Rivian R2 First Drive On Road and Off Road

Here is my Rivian R2 first drive. Rivian flew me out to Park City to drive the production R2, on road and off road. I left two days later convinced that the only real problem this car will have is how fast Rivian can build them. Demand is not the question. These are going to sell, and they are going to sell fast. Supply is the thing I’d be watching if I worked there.

These were real production cars, built in Normal, the same R2s that go on sale starting today. Rivian opened the doors to media and creators and let us crawl all over them, and I vlogged the whole trip start to finish, from waking up that first morning to the last few minutes I had with the car before heading to the airport. I pressed every button, opened every menu, ran my hands over every surface looking for the spot where they cut costs. I didn’t really find it.

I went into this trip already knowing I would be in love with the R2 Performance but the biggest surprise for me, was how impressive the R2 Standard was. Rivian brought out the R2 Standard for the first time, in Esker Silver, and seeing that trim in person changed how I think about it. They were upfront that it was a pre-production unit so not everything worked, but I climbed in anyway and poked around. The price quietly moved to $44,990 from $45,000, which is a ten dollar cut and basically symbolic, but keeping it under that $45k line still matters for how people shop. What is even more interesting, is that R2 Standard is now slated to start shipping in Summer 2027, which is sooner than what we’d been told, and it’ll include Lidar.

Rivian found a way to put real materials in an affordable car without making it feel like the cheap one. The base Black Crater interior looks genuinely good, and the lighter headliner opens the cabin up and makes it feel airier than the price suggests. They have made a few cuts on the Standard model verses the Performance. There is no rear drop glass, no heated rear seats, and no ventilated front seats. In my opinion, the cost is definitely worth the product leaving you with a fast, comfortable, properly capable EV, and most people are not going to miss the stuff that got cut.

I also got a long look at RivianOS 2.0, which is a full rewrite of the infotainment software and will be launching on R2 first. It is fast. It makes my R1 feel sluggish by comparison. Menus don’t lag, the HVAC screen opens right away instead of making you sit there waiting, and they’ve added a bunch of serviceable items owners have been asking about, things like headlight aiming and battery pack health. R1 owners, this is coming to you later this year, so you’ll get the same jump.

I was also able to sit down with Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, who walked me through what’s actually happening under the hood with RivianOS 2.0, and with James Philbin, the VP of Autonomy and AI. Philbin’s stuff is where it gets fun. R2 launches with the same hands free experience you already get on a Gen 2 R1, and more is landing through the rest of 2026. He kept coming back to point to point autonomy, where you set an address and the car drives you there, and he says that’s coming to R2 and Gen 2 R1 before the end of the year. Universal Hands Free 2.0 is targeted for Q3, and that one finally adds traffic light and stop sign recognition along with auto park and on and off ramp handling. I’ll believe the timing when I see it, that’s just the world we live in with this stuff, but the direction is aimed straight at Tesla and Rivian isn’t being shy about it.

Then the part you actually came for. The next morning they handed us the keys. I had Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs riding shotgun, and the first one we took out was an R2 Performance on the 21″ All-Season setup. This thing is fast. I’ve driven every R1 variant and the R2 Performance had no trouble keeping that feeling alive. It stayed flat and composed even when we carried more speed into corners than we probably should have. No body roll. Almost no noise in the cabin either. The NVH (Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) work on this car is seriously dialed in.

After that we swapped into an R2 Performance on the 20″ All-Terrain and went and found some trails outside Park City. I’m not going to pretend I’m some expert on the dirt, but the R2 did not care about anything we pointed it at. It’ll handle a Costco run and a trail in the same afternoon without complaint. I somehow avoided puncturing a tire. A few of the others were not so lucky.

A word on comfort, since I’m not a small guy. I’m 6’3″ and around 300 pounds, and the front seat was perfectly comfortable for me. My one gripe is the steering wheel doesn’t rise quite high enough, so it clipped the corner of the driver display, though I deal with the same thing in my R1 and it’s never really bothered me. The back is the real story. Calling the rear legroom best in class undersells it. I sat back there while Quinn drove and it was almost absurd how much room there is. The one thing I’d flag for tall people is the rear bench sits a touch low, so my thighs didn’t quite make contact with the cushion, but even on a longer drive it felt fine.

Anyway. I keep landing on the same thing I said walking out of there that first day. Rivian has the car. It’s good, the people who get one are going to know it’s good, and from there the whole thing comes down to build rate. Can they make enough? That’s the worry, and it’s a good problem to have.

I’ve got my own R2 on the way, and the full vlog with chapters is right here in the post so you can skip around to whatever part you want to see. There’s a stack of R2 coverage coming right behind this too.