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Rivian Delays Kick Turn and RAD Tuner Features Until End of Year
Rivian’s Kick Turn and RAD Tuner features are still missing in action.
When the 2026 R1T and R1S launched back in June, Rivian showed off two exciting new capabilities: Kick Turn, which lets the truck pivot almost in place on loose surfaces, and RAD Tuner, a built-in real-time tuning system for suspension and drive dynamics. Both were promised to arrive as free OTA software updates in September.
Now it’s mid-October and neither has landed. Rivian confirmed to RivianTrackr that both Kick Turn and RAD Tuner have been delayed until the end of the year. The company didn’t specify an exact timeline or reason, but said they’re continuing to refine the experience before releasing it to owners.
This isn’t the first time Rivian has taken a cautious approach with new features. The brand has a pattern of rolling out updates once they’re fully validated across all trims and conditions, rather than rushing them out early.
It’s a bit of a bummer for those of us who were ready to spin the truck in a snowy parking lot or fine-tune our suspension presets. Still, if Rivian is holding off to make sure these features perform as promised, that patience might pay off once they finally arrive.
Never buy a car based on future software promises. Learned that lesson with my 1st gen Quad. We were told quite a few things were coming, that never did!
That mostly your failure to manage your own expectations. My Gen 1 Quad is the best vehicle i’ve ever owned and while there are some software items I am waiting for, there isn’t anything missing that was actually “promised” by Rivian any more than “planned”. At some point the software updates exceed the hardware abilities and folks have these unrealistic expectations of buying a vehicle that will continue to be updated and changed indefinitely…..get a grip folks!
I still have my 1st Gen truck, and it’s still the best truck I’ve owned. That doesn’t mean promises weren’t made and broken. Early on, Rivian bragged these trucks came with 50% spare CPU processing power for future Level 3 self driving. As a company selling their vision built around their technology, it was reasonable to expect that to be offered at some point. Along came Gen2, and those future promises ended for completely acceptable and predicable reasons. Doesn’t mean Rivian gets a free pass from early adopters.
I bought in early on hoping Rivian could do better then Tesla on this front. It’s a good thing Comma exists. Again, lesson learned to only buy what’s on the vehicle at delivery. I feel bad for 2nd Gen Quad owners repeating history.
100% agree. Rivian has failed to deliver on promises. It’s one thing to talk about possibilities… or to provide vague vision on what could be in the future… But Rivian did neither of these. They promised many things over many years that have all fallen flat.(from kick turn… Twice!, Full self driving, improved voice assistant, text messaging, weather mapping, and more). This is not about expectation management it’s about delivering on what you say you’re going to do. People buying EV‘s are not the consumer that want to buy a truck 20 years ago. The landscape has changed in the expectations have changed. Especially for a 100 K vehicle. And anyone arguing that Rivian is over delivering is completely biased and in fanboy mode.
[laughs in Gen 1]