Rivian, for example, offers to let you return the vehicle after delivery to your driveway for up to the first of a week or a 1000 miles.

While that is certainly admirable, if you’re choosing between half a dozen options, it would be difficult for most people to buy them all and return the ones they don’t want after testing.

No dealerships doesn't mean no test drives. Tesla offers them today.

Yeah but you'd have to set each one up separately, or buy/return in serial order (unless you have a great deal of capital). This vs. walking into some auto mall with like 5 dealers on the same day.

It has meant no test drives in practice. I was shocked when I tried to test drive a Ford Mach-E that no dealership within a 100 mile radius had any inventory on hand -- when I called individual dealerships to ask, they said not only was the entire inventory already promised to individual customers and the only way you could test drive was if someone bailed on their order. I got a few emails that inventory had popped up, by the time I called (even within a few hours!) the vehicle had already sold. I'm genuinely shocked that consumers are buying first production run vehicles entirely online without a test drive.

Even with dealer car sales there's usually a 48 hour or so grace period where if you realize you made a mistake, etc. they'll take it back and annul the sale. I imagine for a purely online sale there'd be a similar agreement and they just pick the car back up.

That’s often a side effect of lemon laws and similar requirements.