Lightning seats vs. Rivian R1T seats design, quality, luxuriousness, longevity - Munroe Teardown

Props to Rivian for sourcing vinyl seats that don't suck. I rented a Tesla on vacation a while back and while the seats were comfortable, they looked and felt like trash.

My seats have creases in the leather after 2 days. Thinking maybe I should bring it up to my dealer.

Wsl346 said:

Props to Rivian for sourcing vinyl seats that don't suck. I rented a Tesla on vacation a while back and while the seats were comfortable, they looked and felt like trash.

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Not sure if it because we optioned for the white seats in our Model Y but those seats look amazing. We have 7k miles on them and still look and feel fantastic.
My wife and I came from XC60 and C30 Volvo's which are know for excellent seats and they are close to that level in my opinion.

Some of my favorite seats though were my heated cloth seats in my 2001 Tahoe. I could drive all day in that Tahoe and never get uncomfortable.

queuewho said:

My seats have creases in the leather after 2 days. Thinking maybe I should bring it up to my dealer.

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It's all Lariat seats, not just yours. If the dealer does something about it, it'll just happen again immediately.

Coolbreeze704 said:

Not sure if it because we optioned for the white seats in our Model Y but those seats look amazing. We have 7k miles on them and still look and feel fantastic.
My wife and I came from XC60 and C30 Volvo's which are know for excellent seats and they are close to that level in my opinion.

Some of my favorite seats though were my heated cloth seats in my 2001 Tahoe. I could drive all day in that Tahoe and never get uncomfortable.

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I've got a P100DL out in the garage with the Ultra White interior that is approaching 80k miles. I'm continually amazed by how incredibly well that has held up over the years. I dare say it looks damn near as good as when they were brand new and I haven't owned it the entire time to know that it was cared for in any special way. In fact, based on meeting the previous owner and some of the decisions that person made, I have plenty of the evidence to the contrary.

I think this interior looking as good as it does is in spite of the previous owner and not because of them. That's a real attribute to the interiors on Teslas considering white seems like a terrible idea of longevity is important. In fact, most of the other people who I know personally that have the white interior also have kids and dogs both and all of them still look great and have held up incredibly well.

I get SO many more compliments on the white interior of this Model S than any of my previous Model S that had tan or black interiors. I've some other issues with the interior on these cars and the seats specifically but those are due more to comfort (or lack thereof) and not so much in the surface treatments. I really don't hear much complaining at all about the Ultra White vegan material used in the newer vehicles. I thought I would hate it but I really don't.

queuewho said:

My seats have creases in the leather after 2 days. Thinking maybe I should bring it up to my dealer.

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They all do it. Even the Platinum leather. The leather they're using these days is super thin and it stretches, creases and wrinkles within the first hours of real use. The much thicker premium leather in my King Ranch F-350 is 7 years old now and still looks amazing. It was designed to show wear marks and be treated like real leather. The seats in my Expedition Limited had visible wear and wrinkles right from the beginning. The arm rest on the center console has pretty well worn through and it's only a bit over 3 years old now. I agree with his assessment about the Platinum not being worth it as the primary upgrade is the seats. IMO, the current Platinum seat design looks like ass.

Rivian's vinyl seats are great, but I have to agree with all the observations in this video. Sadly, the entire truck suffers from the same sort of design inefficiencies as the seat. Lots of curious decisions to wrap and paint. It's a $2000 upgrade to get their Forest Edge interior and it's not just a swap of the vinyl material and stain color on the wood accents. No, there's tons of stuff that needs to be painted and wrapped differently. But lots of mechanical overthink and inefficiency like the seat belt attaching to the seat structure here. I think much of the design efficiencies come from lack of experience and far too long spent in a seemingly endless design phase as they tried to build a new car company of scratch. As pointed out in this video, it's hard to change any of it now. Best they can do is learn from this and hope the R1 platform ends profitably for them and they can do better on the next one. All things considered, the R1T/S are phenomenal vehicles. For a first effort of a new start up they hit it out of the park.

Tesla... Almost the opposite approach from Rivian here. The vehicles are incredibly simple. Seriously minimalist design, especially for the Model 3/ Y. Efficiency to the max. There is no luxury, just plainly stated minimalist design . As for their seats, the vinyl is a great product. They have had a couple variations of their vegan leather. Our older Model X had the white vegan interior that was truly indistinguishable from leather. Very luxurious feeling, loved those seats. But the material was thin and prone to tearing, especially the perforated surfaces. Aside from a couple small tears, the seats looked perfectly new when we sold the car after 4 years. Our Model Y vinyl seats are OK, they're different. They don't feel as much like leather and the surface texture just screams vinyl. They clean up nice, but actually seem to attract blue jeans dye more so than the seats than the previous car, although still not bad. I don't find the Model Y seats as comfortable as our Model X was, even though the seats are thicker and more padded. ...My 2014 Model S still had the leather seats before they went all vegan. The leather was nice, but the seats were not that comfortable.

The Lightning seats are seriously disappointing. I don't know how they justify such thin crappy leather in $80K+ trucks. I would seriously consider cancelling my order (for this and other reasons) except that there isn't anything else at the moment.

lightspeed said:

The Lightning seats are seriously disappointing. I don't know how they justify such thin crappy leather in $80K+ trucks. I would seriously consider cancelling my order (for this and other reasons) except that there isn't anything else at the moment.

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I will agree that that seat wrinkling issue sucks and shouldn't exist at this price point, but I do find the lariat seats very comfortable and have 0 issues with long drives in them.

I’d rather take comfort than looks at my age. I find that up to 3 hours a seat can feel ok. Beyond that and it becomes a new ball game. These are my tales based on 6+ hours of driving in a row:

Model X: Comfy
Model S: Back hurts
Ford Lighting Pro: Comfy
Rivian R1T: Lower back hurts