Rivian is partnering with hospitality brand AutoCamp to launch a branded basecamp during this year’s edition of the Coachella music festival.
The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival takes place over two separate three-day weekends — between April 10–12 and 17–19 — in California’s Colorado Desert.
AutoCamp operates several amenities near US National Parks, offering Airstream trailers and luxury tents as an alternative to conventional camping.
Its new festival activation — called “Camp Rivian Powered by AutoCamp” — was announced on social media on late Tuesday.
The deal aligns with Rivian’s positioning as an adventure and outdoor-focused brand, while doubling as a marketing showcase for the EV maker’s R2 SUV.
What It Offers
According to information available on AutoCamp’s website, guests will stay in private, air-conditioned trailers fitted with Tempur-Pedic mattresses and full bathrooms, located minutes from the festival grounds.
The package is pitched as a design-led alternative to traditional festival camping, blending lodging, wellness programming, and communal dining.
Attendees will get a first look at the all-new R2, the brand’s smaller and more affordable electric SUV that made its public debut earlier this year at SXSW.
AutoCamp says the R2 will be “integrated into every part of the camp experience,” with guests offered the chance to drive the vehicle during their stay.
Rivian will also handle festival logistics through private transportation to and from the venue via dedicated entry points, paired with VIP festival access.
Additional perks listed for guests include desert wellness sessions and a surprise headlining DJ set.
Alongside the activation, Rivian ran a sweepstakes offering one winner two VIP passes to the festival — plus three nights’ accommodation for two at a Coachella Valley hotel or similar property.
Entrants received one entry for submitting the online form and an additional ten entries for completing a demo drive (of a R1 model) at a Rivian location.
Marketing Push
The tie-up marks one of Rivian‘s marketing plays ahead of the R2’s market launch and reinforces the automaker’s positioning around outdoor and adventure use cases.
Previously, the brand also partnered on outdoor and sustainability projects with the Honnold Foundation, established by renowned professional rock climber Alex Honnold.
The EV maker has also partnered with several athletes, including Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who competed in the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games earlier this year.
At the same time, this marks the second activation in a US festival.
It follows the SXSW Music Festival & Conference in Austin last month, of which Rivian was the main sponsor for the second consecutive year.
According to Rivian’s latest Shareholder Letter — published in February — the company is concentrating on expanding its infrastructure and increasing brand awareness as it introduces the R2 SUV in its lineup.
“We are scaling our commercial and service infrastructure as well as driving brand awareness in preparation for customer deliveries of R2 in the second quarter of 2026,” the company wrote then.
As of mid-2024, and according to the EV maker’s Investor Day presentation, Rivian‘s brand awareness reached only 40% in its domestic market.
Last year, Rivian ranked first for the third consecutive year in Consumer Reports‘ Owner Satisfaction ratings; however, despite the high satisfaction score, customers considered the brand to be the least reliable in 2025.
Rivian restructured its customer experience teams as part of a broader reorganization of its Go to Market functions last October, according to an internal e-mail sent by founder and CEO RJ Scaringe.
Scaringe told employees that he would lead marketing on an interim basis while the company searched for someone to fill the position.
Three months later, Rivian told EV that it would not be appointing a new Chief Marketing Officer, as the functions fell under the newly created Chief Customer Officer role — filled by Greg Revelle earlier this year.
R2 Deliveries
The push comes as Rivian works to revive demand following the expiration of the federal EV tax credit on September 30 — which weighed on sales in the back half of 2025 — and as it prepares to begin deliveries of the R2 SUV.
The model debuted on March 12 with a Dual-Motor Performance variant, priced from $57,990.
The long-promised $45,000 entry-level trim — roughly half the average transaction price of an R1 — will launch in 2027.
In the latest call, founder and CEO RJ Scaringe framed the R2 launch as a turning point for the business, telling investors he believes 2026 “will be an inflection point” for Rivian and that R2 will be “a game changer” for the company.
“R2 is really instrumental for driving the business to positive cash flow and overall profitability,” the CEO told CNBC earlier this year.
Rivian currently has an industry-record cumulative loss of over $24 billion.
Scaringe recently said that launching a compelling vehicle required significant investment to make the technology robust.
“For us to be launching something that, I can say with conviction and confidence, is highly compelling, it has required us to spend money on making the technology incredibly robust,” he noted, adding that “the goal isn’t to sell 50,000 R2s a year.”
The company reaffirmed its full-year 2026 delivery guidance of 62,000 to 67,000 units earlier this month — upon reporting a 20% increase in first quarter deliveries — all of which are being built at its Normal, Illinois plant.
The application with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed that Rivian has a projected annual model-year sales figure of 25,000 R2 units and broke down as 5,000 in California and 20,000 across the other federal states.
The figure aligns with Rivian‘s public guidance for 20,000 to 25,000 R2 deliveries in 2026, as stated by management during the latest earnings call.
Rivian is expected to announce the start of R2 production soon, after one of the very first R2s built — identified as VIN number five — was reportedly spotted at a charging station in Kearney, Nebraska.
Between April and May, Rivian is taking the R2 on a tour across seven US cities, with demo drives expected to start at select Rivian Spaces around July.
