Earlier this year, Rivian made a big improvement to the R1 Shop experience by showing a much clearer breakdown of taxes and fees when browsing available R1T and R1S vehicles. Now, they’ve taken another step toward making the buying process even more transparent.
Rivian recently updated the Payment Estimator tool to let you apply your estimated trade-in equity directly toward the purchase price of your new vehicle. When you open the estimator, there’s now a toggle to either request a trade-in quote from Rivian or manually enter your email if you already have one. Once that’s done, your estimated trade-in equity gets applied right away, lowering the MSRP shown on the screen.
There is a small catch to be aware of, though. If your trade-in value ends up being too high — meaning it exceeds what Rivian and Chase allow for a lease — you won’t be able to lease the vehicle. Instead, you’ll have to finance it. Rivian and Chase don’t offer the option to cut a check for excess equity, which is why leases with too much trade-in credit aren’t supported.
Overall, it’s a nice quality-of-life update for anyone trying to get a more accurate sense of what they’ll actually pay when shopping for a Rivian.
