SoFlo Custom Jeeps, a tuning company based in South Florida, is best known for its monstrous off-roading trucks, some of them with six wheels, but it had never worked with EVs before. Well, until recently. The high-rolling Rivian R1T pictured here may well be the first of its kind.
According to the company, designing a lift kit for an electric vehicle like this one is a major challenge – not just because all components have to be able to withstand the battery weight for years. With the R1T, the added difficulty is that it uses four motors to drive its four wheels independently, but the motors themselves reside outside the wheels. To increase ground clearance, new mount points must be found for the motors and aftermarket parts must be used to reconnect them to the wheels.
Even so, the company has already succeeded in lifting the truck by an impressive 104 mm (4 inches). Doing so enabled replacing the stock wheels with ones clad in 38-inch tires. There is no way the standard arches could fit them, but it seems like an easy enough fix.
Watch the video to see the lifted R1T prototype go up against a petrol-powered Ram TRX in a drag race.