The first person publicly claiming to be a regular Rivian R2 customer surfaced on Reddit, describing a delivery arranged by phone and completed within a single day — confirming that the EV maker has begun external deliveries of its cheapest model ever.
Meanwhile, reservation holders who match every priority criterion the company has published, including the reviewers who cover the brand, say they are still unable to order the midsize SUV.
“As of yesterday, we’ve officially begun customer R2 deliveries!” Rivian wrote on X late on Wednesday. “We know you’re all eager to begin the R2 order process and we’re super excited to be sending out new batches of order invites every day.”
The post drew immediate skepticism. Rivian owner and brand enthusiast Chris Hilbert quote-posted the announcement with the line: “It’s not what you know…”
Asked by another user in the replies whether, based on his words, the deliveries were “still just employee customers,” Hilbert answered: “You have to know someone to get it this week.”
Asked by EV on Thursday for a statement on claims that the company had not started R2 deliveries to external customers — people without any connection to the company — on June 9, a Rivian spokesperson said: ‘This is not accurate, customer deliveries started on June 9.’
Presented with those allegations and asked whether the company has delivered R2 units to external customers with no connection to the brand in any way, the Rivian spokesperson confirmed it.
First Public Customer
A detailed account on the r/Rivian forum supports the company’s position while revealing how the first handovers are being arranged.
A user posting as the owner of a black R2 Launch Edition wrote that he took delivery this week, and pushed back on the employee theory directly: “I am not an employee! R1T owner and day one (minute one probably) preorder.”
“I believe I was told I was the first customer, but not the only one who got one today,” the user wrote, adding that he signed a photo release and “wouldn’t be surprised to see it on their socials this week” — a detail consistent with the unidentified families shown taking delivery in Rivian‘s launch video.
His description of the process showed how the EV maker arranged the handover with the very first external customers.
“I got a call early that asked if I could push everything through and be available I could probably get it same day,” he wrote, with the order appearing in his app around lunchtime and the pickup completed late in the afternoon. “Everything was done today.”
“The team was unbelievable. Let me tell you they want to get as many out as they can. It’ll happen,” he added.
An order summary the user shared in the thread shows a configured vehicle price of $59,990, rising to $60,615 with a charging adapter, all-weather mats and a cargo cover, and an order total of $66,808.44 including a $1,495 destination fee and $3,866.38 in Illinois retailers tax — placing the delivery in Rivian‘s home manufacturing state, where the R2 is built in Normal.
The company has not disclosed how many vehicles it has delivered on the first day or how many pre-orders it had as of June 9.
The distance between the company’s headline language and the mechanics on the ground matches the pattern EV reported on Sunday, when Rivian told a customer on X that deliveries would begin “soon after” June 9 — contradicting its own May 27 blog post, which bills the date as the day first customer deliveries begin and declares that the first R2 vehicles “start arriving in driveways across America.”
Reviewers Who Meet Every Criterion Can’t Order
Those most visibly excluded so far are the buyers who match every factor Rivian says it is prioritizing.
“Based on all conversations I’ve had with my reviewer / content creator friends, none of us have received configuration emails,” Kyle Conner, the EV reviewer behind the ‘Out of Spec’ channels, wrote on X late Wednesday. “Many of us are multiple R1 owners and reserved R2 insanely early.”
The group Conner describes — owners of one or more R1 vehicles, holding reservations placed around the model’s March 2024 unveiling, and in many cases living near Rivian service centers — fits all three of the considerations the company has published.
“Your reservation timestamp and delivery location are the primary factors that determine when you receive your invite,” states the “How Order Invitations Work” page Rivian published on May 27, the same day as the launch blog post, adding that “current Rivian owners will receive accelerated delivery timing, balanced alongside deliveries to non-owners to keep the line moving for everyone.”
“It feels like Rivian specifically deprioritized the folks that cover them to not show any favoritism… speculation of course,” Conner wrote. “I’m not sure why I’m being dragged when they are taking a group of people and pushing them back. Seems weird no?” he added early on Thursday, after his post drew pushback on Reddit.
The same pattern runs through the delivery thread itself. One commenter, identifying as an R1T owner in Los Angeles, wrote: “Damn. I ordered within a minute and have an R1T and nothing.”
Another user said he received an order invitation holding a reservation dated April 1, 2026 — barely two months old — while a third, with a reservation from March 7, 2024, found his invitation only after it landed in Gmail’s spam folder, despite Rivian‘s advice to buyers, reported by EV on May 28, to keep spam filters unblocked.
A separate case on X follows the same shape: Austin Moss, who posted his invitation on Thursday, wrote that he owns no R1 and re-placed his reservation on March 13 of this year after cancelling an October 2024 booking — “I’m 15 minutes from a service center.”
A mechanism that can override the two primary factors is disclosed on Rivian‘s support page: “Certain reservation holders may be selected at random with an early order invitation,” it states, to “help us refine our timing estimates.”
The clause appears nowhere in the June 9 launch press release, which repeats the criteria — invitations based on “a variety of factors, the primary factors being when the reservation was made and their delivery location,” with owner acceleration and expiring leases considered — without mentioning the random selection.
Queue position carries a financial consequence: there is no deadline to act on an invitation, but “trims, options and pricing can change based on availability” and nothing is locked until an order is confirmed — meaning every reservation holder skipped by an earlier batch waits exposed to potential price and option changes that those invited first are able to lock in.
The Vehicle at the Center of the Queue
The R2 is the most consequential launch in Rivian‘s history, the midsize SUV meant to carry the company from the premium R1 niche into the mass market.
Currently, the only version available to order is the R2 Performance with Launch Package at $57,990, which includes the Autonomy+ hands-free driving suite, with the Premium trim due in late 2026 and the cheapest R2 Standard following in 2027. Once an order is confirmed, delivery is quoted within two to six weeks, and all reservation holders are due an estimate of their invitation timing by the end of June.
Federal certification filings showed the R2 Performance matching the Tesla Model Y Performance on efficiency at 105 MPGe while traveling farther on a charge, despite weighing more than 530 pounds extra.
The Reddit buyer offered one of the first owner verdicts against the R1: softer seats, a noticeably lower driving position that “doesn’t feel small,” and smaller screens running the same interface as the larger vehicles.
Shares fell 6.6% on Tuesday as first lease quotes arrived near $1,000 a month with nothing down and buyers learned the SUV ships without several familiar software features.
On Wednesday, Bensaid said the features were “intentionally” held back for quality and would arrive through monthly over-the-air updates this summer, while Needham reiterated its Buy rating and $23 price target, urging bearish investors to test drive the vehicle.
The stakes behind the launch sequence are substantial. Rivian‘s 2026 delivery guidance of 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles rests largely on the R2, with a ramp the company has described as back-half weighted — meaning the pace at which order invitations convert into production slots over the coming weeks matters more than the identity of the first recipients.
