Rivian has hired Jody Kerns, who led Cybercab general assembly at Tesla's Gigafactory Texas, as Director of General Assembly for the R2 in Normal. It's a timely hire as Rivian pushes the R2 ramp into its second shift.

Redwood Materials will now recycle Rivian's production scrap and end-of-life battery packs, on top of the energy storage it's already building at the Normal plant. Packs pulled at Rivian service centers will either get a second life as stationary storage or get broken down for their materials.

Rivian closed its $1 billion loan from Volkswagen today at a 6.03% rate fixed for 10 years, with no payment due until October 2028. The loan is backed only by Rivian's half of the joint venture, and Volkswagen has now delivered $5.3 billion of the $5.8 billion it committed.

Rivian delivered 19,248 vehicles in Q3 2026 and kept its full-year guidance at 65,000 to 70,000. Its deliveries for the year so far are already within a few hundred of its total for all of 2025.

Rivian has named Known its new media agency of record, with R2 as the focus. Known's co-founder says the goal is to introduce Rivian to a much broader group of buyers.

Honeywell Aerospace has sued Rivian over seven patents it says cover tech like sensor fusion, hazard detection, and autonomous navigation. Lucid got hit with its own lawsuit the same day, less than three months after Honeywell Aerospace became an independent company.

RJ Scaringe told The New York Times that Chinese automakers will likely be able to sell in the U.S. eventually, and that tariffs are what's keeping things balanced until then. He also sees robotics as the other way American manufacturing closes the cost gap.

RJ Scaringe told The New York Times that R3 will land "materially lower" in price than R2, and that R4 will push prices down even further. There's no pricing or timeline yet, but it's the clearest look so far at where Rivian's lineup is headed.