The Rivian R1S is one of the most exciting new SUVs on sale today. Most owners have waited patiently to take delivery for years so it’s no shock when they almost immediately take them off road. Sadly, it doesn’t always go as planned and that’s the case again for one R1S owner that got stuck deep in the earth on Christmas eve.
We don’t have too much to go on here as the person who posted this photograph to Reddit says that it was forwarded to him by a friend who also happens to be a State Trooper. According to the title of the post, the “owner tried to drive thru the shores of a lake” and has “been frozen there ever since.”
From what we can see it’s clear that something went horribly wrong and it seems likely that the ground was far wetter when the R1S drove onto it than it looks in the photo. The rear wheel is completely caked in dirt and the entire SUV is sunken down to its rocker panels. It looks like the rear window glass is shattered too.
More: Rivian R1T Truck Owner Launches Boat Like The Boss Of Bear Lake
Was the driver unaware of the conditions or did the tide come in quicker than they expected? We’ve seen both of those things happen to other drivers this year. Sometimes it results in a days-long rescue operation. If this ground is frozen as the poster says, it could be a while before this Rivian gets out of the mud.
Perhaps the driver had a Rivian off-roading success story from earlier in the year in mind when they took on this particular patch of earth. In August, we told you about how one Rivian R1T pickup truck owner managed to launch his boat at Bear Lake in Idaho. We’ve included that video below.
What made that even special was that he did it while fording water up to the middle of the wheels if not deeper. Of course, the circumstances there, namely hard-packed sand, made that effort successful. Clearly, the owner of the Rivian sunken all the way down to its frame didn’t have that advantage.