How to Get Vehicle in Borderlands 4: Quick Guide

Getting your first vehicle in Borderlands 4 is a quick but critical step. The game’s new open-world design makes traveling on foot a chore, and vehicles are the fastest way to cut across Kairos while still keeping up with the story. You’ll unlock your first ride very early, during the third main mission, so you won’t be stuck running and gunning forever. This guide covers exactly how to unlock that first vehicle, how the mission plays out, and what you can do with your new ride. We’ll also cover some launch performance issues and how to optimize your settings for smooth play.

Borderlands 4 Vehicle Step-By-Step Guide

Your first vehicle in Borderlands 4 is the MAV-880 Digirunner bike. Unlike Borderlands 3 where you had to mess around with Catch-a-Rides, this bike is handed to you directly as part of the story. You unlock it during the main mission Down and Outbound, which becomes available right after the opening quests.

The mission sends you to the Crimson Resistance HQ on Kairos. You’ll fight through a squad of the Timekeeper’s troops, meet Rush (the leader of the Resistance), and then get introduced to Conway, the mechanic. Conway hooks you up with the bike, which you can summon anywhere on the map. From this point on, you’re free to tear across Kairos without slogging through long treks on foot.

In Borderlands 3, vehicles unlock during the Cult Following mission. After meeting Ellie, you recover a stolen Outrunner or hijack one from enemies, then register it at a Catch-a-Ride to use freely.

Once the mission is complete, the bike is permanently unlocked. You can summon it on PC with X or on console with the Left D-Pad. The Digirunner comes with a boost, drift, and jump ability, along with light weapons—machine gun fire and missile volleys. Don’t expect it to replace your guns in combat, but it makes traveling and skirmishing against small enemy packs much smoother.

Solve Borderlands 4 Launch Issues

Borderlands 4 didn’t hit PCs in perfect shape. Players reported stuttering, inconsistent frame pacing, and low performance even on solid hardware. To smooth out gameplay, experts recommend skipping the default Low/Medium/High presets and instead using a custom mix of settings independently across Nvidia’s RTX 20, 30, 40, and even 50-series cards. It’s weird that Borderlands 4 needs additional optimization from players, but it works and improves experience definitely.