Rivian unveilled the R2 on Thursday in California and more details have been seeping out in interviews, press releases, and through their website. Rivian surprised us by beating the leaked pricing and coming in $2,000 less at a round $45,000 starting price. Let's quickly round up everything we know about the R2:

The trims

We have some confirmed info here and we have some speculation. Everything in black font below is confirmed information. Blue is information from other interviews, but not exactly confirmed by Rivian, and you can click the link to see the source. Gold is complete speculation on our part, trying to fill in the gaps as best as we can today. Of course we will update this table with the confirmed information as soon as we hear more from Rivian.

• There will be 2 battery sizes offered. We'll call these "Standard" and "Large" although that naming is not official.
• There will be 3 motor configurations offered: single motor (rear), dual motor (front and rear), and tri motor (two rear, one front).
• This is the first Rivian being offered with rear-wheel drive (on the single motor configuration).

Will the R2 qualify for the federal tax credit?

The EPA only qualifies cars for the federal tax credit once they are in production (or very nearly production), so we won't have official information on the federal tax credit for a while, and the rules may change before 2026. However, we expect that the R2 will qualify when it becomes available because the lower trims of the R1S and R1T qualify today. The constraint on the R1S and R1T is the $80,000 vehicle price cap, but the R2 won't have that problem, at least for most trims.

Timing and Availability

So far Rivian has only said that they expect to ship the first R2 in the first half of 2026 (read that as June 2026), and that they will be starting production at their factory in Normal, IL in order to de-risk the initial production ramp. While this is good for first availability, it does mean that the ramp up will be slower, since R2 production will need to compete against R1S, R1T, EDV, etc. Just like they did with the R1S and R1T, we expect Rivian to start production with the most expensive tri-motor large battery model and work their way down from there. It makes sense to ship cars to the most enthusiastic Rivian fans first, get the best models out on the road and in front of other potential consumers first, and typically the top end model is one of the most profitable. We wouldn't be surprised to see a "launch edition" premium either, putting the first R2 somewhere in the upper 60s to low 70s. This is just speculation for now, though, and we'll be sure to update as soon as we know more.

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Images in this story courtesy of Rivian.

Read more:

• R2 Product Page
• R2 Reservations