In this edition, the UX team is testing the Rivian R1T. Its system offers an HMI experience that manages to be both familiar and unique in fairly equal parts. The in-vehicle experience bears no small resemblance to that of a modern Tesla

Overall, the vehicle provides a commendable HMI experience from a newcomer manufacturer, which is certainly comparable to offerings from other more stablished OEMs and, with improvements, has the potential to be a leader among peers.

SBD’s HMI UX Evaluation Report Series provides a comprehensive assessment of the latest systems released globally. Over the course of this year, our team of HMI and UX experts will benchmark six vehicles from Europe, the US, China, and Japan to understand who is leading in the space, and who is falling behind. Each report helps provide an indication of what the final customer experience of each vehicle should be. In doing so, the team thoroughly scores and analyses them across several HMI domains.

These include the vehicle’s ADAS, infotainment, navigation, voice recognition, connected feature, and convenience capabilities. Our experts assess the reliability of each domain - testing their repeated usability, evaluating whether their solutions provide the features that customers expect and need, and gauging how easy these features are to learn. Likewise, the potential perceived quality of individual HMI components is measured against its impact on the overall customer experience.