How would you like to have a kitchen in your pickup when you go camping? Well, according to the Road Show newsletter (by Kyle Hyatt), Rivian’s camp kitchen may be easy on the environment, but not on your wallet
The kitchen slides out from the R1T’s gear tunnel and is powered by the vehicle battery.
Sure, the R1T with a bed tent and a slide-out camp kitchen looks dope, but it’ll cost you.
Rivian
Remember way back in the beforetimes when Rivian showed off its R1T electric pickup truck at the Overland West show? The big standout feature of the truck at that show was the slide-out camp kitchen that used the space in the pass-through gear tunnel to house a built-in stove, sink and electric kettle along with tons of storage for food and cooking gear.
It looked rad, and we’ve been curious since then whether or not Rivian would actually offer the camp kitchen for sale or if it was just a gimmick for the show. Well, now, thanks to Rivian giving us a sneak peek at its configurator, we know, and we know how much it’ll cost. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.
So, yeah, the camp kitchen is awesome, but it will set you back an eye-watering $5,000 if you buy it from Rivian. If you think that’s a lot for a camp sink with a 5-gallon tank, an electric stove, a kettle and some cabinetry, you’re right. Still, the integration is clean, and the fact that it’s all powered electrically by your vehicle’s big battery is cool, especially if you’re all about carbon-neutral camping or something.
Can you build out a similar rig for way less money? Probably. The tricky part will be getting the sliding counter/storage apparatus to work but, if the R1T proves popular, we suspect that there will be a bevy of overlanding gear companies champing at the bit to sort that out. Ditto for the appliances. Propane is a clean-burning fuel that won’t eat into your battery, so that seems a likely route for the aftermarket to go.
Of course, you may not want to give up that useful gear tunnel. When it’s not full of kitchen, it’s a perfect place to safely store recovery gear or even gear bags if you want to keep the interior uncluttered and the bed free for other stuff.
In case you forgot, the R1T Launch Edition starts at just over $75,000 and goes way up from there. For example, if you want the 400-mile-capable battery pack, that’ll be another $10,000 (and a wait until January of 2022). The Launch Edition is limited and will be available starting in June of 2021.
