Rivian R2 due in 2026 teased during Instagram Q&A

It's not much to go on, but we've had our first taste of what the Rivian R2S will look like. Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe hosted an Instagram Q&A, and thankfully, the company uploaded the entire showcase to YouTube with chapter titles. The second segment of the 33:14 vid contains ten seconds of Scaringe and Rivian lead designer Jeff Hammoud standing in front of the model they call the R2; we called it R2S because of its SUV shape and the company's nomenclature established with the R1. Probably as intended, we weren't able to find any gotchas in the shape. The R2 is obviously smaller than the R1. The two things that stood out to us were the way the greenhouse tapers from the shoulder to the roof, and as a consequence of that, the way the line around the taillight stands out from the rear fender and the greenhouse.

The narrow-seeming cabin sounds like a result of the R2 and R3 "[moving] in different form factors and obviously different sizes," according to Scaringe.

We've read that the R2 is supposedly around the size of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. That clay model doesn't look GC-sized, although who knows if it's to scale. There's also a long way to go until we get a production-ready debut, we believe. Scaringe talks about the production ramp-up in the video not long after the R2 segment, growing pains having pushed the R2's arrival from 2025 to 2026. Unless everything goes great guns, we're probably at least 18 months away from knowing what the R1's follow-up will look like.