Rivian’s brilliant Halloween update includes excellent Knight Rider and Back to the Future costumes

Over-the-air updates are generally pretty boring. We wouldn’t bother reporting on a carmaker optimising its energy management system or improving it’s voice control software, but Rivian’s latest update did catch our eye.

Because this is Rivian’s Halloween update and it’s only available for the R1T and R1S between 18 October and 4 November. The best bit? Two new ‘car costumes’ that allow you to dress up your funky electric truck/SUV as K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider or as the DeLorean time machine from the Back to the Future films.

With the Knight Rider costume you’ll get K.I.T.T.’s diagnostics display on your interior screen and the TV show’s intro music will play over the stereo. For those with Gen 2 cars, the exterior lightbar will also display the iconic cascading red beam, although all of this will only be available while the car is in Park. Boo.

The same is true for the BTTF costume, with the costume filling the cabin with music and the ‘Time Machine acceleration sound effect’ from the film. You’ll see the DeLorean time machine’s interface up on your screen too, while Gen 2 R1T and R1S owners will be able to hit an ‘88mph’ button to “engage Back to the Future themed lighting and sound effects in the front and rear of the vehicle”.

All sounds very fun. Although if you want something a little more spooky for Halloween, Rivian also says the update adds up to four different scary lock and unlock noises to replace the standard chirp of the mountain bluebird. It’ll also turn pedestrians that appear on the driver display into zombies, while bicyclists and motorcyclists will appear as headless horsemen as they pull up next to you at traffic lights.

‘Camp mode’ gets an update with crows, pumpkins and green flames, while there will be further ‘spooky 3D artwork’ across the rest of the drive modes.