Rivian R2 First Drive: The Company's Most Important Car
Smaller, cheaper, and unmistakably a Rivian. The waitlist is, again, the story.
Rivian's R2 is the car the company needs to sell hundreds of thousands of. After two days with a pre-production unit on the roads around the company's Illinois plant, it is clear it can.
The car
The R2 is a two-row midsize SUV, roughly the footprint of a Honda CR-V, priced from $47,000 before incentives. Two motor configurations, three battery sizes, a claimed 330 miles on the largest pack. It is unmistakably a Rivian — the vertical light bars, the flat dashboard, the excellent seats — reduced to the dimensions and price point of a car that ordinary families will actually buy.
How it drives
The chassis tuning is more compliant than the R1S. Steering weight is a shade lighter, which will please more buyers than it will disappoint. The dual-motor version, which is what I drove, has plenty of thrust for a vehicle in this class without any of the neck-snapping absurdity that characterized the early R1 launches. The one-pedal driving mode is calibrated with more restraint than the R1's.
Interior
The interior is where the price cuts show, mostly in defensible ways. Fewer physical controls. A smaller center screen. Cloth seats standard, with a very nice "synthetic leather" as the mid-tier upgrade. The build quality on the pre-production units was better than I expected. The window switches, an ongoing source of Rivian complaints, are the old switches. This will not be fixed.
Range and charging
On the drive loop the range projection tracked within 4% of the EPA number. The R2 uses the NACS port from launch and will supercharge at up to 220 kW on the largest pack. Twelve minutes gets you 100 miles.
Score
8.9 out of 10. The most important car Rivian has ever launched, and the one that will decide whether the company gets to be a company for the long term. First deliveries begin in the first quarter of 2026. The waitlist, at last check, is over 150,000.
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