and I kinda just stumbled upon the Transamerica Trail
01:13 and was like, that, that's what we're gonna do.
01:15 We're gonna be the first to do this,
01:16 to cross the Transamerica Trail in an electric vehicle.
01:19 (dramatic music)
01:21 (bells jingling)
01:24 - It does start now.
01:28 - That's it, our electric adventure is starting now.
01:30 - Let's do it.
01:31 - This is your two year dream.
01:33 - Yeah, it's been a while.
01:34 - First country in electric car.
01:35 - Wow.
01:36 Off road.
01:37 - Starting backwards, off road.
01:39 - The Transamerica Trail is kind of like
01:41 the ultimate great American road trip.
01:43 You're starting in North Carolina on the Atlantic Ocean
01:46 and driving largely on unpaved roads
01:49 to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon.
01:51 You know, it's kind of an insane thing to do,
01:53 in all honesty.
01:55 - Holy crow, we as Motor Trend are gonna cross the country
02:00 using back roads and no roads in an electric car.
02:05 Like, people are not buying electric cars
02:07 because they're going, well, what if I,
02:09 out of my usual routine, instead of going from home
02:11 to work, I suddenly have to pick up the kids
02:13 because my husband got sick, or my wife got sick,
02:15 or what if I have to go to the grocery store
02:17 and I run out of power?
02:18 We're going to the middle of freaking nowhere.
02:21 - I've been thinking about this project,
02:36 staring at the maps for more than a year,
02:38 and so to be out here on trail with the Motor Trend team,
02:41 with our vehicle team, has been super fun.
02:45 The piece that took us the longest to solve for
02:48 was just the appropriate daily mileage to hit.
02:51 How do we do it in a way that's aggressive
02:53 and time efficient, but also manageable
02:56 for the people who are on trail driving,
02:58 not wearing them out, you know,
02:59 making sure they're getting enough sleep,
03:01 stuff like that.
03:02 - Cool, we got questions.
03:17 - Man, I don't even know where to start today.
03:19 Long, long story short, we did our drive,
03:23 we left at seven in the morning,
03:24 we arrived in Lovingston, Virginia,
03:26 from Nags Head, North Carolina,
03:28 at seven o'clock in the evening.
03:31 I'm really proud of our progress today.
03:35 12 hours of driving is a lot.
03:38 Some really, honestly, great driving roads.
03:40 Man, I lost my train of thought
03:45 'cause it's late and I'm tired.
03:47 And, yeah, peace.
03:50 Also, who says peace anymore?
03:53 What am I like, (beep) 13?
03:55 Anyway.
03:56 - Hey, one Indian, we have a flat rear tire.
04:02 - So the irony here is we were just in the car discussing,
04:07 'cause I'm trying to watch my speed
04:09 'cause it's really rocky and I'm worried about a tire,
04:11 and I'm just saying to Christian,
04:12 what do you think, you know?
04:13 Should I be worried about the tires?
04:14 He's like, no, I think you could put on
04:16 a little bit more speed and not worry about them so much.
04:18 And then we find out we didn't even realize
04:20 we had a flat tire.
04:21 So, yeah, guess slower would have been better.
04:24 I am thinking this is the first of many tires
04:27 we'll go through on this trip.
04:29 These guys put the spare on and repaired the tire
04:35 that I thought I destroyed but didn't
04:37 in about 60 seconds is what it felt like.
04:40 I've seriously never seen tires come off a car
04:42 and onto a car so quickly.
04:44 It's like being in NASCAR.
04:45 So, yeah, we'll continue on our way,
04:47 what, 10 minutes after we stopped, would you say?
04:50 Yeah, this is incredible.
04:52 It's been something on this trip
05:07 that like the pavement just, boom, it ends,
05:09 and all of a sudden you're on gravel,
05:10 and you have to adjust your driving style
05:12 because as we learned the hard way
05:15 to our detriment, you can really screw up a tire
05:17 on some of these really rough rock roads.
05:20 But the Rivian has a lot of drive modes,
05:23 and there's really a lot of differentiation between them
05:26 because they have an air suspension,
05:27 they have this fancy hydraulic damper
05:30 and roll control system where all four axles are intertwined.
05:33 They change their pedal travel,
05:34 they change the regenerative braking response.
05:37 So the road changes instantly,
05:39 and you change modes with the screen,
05:41 and the truck changes instantly.
05:43 Before Christian is my co-pilot, I'm like,
05:45 Christian, give me rally mode.
05:47 Christian, give me drift mode.
05:49 Christian, give me all-purpose mode.
05:51 But there really is a mode for every type of driving.
05:54 It's like two different vehicles, it's wild.
05:57 Ah, well this is different.
06:05 So look at this, I think it says on there 1928 Ford.
06:09 So it's kind of funny, so here's our tie-in, right?
06:11 You ready for this?
06:12 Like, this was the most modern thing you could buy,
06:16 at least from Ford, because you know,
06:17 Ford kept on with that Model T right into the 20s,
06:20 long after it was obsolete.
