Why Rivian’s ‘Camp Kitchen’ Was Genius (And Why They Canceled It

Off-roading refers to what you might call an afternoon adventure, maybe a whole weekend, if you’re feeling bold. All you really need for the trip is a reliable 4×4 and a tank of gas, or a fully charged battery. Bring along some snacks, a jug of water, and you’re good to go. Overlanding, on the other hand, could have you out there for days, or even weeks, with the key phrase being “self-sufficiency”.

Rivian Offered An All-In-One Portable Cooking Solution

The best look we’ve had at the Rivian Camp Kitchen comes to us courtesy of the team at TechCrunch, who were lucky enough to get their hands on a prototype six years ago, before the Rivian R1T even went into production.

The whole video is worth a watch if you’ve got a few minutes to spare, but to go over some of the details we really like here…

• Cork storage compartments to keep the pots and pans from rattling around on the road.
• The whole unit pops out of the R1T’s pass-through “Gear Tunnel” storage compartment, taking about a minute to deploy.
• A bamboo drying rack and resin-infused, paper-based prep surfaces are stylish, lightweight, and easy to clean.
• Rivian claims that you could run the burners for 45 minutes on a single mile of range, which sounds like a good deal to us.
• The electric kettle runs on its own power supply, so you can boil water without waiting for the stove to heat up.
• We really like the sink with a five-gallon, stainless-steel water tank tucked into the pass-through compartment.
• It even has a built-in bottle opener, for cracking open a cold one before turning in on a hot summer’s night.

Rivian was hoping to sell the cooking station as an option for around $5,000. You could put together your own camp kitchen from portable sinks and propane stoves for way less than that, but the Camp Kitchen would have been a built-in, all-in-one solution, included in the price of purchase. We’ve seen overlanding features that deliver way less functionality for way more money.

Rivian Scrapped The Camp Kitchen, And Gave Us A Fancy Hotplate

Credit: Rivian

After quietly pulling the Camp Kitchen from the Gear Shop, Rivian made an official announcement on the cancelation of the feature.

Rivian hasn’t clearly laid out the reasoning behind the cancelation of the Camp Kitchen, but we can look at what the brand did give us and take a wild guess that the initial plan was simply too complicated to efficiently produce at scale.

We don’t mean to pooh-pooh the whole thing, but when you promise us the coolest first-party camp kitchen ever built, and deliver a portable stovetop, it’s hard not to be disappointed. The Rivian Travel Kitchen is a $1,400 standalone induction cooktop that allows you to… cook. And that’s about it.

No portable sink, and a miniscule storage compartment. It’s essentially a hotplate. A good-looking hotplate with sleek surfaces and a cool all-black color scheme, but still, a glorified hotplate, costing several times what you would spend if you were to go buy a portable cooking station of your own.

Nobody’s Thrilled About The Stovetop

Checking in with unanimously disappointed Rivian R1T owners when this thing was released a couple of years ago, users in the r/Rivian subreddit had the following to say…

“Bought an induction top off Amazon for less than $200.”

“When I see stuff like this, I immediately think of cleaning grease off my range hood in my kitchen.”

“Without any kind of grip, induction pots and pans will slide all over the place.”

“This seems less functional than my $40 Coleman and a Rubbermaid bin of camping stuff.”

Our impression of this thing? We think Rivian said “Well, we have to deliver something,” and this was all it could manage with the time and resources available to produce a first-party cooking station.

Read the full article on CarBuzz

This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.