Rivian Will Give You a Discount to Trade In a Gas Vehicle for a New R1 Model

Chris Teague
by Chris Teague

Rivian sells two compelling EVs that have garnered a good deal of happy customers, but they’re far from affordable. At around $70,000 to start, the brand’s R1T pickup and R1S SUV are out of reach for most buyers, even after the $3,750 federal tax credits for some models. The automaker is taking steps – small ones, to be fair – to make its vehicles more affordable, though, knocking up to $5,000 off some configurations. Oh, and you’ll have to trade in a gas vehicle to get the price cut.


Buyers who take delivery of a new Rivian before June 30 can get up to $3,000 off the R1T Standard + Pack, $4,000 off the R1T Large Pack, $5,000 off the R1T Max Pack, and $1,000 off the R1S Large Pack. Those sound like generous discounts, at least until you consider that the R1T Max Pack’s price tag easily crests the $100,000 mark.


Of course, discounts don’t usually come without terms attached, and Rivian is no exception. Any configurations not listed in that list are not eligible for discounts, and the vehicles must be bought or leased through the automaker’s online shop. You’ll still have to plop down a $1,000 non-refundable deposit to buy one, and the discounts are applied at the point of sale on the site.


Finally, only a handful of gas vehicles are eligible for the trade-in offer. The list includes:

·     Audi Q5, Q7, and Q8 from 2018 or after

·     BMW X3, X5, and X7 from 2018 or after

·     Ford F-150, Explorer, Expedition, and Bronco from 2018 or after

·     Jeep Grand Cherokee, Wrangler, and Gladiator from 2018 or after

·     Toyota Tacoma, Tundra, Highlander, and 4Runner from 2018 or after


Note that those vehicles are in direct competition with models Rivian sells, so the automaker clearly wants to draw traffic away from its ICE rivals. That said, it’s unclear how much the automaker will give you for your trade-in, so it would be wise to shop around a bit before signing for a new Rivian.


[Image: Rivian]


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Chris Teague
Chris Teague

Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.

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  • 28-Cars-Later This question has been posed many times and we discussed it in depth around the time of the ATS and JdN. Then GM had 933 dealers left over from its glory days and ATS was intended to be volume lease fodder for all of those dealer customers. But of course the problem there is channel stuffed junk worked against the image they ostensibly were trying to create when they threatened products like Escala (and the image they thought they were creating with ELR). Cadillac had two choices in my view at the time, either drop 2/3rds of the dealers and focus on truly bespoke low volume product or abandon the pretense of exclusive/bespoke and build high volume models as they had essentially been doing since the last 1960s. Ten years on the choice they made was obvious, hence XT everything... XT an acronym for Xerox This when pointing at Chevrolets and Buicks.There's no "saving" a marque which doesn't wish to be saved. In the next major financial crisis Buick may be folded or consolidated into Chevrolet but Cadiwrack will just become a wrapper over whatever Chinesium infused junk the new openly owner/controlled SAIC GM wants it to be. Cadillac been gone for a long, long time.
  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh you cant. the younger buyers do not want Cadillac's .. Older buyers want toyotas, lexus and of all things subarus ... all in SUV form
  • Billccm Accepting that they can't compete with Hyundai and Kia opens that door for increasing market share for the Korean cars. I need to find a few more grand marquis and figure out the best way to store them as I'm not surrendering to a cute yute of F150 for my daily.
  • Slavuta That car that they sell for $80K... Sell it for $50K
  • NJRide I miss GM offering sedans.I don't miss a plasticky, uninspiring one not changed much from Obama's second term. As I have said before, the A-Bodies may have been an epoch but they had a certain charm to them. These have screamed rental class from Day 1 and have a third-world level engine.Sedans died because they got too cramped and too derivative. Especially the Big 3's offerings. The fact that there was no real move back to them when gas was $5 in 2022 shows this to be true. Then again the Trailblazer/Trax are hatches not SUVs. Non-identifying wagons and hatches along with on-road crossovers will be the "cars" of the upcoming era.
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