Rivian is still a young brand in the grand scheme of the auto world, but it has wasted no time proving it can build EVs that move like rockets. The early quad-motor R1T and R1S set the tone with big power and shockingly quick acceleration, and the latest quad-motor updates only pushed that idea further. Now Rivian is putting an official name and structure behind its most extreme work by launching RAD, short for Rivian Adventure Department, a new division aimed squarely at pushing performance and capability to the edge.

What’s interesting is that RAD is not really new inside Rivian. The company has essentially had this “skunkworks” group for years, quietly testing, tweaking, and learning in the background. Making it an official division signals that Rivian wants the enthusiast side of its identity to be loud and clear, not just something you hear about through a one-off record run or a special demo vehicle.

Rivian’s adventure credibility is not just marketing talk, either. The brand has already put real trucks into real competition, including a notable win at the Rebelle Rally, plus attention-grabbing appearances at Pikes Peak where it chased records and learned what it takes to make a heavy electric truck behave when the road turns technical and the clock is running. Those kinds of events are essentially mobile laboratories, and Rivian says RAD will continue using that kind of real-world punishment as a proving ground for future hardware and software.

One of the first tangible results is something owners can actually use: the RAD Tuner. For Gen 2 quad-motor R1 models, it opens the door to creating personalized drive modes by adjusting things like power output, torque bias, stability control behavior, and regenerative braking. Rivian also includes preset modes with names that tell you exactly where they were born, including Desert Rally and Hill Climb, which were shaped by the brand’s experience in off-road competition and hill climb testing.

The public reveal for RAD also had the right kind of setting. Rivian announced the division around the 2026 FAT Ice Race in Big Sky, Montana, and it plans to run a quad-motor R1S there wearing a bold livery. If you’ve never heard of FAT Ice Race, it’s basically a winter performance festival that mixes vintage machinery, modern performance cars, and a whole lot of snow-and-ice spectacle, right down to events like skijoring where a skier gets towed behind a vehicle.

The big question is where RAD goes from here. Rivian showed off a new logo and made the division official, but it has not outright said whether we will see dedicated RAD-badged trims sitting on dealer lots or if the team will keep operating as the force behind the scenes, quietly injecting new capability into future Rivians. Either way, this is Rivian planting a flag for drivers who care about more than range figures and screen sizes, and it suggests the brand is serious about building EVs that feel like they were engineered by people who actually want to go out and use them hard.