Rivian‘s decision to ship the R2 with a screen-heavy, button-free cabin was made by the company’s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, over alternatives that included physical controls, a senior designer has revealed.
Andrew Morandi, a Senior Lead Designer at Rivian who joined the company from Volkswagen Group in 2022, said in a Facebook comment that the minimalist direction “comes straight from RJ, an engineer at heart, but very design-minded as well.”
The exchange — first reported by Torque News on Monday — began when Facebook user Richard Graves, wrote that “the design department won the argument in the meeting about whether to have knobs/buttons for critical controls and about whether to hide the cupholders.”
Graves called it “a clean design” but added: “please give me basic knobs/buttons for HVAC and volume, and don’t make me work for cupholders in an SUV.”
Morandi responded directly revealing that the final decision was made by Scaringe.
“Believe it or not, that direction comes straight from RJ, an engineer at heart, but very design-minded as well,” he wrote.
“We tried various forms of buttons, controls, and static exposed cup holders, be he always prefers the cleaner / more simple aesthetic,” the Senior Design added.
Scaringe’s Position
Asked about consumer pushback against the all-digital interior, the founder and CEO said recently that buyers who do not want the screen-heavy layout should “buy something else.”
The same logic underpins Rivian’s decision to exclude Apple CarPlay from the R2 and the rest of its lineup — a decision multiple times defended by the company’s founder.
Scaringe has said the transition between third-party software and the vehicle’s native controls is “quite jarring,” arguing that navigation, media, vehicle systems, and future AI-driven features should all operate within a single proprietary environment.
The minimal design position puts Rivian at odds with an industry trend of bringing back more physical buttons.
Volkswagen, Porsche, and Hyundai are among the automakers reintroducing or retaining physical knobs and switches for key functions.
The changes came after widespread customer complaints about touchscreen menus and distracted driving, with the shift accelerated in part by EuroNCAP’s new 2026 safety-rating rules that penalize overly touchscreen-dependent interfaces.
The Chinese premium EV maker Nio unveiled last week a third row SUV named ES9 with 137 physical buttons in the cabin — a new record for the also-minimal design oriented brand.
Rivian’s Design Chief
The top-down design philosophy extends to the R2’s exterior.
In a video interview on the Out of Spec channel with Kyle Conner on March 17, Chief Design Officer Jeff Hammoud described a deliberate departure from the aggressive styling that dominates the segment.
Hammoud said most competing brands “try to be as aggressive, as menacing as possible.”
Rivian opted instead for a vehicle that looks “confident” rather than “angry,” with the cowl “purposely” shaped to convey attitude without intimidation.
He described the R2 as the “athletic brother” of the R1 — “slimmed, shortened, squished, and made wider” to achieve a “sleeker” stance in a smaller footprint.
Rivian‘s signature stadium LED light bar — a cross-car element that has become central to the brand’s visual identity — was “debated quite a bit” internally, Hammoud said.
The design Chief said there is “no plan for it to go away” as long as the current design language is in use.
The differences from the R1 were not purely aesthetic. Hammoud said the team prioritised changes that would “ease repairability,” improve “aerodynamics around the vehicle,” and “find ways to reduce costs” without degrading the customer experience.
The R2’s front fascia, for instance, uses a plastic panel rather than a structural component — a change that reduces the cost of a low-speed collision repair by “hundreds of dollars,” according to Hammoud.
The vehicle targets a drag coefficient of approximately 0.30 and delivers an EPA efficiency of 3.75 miles per kWh from an 87.9 kWh battery.
Production Update
As EV reported earlier on Monday, a Rivian senior manager said the company’s R2 SUV is “coming to life on the assembly line” in a LinkedIn post on Sunday, adding to signals that production of deliverable units is underway ahead of a formal announcement.
The formal start-of-production announcement is expected at any moment.
The EV maker is targeting 20,000 to 25,000 R2 deliveries in 2026 — including 5,000 in California and 20,000 across the other states.
Employee deliveries begin this month, with customer deliveries scheduled by the end of spring.
The R2 Performance Launch Edition starts at $57,990.
