First Drive: REE’s Electrifying P7 Delivery Chassis

REE Automotive put SAE Media in the driver seat of its all-electric P7 Class 5 chassis alongside their VP of Engineering Peter Dow.

March 28, 2025

Matt Wolfe

At NTEA’s 2024 Work Truck Week, REE Automotive showcased its P7 EV chassis and REEcorners modular suspension system. At the time, the P7 was being offered to North American fleets for demos. One year later at the 2025 edition of Work Truck Week, REE offered SAE Media the opportunity to jump into the cab of the P7 and experience the truck’s capabilities firsthand.

SAE Media wheeled the P7 around downtown Indianapolis with Peter Dow, VP of engineering for REE Automotive, riding shotgun to discuss some of the details of the P7’s driving experience and the engineering behind it.

Driving smarter not harder

SAE Media wheeled the P7 around downtown Indianapolis with Peter Dow, VP of engineering for REE Automotive, riding shotgun. (REE)

One of the aspects that’s immediately apparent behind the wheel of the P7 is the unique and user-tunable way that REE has calibrated the regenerative braking. “We’ve gotten feedback from drivers who wanted more regen,” Dow said. “Particularly because of the kind of environments that delivery trucks operate in. So this is one of the options we can provide. You can also choose a one-pedal drive option in those instances where you want a lot more regen.”

The steering feel of the P7 has also been carefully tuned based on driver feedback. “We’ve spent a lot of time looking at that aspect of the driving experience,” Dow said. “We had to do a lot of testing with what sort of feedback drivers need, because essentially you’ve got a motor on your steering wheel that’s giving you all the feedback. We’ve always had the mentality of drive it, don’t fight it.”

Dow continued, “You don’t want [the steering] to be overly heavy when you’re just trying to get around a corner, but it can’t be a PlayStation joystick either. You’ve got to have something in the middle. We’re still doing more work on it with the goal of providing as much driver feedback as possible. It will have a speed-sensitive element to it as well, so you can make it slightly heavier or lighter depending on your preferences.”

Another characteristic of the P7’s drive that stood out was the ride-and-handling balance while unladen, something Dow highlighted at length during our interview with him at Work Truck Week in 2024.

“We have load sensing on our REEcorners, so we can do things like adjust settings for unloaded or loaded driving conditions. We do it with brake distribution, for example, so we can actually put more brake bias on when we’ve got more load on the truck.”

Under construction

There will be several variations of the P7 available, including the flatbed configuration that we sampled at Work Truck Week. (SAE/Matt Wolfe)

As is the case of any vehicle still under development, the P7 isn’t perfect. Dow pointed out a few of the truck’s flaws that REE is still working on ironing out. “We’ve got some improvements to make still,” he explained. “For example, we’re having an issue with water intrusion if you open the sliding window after it’s rained. But we’ve already got some new designs to fix that.”

The interior of the P7 made it easy to jump in and drive around the streets of downtown Indianapolis. (SAE/Matt Wolfe)

Dow also explained how REE is using an all-hands-on-deck approach to put miles on its P7 mules. “Something we do back in the UK on a Friday afternoon is we take anybody in the office and say, ‘take a truck and drive it,’” he said. “I want as many people driving the trucks as possible. So you’ll get accountants and HR people driving [our truck] around and we’re keen to get that feedback. We want to make the truck easy to drive for everyone.”

Based on our experience behind the wheel, REE’s accountants have given the engineering team plenty of solid feedback. The controls and driving experience made it easy to feel at home behind the wheel even in tight spaces, where the maneuverability provided by the P7’s four-wheel steering system shined.

You can feel the system working, but it’s subtle and only obvious if you’re paying attention, a hallmark of any well-integrated system that impacts vehicle dynamics. The turning radius of the P7 is a scant 19.7 ft (6.0 m), which is tighter than many current-generation full-size pickups and significantly less than the P7’s competitors.

During our drive around Indianapolis, Dow also explained that REE is not expending resources developing aspects of the truck that can be purchased from outside suppliers and integrated. “If there’s an option in a catalog that someone else has spent time developing and we think fits our parameters, we’re just going to use it,” he said.

“Infotainment, for example, we’re not going to spend our time developing that ourselves. We like the idea of taking the bits that other people are good at and combining them with the things that we’re good at to make a great product.” REE expects to launch the first production versions of the P7 in 2025.

Follow the money

Investors have apparently taken note of what REE Automotive is good at, as the company recently announced that it has agreed to a memorandum of understanding with “a global technology company developing and marketing new mobility solutions for passenger and freight transport.”

According to REE, the MOU outlines the intent to develop and produce thousands of autonomous vehicles based on REE’s P7 platform. A strategic collaboration agreement will reportedly be signed by the end of this year. REE estimates that the agreement will generate up to $770 million in potential revenues over the next five years.

“We are very excited to see our advanced SDV [software-defined vehicle] technology reshaping the future of autonomous transportation at scale as it is being integrated into vehicles and applications outside of REE,” said Daniel Barel, CEO and co-founder of REE Automotive. “We believe that using our AD-ready and certified P7 platform and our advanced software technology allow us to bring this program to the market swiftly and with minimal investment offering a truly modular, adaptive and cost-effective autonomous solution.”