Rivian saw its California new-vehicle registrations fall 35.9% year-over-year to 1,841 units in the first quarter of 2026, the steepest decline among any of the state’s top 30 selling brands.
Vehicle registration data was published on Tuesday by the California New Car Dealers Association.
The first quarter figure compares with 2,872 units registered in the state during the first three months of 2025.
Rivian held a 0.4% share of the California new-vehicle market in the first quarter, down from 0.6% a year earlier.
The Irvine, California-based EV maker fell from its full-year 2024 tally of 12,027 California registrations to 11,134 in 2025 — a 7.4% decline — and the Q1 2026 pace suggests the slide is accelerating.
The California result weighs heavily against Rivian‘s full-year 2026 delivery guidance of 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles globally.
The company delivered 10,365 vehicles globally across the US and Canada in the first quarter, meaning California accounted for roughly 17.8% of total Q1 deliveries — consistent with California’s historical weight in Rivian‘s sales mix, but on a declining absolute base.
The California ZEV Slowdown
The first quarter of 2026 marked the weakest ZEV market share performance in California since the fourth quarter of 2021, with zero-emission vehicles accounting for just 13.7% of new-vehicle registrations — down sharply from 21.0% for the full year 2025.
Total California ZEV registrations dropped 40.2% year-over-year to 57,111 units in the first quarter, from 95,520 a year earlier.
The decline has been attributed to the expiration of the federal $7,500 consumer EV tax credit at the end of September 2025, as well as broader affordability pressures across the state’s new-vehicle market, where total registrations fell 8.9% to 416,810 units.
The Tesla Model Y remained the best-selling light truck in California in the first quarter at 22,907 units.
The Rivian R1S was the only Rivian vehicle to crack California’s top 25 selling hybrid, ZEV, and PHEV models in the first quarter, ranking 25th with 1,520 units.
Tesla and Lucid
Tesla California registrations fell 24.3% year-over-year to 31,958 units in the first quarter of 2026, from 42,211 a year earlier — a sharper decline than the 11.5% drop the EV maker posted across its full-year 2025 US figures.
The company’s California new-vehicle market share fell to 7.7% in the first quarter, from 9.2% a year earlier.
Despite the volume decline, Tesla actually grew its share of the state’s shrinking ZEV market — holding 56.0% of California ZEV registrations in the first quarter, up 11.8 percentage points from 44.2% a year earlier, as other brands lost volume more rapidly.
Tesla delivered 336,681 vehicles globally in the first quarter of 2026, meaning California accounted for approximately 8.9% of worldwide volume.
Lucid was the only pure-play US EV maker to post year-over-year growth in California, with registrations up 37.1% to 1,315 units from 959 a year earlier.
In the first quarter of 2025, Lucid was only delivering meaningful volumes of its debut model as production ramp up of the Gravity SUV began later in the year.
The Saudi-backed EV maker’s California market share rose to 2.3% of state ZEV registrations from 1.0% a year earlier, driven by the Gravity SUV ramp following its late-2024 launch.
Lucid‘s California volume represented approximately 42.5% of its global Q1 2026 deliveries of 3,093 vehicles — a significantly higher California concentration than either Rivian or Tesla.
Declining Total US Market
California’s ZEV decline paralleled a broader US pullback, with US ZEV market share falling to 5.2% in the first quarter of 2026.
California accounted for 29.6% of US ZEV registrations through March, underscoring the state’s outsized role in the nation’s EV economy.
Among the 30 top-selling brands in California tracked by the report, only seven posted year-over-year registration gains in the first quarter: Lucid, Mitsubishi, Genesis, Lexus, Volvo, Chrysler, and Toyota.
Rivian posted the steepest decline of any brand on the list at -35.9%, ahead of Audi at -27.4% and Land Rover at -25.0%.
The R2 Launch
The California result comes as Rivian prepares to begin customer deliveries of its R2 midsize SUV — the $45,000 vehicle the company has staked its path to profitability on — with internal deliveries already underway.
The R2 is being certified through California’s Advanced Clean Cars II pathway, and Rivian‘s CARB certification filing disclosed projected annual model-year sales of 25,000 R2 units — split between 5,000 in California and 20,000 in federal, non-California markets.
At Rivian‘s current California run rate of 1,841 units per quarter across the R1S, R1T, and commercial van, the company would need R2 to add approximately 1,250 California units per quarter on average to hit the 5,000 CARB projection, assuming R1 volumes remain steady.
DA Davidson analyst Michael Shlisky has previously flagged Rivian‘s 2026 R2 delivery expectations as “aggressive,” noting that “only the Ford Mustang Mach-E has come close to that level in a debut year — and it had the since-ended $7,500 Federal EV credit and broad dealer support.”
Rivian‘s full-year 2026 guidance of 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles implies a 47% to 59% increase over 2025, with the growth driven almost entirely by R2 volumes.
With 10,365 vehicles delivered in the first quarter, the reaffirmed guidance means Rivian needs to deliver between 51,635 and 56,635 vehicles over the remaining nine months — an average of roughly 17,200 to 18,900 per quarter, or 1.7 to 1.8 times the Q1 rate.
