Rivian has assigned more than 13,000 vehicle identification numbers to its R2 SUV, according to owner-run tracker Rivian Roamer, a day before the end of the quarter in which the company said it would add a second production shift.
The highest R2 serial on Roamer stood at 13,0XX on Tuesday, up from 12,1XX on September 20.
The platform hides the last two digits of each serial, so the rise over those nine days was between about 800 and 1,000 VINs.
That is faster than the previous nine-day stretch, when the count moved from 11,4XX on September 11 to 12,1XX, a gain of between about 600 and 800.
Two linked R2s carry serials in the 13,000s. One, in Catalina Cove with a Coastal Cloud interior on 20-inch all-terrain wheels, has a VIN assigned.
The other, in Esker Silver with the same interior on 21-inch all-season wheels, already has a delivery date booked.
Roamer’s highest VIN is only the highest linked to the site, and an assigned VIN does not mean a car has been built or delivered.
Rivian does not disclose R2 production or deliveries.
Second Shift Due by September 30
“R2 production started with a single shift, and we expect to scale to two shifts by the end of the third quarter,” Founder and Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said on the July 30 earnings call.
The quarter closes on Wednesday.
Chief Operating Officer Javier Varela said on the same call that the second shift was not expected to add material volume until the fourth quarter.
Chip Newcom, Rivian’s VP of Investor Relations, reaffirmed on September 8 at Goldman Sachs’s Communacopia conference that the company still planned to add the shift in the third quarter.
Scaringe said at Morgan Stanley’s Laguna Conference on September 15 that the second shift, planned for the end of September, remained on track but had to be timed to the arrival of parts.
“Bringing a second shift on to then not be busy because you don’t have parts is also a challenge,” he said.
He said the ramp is “gated by or throttled by the rate at which we ramp up our suppliers,” rather than by the plant.
Rivian had not said by publication time whether the second shift has started.
Deliveries Accelerate
Roamer tracks 1,520 R2s, of which 811 have been delivered, 69 have a delivery booked, 131 have a VIN assigned and 509 are still waiting for one.
On September 20 the site counted 1,124 linked cars, 554 of them delivered.
Owners recorded 179 deliveries in the week beginning September 21, more than double the 87 logged the week before and the highest weekly total on the site since customer deliveries began on June 9.
Roamer cautions that recent weeks rise as more owners link their accounts, so the jump partly reflects new sign-ups.
Another 57 deliveries are booked for the week beginning September 28, which straddles the quarter end.
The gap between assignment and handover is concentrated at the top of the range.
Of the 60 linked R2s with serials in the 12,000s, 50 have a VIN assigned, five have a delivery booked and five have been delivered.
In the 11,000s, 27 of 75 have been delivered.
The median wait from VIN assignment to scheduled pickup is 14 days, based on 159 orders, and the median from configuring an order to receiving a VIN is 12 days, based on 64 orders, according to the tracker.
New Colours Still Waiting
Catalina Cove is the most common paint among linked cars, with 497 R2s or 33% of the sample, followed by Launch Green with 349.
Forest Green, which opened to all buyers on September 9, accounts for 147 linked orders, but 134 of them are still waiting for a VIN and six have been delivered.
Rivian now quotes eight to 12 weeks from order confirmation for Forest Green, Borealis and the Coastal Cloud interior.
The only version on sale remains the $57,990 R2 Performance with Launch Package.
Quarter-End Test
Rivian expects to deliver 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles in 2026, a range it raised on July 2, including 20,000 to 25,000 R2s, after delivering 22,559 vehicles in the first half.
The company gave no R2 count with its second-quarter results, and Cox Automotive data implied about 789 R2 deliveriesin that quarter.
The third-quarter delivery report is expected in early October.
Some deliveries face disruption from Rivian’s instruction to certain owners to stop driving their R2s pending a “high voltage circuit fastener inspection,” for which no recall has been filed.