06:22 But then he came out with this, so just like our Rivians,
06:25 like this was super modern, it had traditional controls.
06:29 Before too long it would have a V8 engine.
06:31 This might have gotten, at least from Ford fanatics,
06:33 the same kind of stares we're getting in our Rivians.
06:35 - I can imagine.
06:41 - Well, hello, here I am.
06:44 You know, today it really, really occurred to me
06:47 kind of how monumental it is, what we're doing,
06:49 and what these trucks are doing.
06:52 I mean, we are crossing the country,
06:55 off-road, almost entirely off-road, in electric trucks.
06:57 We're the first ones to do this.
06:59 And I told Christian, like when we're old men
07:01 and we can see these vehicles in a museum somewhere
07:03 and say, "We drove that car part of the way
07:06 "across the country, we were the first ones,"
07:09 or something like that.
07:10 I do plan to talk in this voice when I'm old.
07:13 I'll fake it, but I'll talk like this.
07:16 So, thank you for watching.
07:18 Good night.
07:20 - Our support, we're gonna get as much charge as we did.
07:28 These chargers appear to be really slow.
07:30 - So yeah, we didn't get quite as much charge as we need,
07:34 so we're just plotting an extra stop.
07:35 We're gonna turn off the route for a few miles
07:38 to hit a fast charger, juice up, and then away we go.
07:41 The minor perils of electric car travel.
07:44 So our 12-hour day is now looking like 13 hours.
07:47 What's an hour when you're not getting any sleep?
07:50 - I've been doing this for about 10 years now.
07:54 I've driven lots of cars.
07:55 I've spent countless thousands of dollars on fuel.
07:59 There's probably a sense of guilt
08:00 as we watch the world change,
08:02 you get more extreme weather events.
08:04 I don't fault anyone for it.
08:06 These are all decisions made way before our lifetime.
08:08 We inherited this system,
08:10 but it doesn't mean we can't change it,
08:12 change it for the better,
08:12 and hopefully leave a better world
08:14 for the people that follow us.
08:15 And so it's really great to me that vehicles like the R1T
08:18 kind of allow you to continue to do the things
08:20 you already love, to be outdoors, to explore,
08:22 to go off-roading, to haul stuff,
08:24 to drive quick on a good road
08:26 without the environmental guilt, the damage,
08:28 the noise, the air pollution.
08:30 It's definitely a hard transition I think we're making,
08:33 but long-term it'll be worth it.
08:35 I'm positive of that.
08:36 (car engine rumbling)
08:40 - We're just parking between the Jeep and that other car.
08:42 - Today, despite being, you know, 14 hours on the road,
08:46 it's tough to complain.
08:50 That's weird as that is.
08:52 The roads were so, so (beep) epic.
08:56 You really have to see this to believe this.
08:59 And I really think the next waves
09:01 are gonna be in for a shock when they see
09:04 how grueling this is and how, you know,
09:08 it's rewarding, but grueling.
09:09 It's like a good workout.
09:11 This is 43 days.
09:15 It is a endurance race.
09:17 It's a marathon.
09:19 It's a relay race, actually, if you really think about it.
09:21 It just made sense to not be selfish
09:24 and not do the whole thing myself
09:25 as much as I might want to
09:27 and to hand it off to my fellow editors.
09:29 I'm actually really looking forward to seeing
09:31 what people in the next wave,
09:33 like, you know, Miguel Cortina.
09:34 I talked to him on the phone yesterday.
09:35 He's super excited to get behind the wheel,
09:37 and I can't wait to see his reaction
09:39 and how he enjoys the trip.
09:41 - We've been in Virginia for a very, very long time,
09:45 but the cool thing to me is, like,
09:47 I look at these beautiful mountains in the backdrop,
09:50 these tree-strewn mountains where it looks like,
09:53 you know, nothing that doesn't walk on all fours
09:56 would possibly go, but that's what we've driven through.
10:00 It's given me a new appreciation
10:01 for hitting the back roads.
10:03 I mean, I always put Google Maps when I have the time.
10:06 I always put avoid highways, you know,
10:08 and take the secondary roads,
10:10 and I thought I was seeing the landscape then,
10:13 but boy, this is terrific.
10:15 It's emotional.
10:16 It's spiritual.
10:17 I think if everybody, even with what little I've seen,
10:22 if everybody could get out
10:23 and just drive this little piece that we've seen,
10:25 I think it would just change you.
10:28 (gentle music)
10:30 - We're gonna sit battery.
10:34 - So we got 299 miles of range.
10:37 I think, yeah, 199, but we're very low on saltwater taffy.
10:43 - I should have bought more. - This could be a real problem.
10:45 Should have bought more. - If they had a five-pound box,
10:46 why didn't they buy that five-pound box?
10:47 - I know, we ate a whole pound of taffy.
10:50 What is wrong with us?