Rivian briefly displayed a “Design yours” button for its R2 mid-size SUV on its public website on Wednesday before subsequently pulling the element — the latest signal that the company’s online configurator is imminent.
The button, spotted by X user ‘RivianTrackr’, was placed under an R2 promotional card on Rivian’s main website alongside the carmaker’s “Available spring 2026” framing.
Clicking the button initially routed users to the R1 lineup, before being updated to direct toward a dead link at the time of testing.
The placement of the button on the public website indicates that the consumer-facing tool is in the final stages of deployment.
Rivian had not formally announced the configurator’s launch at the time of writing.
The June Timeline
Rivian had said last week that the public R2 online configurator would open in June, aligning the tool’s launch with the timeline the company originally communicated to reservation holders when it unveiled the R2 production version at SXSW on March 12.
The company responded to a user on X asking about the timing by pointing to “June! Only a matter of weeks until we take the next step in the R2 journey together.”
That statement effectively walked back an earlier report that the configurator would open in May — a timeline that would have placed the tool online roughly a month ahead of the original June milestone, as Rivian had previously communicated at the time of its volume saleable production announcement.
Customer deliveries are also scheduled for later this month, beginning with existing R1 owners after employee deliveries are complete.
R2 Production
Rivian officially started volume, saleable production of the R2 on April 22 at its Normal, Illinois plant.
The company completed its first manufacturing validation builds of the R2 in mid-January, with hundreds of production-intent builds reported on the road for real-world testing by late 2025 following a three-week shutdown of the Normal plant in September 2025 to integrate manufacturing changes.
VIN-sequenced units have been spotted at an accelerating pace since early April — including a Glacier White unit identified as VIN 5 spotted at a charging station in Kearney, Nebraska, driven cross-country from Normal to Rivian’s Irvine, California headquarters by an employee.
A unit identified as VIN 100 has since been observed.
Employee deliveries are underway, with Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid sharing late last month that he had taken delivery of his unit.
Bensaid stated at SXSW in March that employees would hold their vehicles “for a few months” to accumulate mileage and return software experience data to the company, after which external customer deliveries would begin by the “end of spring.”
Rivian’s Normal plant is preparing to add a second production shift, with Kyle Kindred — recently promoted to R2 Group Leader — writing on LinkedIn earlier this month that he was looking forward to ramping production on the night shift.
The plant began R2 production on a single shift, with a second planned for later this year and a third in 2027.
The facility has capacity for 215,000 vehicles annually, including up to 155,000 R2s.
A tornado damaged Building 2 — where the R2 is assembled — in mid-April, but Rivian resumed operations within a week and said the incident did not affect its production timeline.
Scaringe on the R2 Ramp
Speaking on the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call in late April, Scaringe framed the R2 as the foundational vehicle for Rivian’s financial trajectory.
“The R2 represents a significant step forward in our mission to provide high-quality EV choices to the market,” Scaringe said.
He emphasised that higher production volumes will be critical to improving margins, noting that increased output will help spread fixed costs and reduce the overall cost of goods sold.
Scaringe described the supply chain environment as a key operational risk for the ramp.
“The supply chain continues to be an area where there is a lot of unknowns, a lot of variability, and a need for us to be very hands-on and very proactive,” the CEO said.
On the cost structure underpinning the R2’s path to profitability, Scaringe distinguished the new program from the R1 launch.
“The bill of materials, different than the non-BOM COGS, is contractual,” Scaringe explained.
“Very different than when we sourced R1, we went into the R2 sourcing with a lot of momentum and much better supplier leverage.”
Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough flagged that the ramp will pressure near-term margins before becoming a tailwind in the fourth quarter.
“We expect the complexity of a new vehicle launch will negatively impact our Automotive gross profit in the second and third quarters before becoming a benefit for our overall operations in the fourth quarter as we ramp production and deliveries,” McDonough said.
Rivian reiterated its target of exiting 2026 with a trajectory of positive automotive gross profit — for both R2 and total automotive operations.
Launch Trim Specifications
Only the R2 Performance with Launch Package — priced at $57,990 — will be available when the configurator opens.
The Performance is a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive SUV delivering 656 horsepower and 609 lb-ft of torque from its dual-motor powertrain, with an 87.9 kWh battery pack offering up to 330 miles of range. Fast charging from 10% to 80% takes 29 minutes.
The Launch Package includes lifetime access to Rivian’s Autonomy+ hands-free driving system, a tow package rated at 4,400 pounds, and a Rivian Green key fob.
After the Launch Edition, Autonomy+ will cost $49.99 per month or $2,500 as a one-time purchase.
A Premium trim at $53,990 — with 450 hp and 537 lb-ft, dropping features like semi-active suspension and certain drive modes — is expected in late 2026.
The Standard Long Range Single Motor RWD variant at $48,490 — 350 hp / 355 lb-ft, 345 miles range — is scheduled for early 2027.
The $45,000 Standard base trim — with a smaller battery and approximately 265 miles of range — is not expected until late 2027.
The deferred base trim means customers buying the R2 at launch face a $57,990 starting price — 29% above the figure Rivian has promoted since the R2’s original concept unveiling in March 2024 at Laguna Beach, California.
The R2 Performance at $57,990 sits almost exactly at the $57,490 price of the Tesla Model Y Performance, the vehicle Rivian has explicitly named as its primary target.
A Gen 3 autonomy stack with LiDAR and Rivian’s RAP1 chip will be fitted to R2 vehicles starting in late 2026. Launch units ship with Gen 2 hardware.
Scaringe said on the Q4 2025 earnings call that hardware retrofits are not planned, meaning early buyers will drive a fundamentally different vehicle from those who purchase later.
Scaringe revealed earlier this week that the company is working on “other variants” of the R2 SUV beyond the three initially disclosed, hinting at upcoming production in Georgia — where Rivian is currently building its second plant.
Rivian broke ground on the $5 billion Georgia plant in September 2025 after zoning-related lawsuits delayed construction.
The facility is expected to take roughly 36 months to build, with partial operations projected for the third quarter of 2027 and sales of its output starting in 2028.
Rivian is targeting 20,000 to 25,000 R2 deliveries in 2026 within a total target of 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles for the year.
Q1 2026 deliveries were 10,365 units — none of them R2s — meaning Rivian needs to deliver between 51,635 and 56,635 vehicles over the remaining nine months, roughly 1.7 to 1.8 times the Q1 rate.
Of those, the company expects to sell 5,000 R2 units in California alone, according to a prior EPA filing.
The company has reached 100 service centers in the first quarter and plans to operate more than 150 by the end of 2027, while expanding its mobile service fleet by 50% this year.
Demo drives at select Rivian Spaces are expected to begin around July.
Rivian is also revising its US Department of Energy loan to $4.5 billion to support the Georgia plant build-out, with capital expenditure guidance for 2026 of $1.95 billion to $2.05 billion focused primarily on production capacity and infrastructure expansion.
