- Two electrified trucks battle it out for dominance in the dirt.
- Rivian’s dual-motor trim struggles in some off-road scenarios.
- Both trucks lose range when driving off-road, but is one worse than the other?
Rivian R1T vs. Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro: Is an EV or Hybrid Better Off-Road?
When it comes to off-roading, power isn't everything
Off-roading in an electric truck can be very satisfying. With no engine noise, it’s easy to hear your tires crunching over the trail and the birds singing in the trees. The problem: Driving range decreases at a quicker rate when you're driving in the dirt and charging stations are usually reserved for more heavily populated areas. You can bring gas with you; EV charging is another story.
But when it comes to off-road capability, is it better to go fully electric or stick with a gas-fed hybrid? That's why we brought the Rivian R1T and Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro to the desert to test their overall range of abilities.
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The trucks
Rivian gave the R1T a refresh for 2025 that includes styling tweaks and new drive modes. Dual- and tri-motor models are available right now, but a quad-motor example like our year-long test truck isn't available just yet. For this test, we used a dual-motor R1T with the larger battery pack, giving us 420 miles of on-road driving range, the all-terrain package with 34-inch tires, and the Performance upgrade that ups output to 665 horsepower and 829 lb-ft of torque. The dual-motor R1T starts at just under $77,000 but our upgrades add over $20,000 to the price. Yowza.
Meanwhile, the Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro has a 2.4-liter four-cylinder hybrid engine with 326 hp and 465 lb-ft of torque. The TRD Pro comes with 33-inch all-terrain tires and the 18-gallon fuel tank that should give us 414 miles of on-road driving. You’ll spend just a bit over $65,000 to drive one of these trucks home off the lot.
Climb on up ... if you can
We started with an articulation test. Driving one front wheel up a steep rock until the rear wheel loses contact with the ground shows us how each truck's chassis flexes. More flexibility means the tires can stay in contact with terra firma, which is what you want when off-roading. OK, you probably want your tires on the ground at all times, but I digress.
Both trucks have similar wheelbase lengths, although the Rivian has a better approach angle, allowing it to climb steeper obstacles without fear of scraping the front bumper. We expected the contest here to be close, but the Toyota easily bested the Rivian as the R1T refused to climb our makeshift ziggurat. We tried it twice but the dual-motor truck just let the rear wheel with less weight on it spin while the other rear wheel remained steadfastly still. There is definitely some flex in the chassis, as we’ve performed this test with the quad-motor R1T, but we couldn’t exploit it with the dual-motor truck.
Next up was a hill climb, which the Tacoma conquered easily. The Rivian, however, struggled and couldn’t drive all the way to the top, merely spinning its wheels when the going got steep and loose. This confirmed our suspicions about the dual-motor setup.
Rivian's tri- and quad-motor trucks both have more power, but they also distribute that power differently than the dual-motor setup. The more expensive trucks can modulate their traction by both adding and deleting torque, acting like a mechanical differential locker. The dual-motor truck, however, has a brake-based torque-vectoring system rather than a traditional locker. While that’s fine when hustling the truck through corners on the pavement, shuffling power side to side across the rear axle, it does not help in off-road scenarios.
Put the power down
While both trucks have a Sand mode for maximum performance in the soft stuff, we found that the Rivian handled this terrain better. Sure, some of that might be due to its increased power and torque, but the Tacoma’s traction control system interfered much more during this test. Nothing is more frustrating than a vehicle cutting power just when you need it the most, and we'd often find ourselves flooring the Toyota with it refusing to comply.
On the other hand, the Rivian was happy to obey our right-foot commands, putting the power down smoothly and easily. It was pure joy until we hit a bump a bit too hard. The truck went into limp mode and we were barely able to climb out of the wash. The good news is that a quick reset — like, turn it off and turn it back on again — put everything back to normal and the truck completed a few more successful runs.
Time to crawl
Our final test was a rock crawl to test breakover and departure angles. We chose to go down obstacles rather than up since the Rivian had already shown us its climbing capabilities, and we figured we needed gravity on our side. Although the trail was narrow in a few places, both trucks were nimble enough to make tight turns, descending steep rock ledges without touching the undercarriage or rear bumpers.
At the end of the day, we calculated the number of miles we had covered and the efficiency of each truck. We also made note of the closest location to get fuel, be it petrol or electrons. The results here might just be surprising, so check out the video above to learn what we found out.