Rivian’s Teen Driver Mode Is The Industry Admitting 1,000+ HP EVs Have A Problem Tesla Never Solved
Rivian is building a software fix for a problem that’s been sitting in plain sight since the R1T shipped with 1,025 horsepower: what happens when a teenager gets the keys. Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid told The Drive that Teen Mode and Valet Mode are coming to every Rivian model, including the R1T, R1S, and the upcoming R2, in early 2027.
Teen Mode will let parents create age-gated driver profiles that cap horsepower using preset tiers, shut off off-road driving modes, and lock stability control so it can’t be switched off. The system ties into Rivian’s digital key architecture, which means a teenager can’t just grab the fob and drive around the restrictions. Tesla’s Model X Plaid and Cybertruck both ship with three-digit-plus horsepower and no announced equivalent feature, which puts Rivian ahead on a safety angle that’s becoming harder for EV makers to ignore as battery-electric performance numbers keep climbing.
How Rivian’s Digital Key System Locks Out Teen Drivers
Bensaid said the feature grew directly out of owner feedback. “We got that feedback from the community. The only reason we did not get it yet is we really wanted to do it right, and it will leverage on all the framework of the digital key integration that we have,” he told The Drive.
The setup hinges on Rivian’s profile system. Owners can register separate profiles for each kid, so a stricter cap can apply to a newly licensed 16-year-old while an older sibling gets more freedom. “You as an owner can associate and say my first kid, this is a teen profile, my second kid is not a teen profile,” Bensaid said. Crucially, the restrictions attach to the digital key itself, not an honor-system toggle in the app. “That’s the beauty with digital key, you can not get out of it unless you have a password. The physical key and the keycard will not have access to defaults,” he explained, meaning a teen handed a key fob or key card tied to their profile can’t simply swap to a different, unrestricted key to unlock full power.
That closes the loophole that would otherwise gut the whole idea. A kid who fudges their age during setup is a real risk Bensaid acknowledged, but pairing the restriction to a specific physical key or card, rather than trusting self-reported settings, gives parents actual enforcement instead of a suggestion.
Preset Power Tiers, Not Sliders, By Design
Rivian isn’t giving owners a horsepower slider to fine-tune. Bensaid was direct about the reasoning: “We will not necessarily give you the option to say, okay, set it to have a slider [of] 500, 600 [hp], but here will be a category which is limit the horsepower.” Instead, owners will choose from roughly five to ten preset categories covering horsepower limits, stability control lockout, and whether off-road modes are available at all.
The interface will apparently borrow from Rivian’s existing RAD Tuner screen, the same toggle-and-slider layout owners already use to adjust ride height and drive characteristics. Keeping the options categorical rather than granular is a deliberate guardrail. It’s harder to talk a parent into “just one more notch” of power when the choices are broad tiers instead of a number pad.
Valet Mode Handles A Different Problem Entirely
Separate from Teen Mode, Rivian is also building a Valet Mode that locks down storage rather than performance. “We will give you the optionality to lock some of the closures, don’t allow access to the front trunk, don’t allow access to the gloveboxes,” Bensaid said. It’s aimed at handing a vehicle to a valet or service technician without exposing whatever’s stored in the frunk or glovebox, a common request across the industry but one few EV makers have built natively into the vehicle’s own key system.
Both features are still roughly a year and a half out, landing across the R1T, R1S, and R2 in early 2027. Rivian hasn’t published exact horsepower figures for each teen tier yet, and Bensaid’s comments suggest the company is still finalizing the category breakdown. Tesla, meanwhile, has no publicly announced equivalent for either feature on the Model X Plaid or Cybertruck, leaving Rivian first to market with a software answer to a problem every high-output EV maker technically shares.
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