Rivian raised its full-year delivery forecast on Thursday after second-quarter deliveries topped its own outlook, citing the start of R2 SUV handovers and stronger demand for its trucks and commercial vans.
The Irvine, California-based company lifted its 2026 delivery range to between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles, from a prior target of 62,000 to 67,000, an increase of 3,000 units at each end.
Rivian said the revision reflected “the progress” it had made and its production and delivery outlook for the second half of the year.
The new range implies a 53.9% to 65.7% increase over the 42,247 vehicles Rivian delivered in 2025, and lifts the midpoint of the forecast by 4.7%.
Shares of Rivian were flat on Thursday’s pre-market shortly before the announcement.
Second Quarter Clears the Bar
The upgrade followed a quarter in which Rivian delivered 12,194 vehicles, above the 9,000 to 11,000 outlook it had set for the period and 1,194 units beyond the top of that range.
Deliveries rose 17.6% from the 10,365 vehicles handed over in the first quarter, when Rivian beat consensus estimates but recorded no R2 volume.
Measured against the second quarter of 2025, when the company delivered 10,661 vehicles, deliveries increased 14.4%.
Production reached 12,613 vehicles at the company’s plant in Normal, Illinois, exceeding deliveries by 419 units and pointing to a modest inventory build as output scales.
The company attributed the beat to quarter-over-quarter growth in its electric delivery vans and R1 line, “coupled with the introduction of R2 deliveries.”
The Second-Half Math
The raised forecast concentrates an already steep ramp into the final two quarters of the year.
Rivian delivered 22,559 vehicles across the first half, which leaves it needing between 42,441 and 47,441 units in the second half to reach the new range.
That equates to roughly 21,220 to 23,720 deliveries per quarter over the third and fourth quarters, close to double the pace of the first half.
The company had first set its 62,000-to-67,000 target in mid-February and reaffirmed it in April, describing a delivery curve weighted heavily toward the back half of the year.
Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough said in April that meaningful R2 volume should not be expected until the second half of 2026, a cadence the raised guidance now leans on.
R2 Carries the Upgrade
The forecast increase rests almost entirely on the mass-market R2, the mid-size SUV that opens Rivian to a far larger pool of buyers than its premium R1T pickup and R1S SUV.
Rivian began volume, saleable production of the R2 in late April and started customer deliveries on June 9, meaning the second quarter captured only a few weeks of handovers.
The company has guided for the R1 and commercial van business to hold roughly in line with 2025’s volumes, implying that most of the year’s growth, and the newly added units, must come from the R2.
Rivian was on track to deliver more than 1,100 R2 units before the quarter closed, according to vehicle-identification-number data shared by early buyers, though the company did not break out an R2-specific figure in Thursday’s release.
The R2 launches with a Performance trim priced at $57,990, positioned directly against the Tesla Model Y Performance, before lower-priced Premium and Standard trims arrive through 2027.
A base Standard variant, originally promised at $45,000, is not expected until late 2027, and the company removed that starting price from its website earlier this year as the higher-priced launch trim went on sale.
Backdrop and Risks
The upgrade lands in a US electric-vehicle market that lost its central subsidy last year, after the $7,500 federal tax credit expired on September 30, weakening demand across the industry.
The R2 is ramping into that no-credit environment, and Rivian has said its trucks and vans faced softer sales in the first quarter partly as a result.
Set against those headwinds, the decision to raise rather than reaffirm guidance signals management confidence that the R2 ramp is tracking ahead of plan.
Execution risk remains the central question, since the second-half target requires Rivian to sustain a run-rate it has never delivered, from a production line that added its second vehicle only weeks ago.
The company is expanding capacity at Normal from a single R2 shift toward a second later this year, and continues to build a second plant in Georgia backed by a $4.5 billion Department of Energy loan.
Rivian will report second-quarter financial results on July 30 after the market close, when investors will look for gross-margin progress and an R2 volume breakdown to test the raised forecast.
