The first Rivian R2 vehicles have been photographed parked in the customer delivery area outside the company’s Normal, Illinois plant, increasing speculation that employee handovers of the mid-size SUV are underway.
The pictures, posted on Wednesday by X user ‘EVguyZach’, followed the spotting earlier this week of a separate R2 carrying VIN 36, adding to earlier sightings of VIN 5 and VIN 23.
“Looks like #R2 employee deliveries are already happening?!” ‘EVguyZach’ — a Rivian R2 reservation holder — wrote on X alongside three pictures showing a blue R2 outside Rivian‘s plant building.
The EV maker founded and led by RJ Scaringe has not issued a formal announcement.
The pictures do not show a delivery in progress, but the parking location — consistent with where Rivian does the customer handovers — provides the strongest signal yet that employee deliveries have now started.
Timeline Consistent With Guidance
The Wednesday sighting aligns with the April timeline Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid disclosed at the SXSW festival in March, when he said employees would receive the first R2 units “for a few months” before external customer deliveries begin by the “end of spring.”
Bensaid confirmed on X on April 6 that April would mark the start of R2 employee deliveries.
Rivian emailed all employees on April 2 about the R2 employee delivery programme for ‘Launch Edition’ vehicles.
Both Rivian and Rivian-VW Technologies Group joint venture employees are eligible, according to Rivian owner and X user Chris Hilbert.
However, the Wednesday pictures also contradict employee accounts from earlier this week.
As reported by EV, Rivian employees driving separate R2 units across Colorado and Utah last week told a Rivian Forums user that employee deliveries had not yet started.
Those vehicles were company-owned test units being driven back to California for mileage accumulation.
VIN Progression
The Wednesday images follow a rapid progression of R2 identification numbers spotted in the wild over the past two weeks.
VIN 5 was photographed at a charging station in Kearney, Nebraska, on April 4 while being driven cross-country from Normal to Rivian‘s Irvine, California, headquarters.
VIN 23 was spotted near Moab, Utah, last week — a company-owned test vehicle.
On Tuesday, ‘EVguyZach’ posted a picture of a parked R2 in Catalina Cove — one of the newly introduced exterior colours — identifying it as VIN 36.
The company has not confirmed total production volumes.
Production Ramp
Rivian completed its first manufacturing validation builds of the R2 in mid-January.
The company is targeting 20,000 to 25,000 R2 deliveries in 2026 within a total production target of 62,000 to 67,000 vehicles.
Of those, Rivian expects to sell 5,000 R2 units this year in California alone, according to an EPA filing.
The Normal plant has capacity for 215,000 vehicles annually, including up to 155,000 R2s.
Production is currently running on a single shift, with a second shift planned for late 2026 and a third in 2027.
External customer deliveries are expected by the end of spring, with reservation holders receiving their “estimated time to order” in June.
Until May, Rivian is taking the R2 on a tour across seven US cities, with demo drives expected at select Rivian Spaces around July.
R2 Lineup
Rivian unveiled the full R2 lineup at SXSW last month with three trims tailored to different price points.
The R2 Performance, the first variant to reach customers this spring, starts at $57,990 with the Launch Package.
The dual-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain produces 656 horsepower and 609 lb-ft of torque, with a 0-to-60 mph time of 3.6 seconds and an EPA-estimated range of up to 330 miles.
The R2 Premium, arriving in late 2026 at $53,990, features a dual-motor AWD setup producing 450 horsepower with an EPA-estimated range of up to 330 miles.
The R2 Standard, starting at $48,490 in a single-motor rear-wheel-drive long-range configuration with 350 horsepower and up to 345 miles of range, is expected in the first half of 2027.
An additional Standard variant starting at approximately $45,000 will follow in late 2027.
The R2 is nearly 2,000 pounds lighter than the R1 and sits on a shorter wheelbase.
It retains 9.6 inches of ground clearance — which Rivian describes as best-in-class — and total enclosed storage of 90.1 cubic feet with fold-flat rear seats.
On the technology side, the R2 is equipped with 200 sparse TOPS of AI compute and built-in hardware for Rivian‘s Autonomy+ system, which provides Level 2+ hands-free assisted driving on 3.5 million miles of roads across the US and Canada.
