Yes, I’m aware of the irony. We recently spent a few hours running a 70-mph range test with the Out of Spec crew, watched the number tick down mile after mile, and then published it all. So opening an article about how range does not really matter is a little rich coming from me. Our only defense is that we share the data and show exactly how we got there, and what anyone decides to do with that number afterward is not our responsibility.
But the number is not the thing. Or at least it is not the thing in the way when people are sitting in a configurator, deciding between vehicles.
The federal data on how much Americans actually drive is boring and remarkably stable. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety runs a survey every year where they ask people what they drove the day before, not what they think they drive in a typical year, and the answer keeps landing in the same place. Drivers averaged 31.1 miles a day in 2024, which isn’t too far from the 29.1 miles they logged in 2023 and the 30.1 the year before that, three years of data, no real movement. The FHWA figure runs a bit higher, somewhere between 33 and 37 miles per day, depending on whether you divide national vehicle miles by licensed drivers or rely on survey responses. Still, even the top of that range is nowhere near 330.
And all of those are averages, which is worth sitting with for a second. An average gets pulled upward by the small group of people driving 200 miles a day for work and by everybody’s summer road trip. The median day is lower than 30. Nobody publishes that number cleanly, but the shape of the distribution makes it fairly obvious once you look at the trip level breakdown.
Oak Ridge reviewed the 2022 National Household Travel Survey and found that the majority of vehicle trips in this country are under 6 miles. Only about 6.9% of trips are longer than 30 miles. An earlier run of the same survey found that of the cars that moved at all on a given day, 93% covered fewer than 100 miles before being parked again. The Department of Energy publishes this specifically as guidance for automakers sizing battery packs, which is a little funny given how the marketing eventually shakes out.
So for something like six days out of seven, the difference between a 250-mile car and a 330-mile car is that one of them is carrying around a few hundred extra pounds of cells it never touches.
Here is where I should be honest about the R2 specifically, because it does not actually present this choice. Every version you can order uses the same 87.9 kWh pack, and the range differences between Performance, Premium, and the Standard RWD coming next year come down to how many motors are turning and what tires are on the car. There is no bigger battery to upsell you. The smaller Standard pack is not arriving until late 2027 alongside the cheaper trim, and that is the moment this conversation gets real for Rivian shoppers, because that is when somebody is going to be standing in front of two prices and deciding whether the extra range is worth it.
There is a fair counterargument here, and I would rather deal with it than pretend it does not exist. That same AAA survey found EV drivers logging more daily miles and taking longer trips than drivers of gas or hybrid vehicles. Whether that is the car changing behavior or just the kind of person who currently buys an EV is impossible to untangle from that data. Honestly, I lean toward it being selection more than anything. Early adopters skew toward suburban households with garages and long commutes. That will probably flatten out as EVs stop being an enthusiast purchase, and the R2 will be a big part of that flattening.
What people are really buying when they pay up for range is insurance against a trip they take twice a year. Thanksgiving. That one drive to see family. Maybe a camping weekend. And there is nothing wrong with buying insurance, except that you pay the premium every single day in the form of a heavier vehicle, worse efficiency, faster tire wear, and several thousand dollars that could have gone toward literally anything else.
The thing I would rather people obsess over is what the car does when you are actually on that once-a-year trip, which is where the charging curve matters far more than the pack size. A car that holds a strong curve from 10 to 80% will get you there faster than a car with a bigger sticker number that falls off a cliff at 45%, because the trip stops being about how far you can go and starts being about how long you are standing around. The number on the screen mattered a lot less than what happened when I plugged in.
And since the R2’s range spread comes from tires and drive layout rather than cells, there is a lever available today that costs nothing. Wheel and tire choice moves real-world range more than most people expect, and it moves it in both directions.
None of which means the range test was pointless. It means the range test answers a narrower question than people want it to answer. It tells you what the car does at a steady 70 in specific conditions on a specific day with a specific set of tires, and that is genuinely useful for planning, but it is not a score, and it is not a ranking. If anything, the more interesting question is what the EPA number is even measuring, which is a rabbit hole I already went down separately.
I do not really expect any of this to change how people shop. Range is the one spec everyone understands without needing to learn anything, and it will remain the headline number for a while yet. We will keep running the tests, because somebody should, and because the alternative is letting the estimates go unchecked.
It wouldn’t hurt if more people, before spending the extra money, went and looked at what their own driving actually looked like last month.
The R2 is the first EV that really checks all the boxes for me. I live in a small rural town 80 miles from the center of a large metropolitan area. The battery and range work fine for me. I think they work fine for the 500 plus mile trips too, but that’s me. I believe part of the brouhaha is because the R2 is attracting so many folks that are ignorant about EVs and they are freaking out about EPA vs. 70 mph range. It is a non-issue if you really look at it.
A great article. It’s the same stuff I’ve been saying in reddit forums for a while, and so have many others. I think people are starting to figure this part out.
One thing I’d like to see is an article on what people do when charging. I think most who haven’t had an EV think of it like they’re basically sitting at a gas station for 30-ish minutes. My family takes a road trip to Minnesota every year, from WA state, 4500 miles round trip once it’s all said and done. We have found that the charging stops have turned into mini adventures that often end up being a highlight of the trip. New local restaurants, cool local shops, etc. I’d really love to see a study done on what people do at their charging stops, and an article on it.
The range coming in at around 250 on a 70-mph test for this vehicle is pretty much on par with what I would have expected. I would think most of the people who are bothered by that are likely someone new to the world of EVs. This is not something that would hold me back from going forward with an R2.
Great editorial. I have progressed from a 2020 MYLR (my first EV and it only took one test drive to convince me to buy), to a 2023 HW3 MYLR with comfort suspension (so much quieter and smoother) to a 2026 Premium AWD with FSD (got the free license transfer from trading the 2020), which my wife and I utilize 94% (interventions for some quirky navigation in my neighborhood, plus parking). But I have an R2 reservation that I’ll exercise next year when LiDAR and RAP1 upgrades are available. Why? Roadtripping isn’t a priority (I’ve only used a Supercharger maybe a dozen times in over 6 years); the R2 demo drive showed me how solid, quiet, comfortable and planted feeling the R2 is over the Juniper. I like the higher driving position and visibility, plus the larger and better shaped storage room is much more convenient for hauling bulky stuff. As great as FSD is, I think in a couple of years Rivian’s Autonomy software will equal and possibly surpass “eyes off” Unsupervised FSD due to the extra sensors. We’ll keep both the R2 and the Juniper for many years (into our 80s as long as we are allowed to keep our licenses). We’ll have the best of both.
Range doesn’t matter, but having realistic expectations on the drivable distance between chargers does. Anyone who’s owned an EV knows to take the range calcs, and even the SoC displayed on the dash, with a grain of salt. There are too many variables that impact EV efficiency.
My 23 Mach-e GT has never taken me from 100% to 0% for the advertised 270 miles, but I wouldn’t even want to really test that. I recently took it on a trip from Denver to Maine and back, 4k miles RT. The longest distance between charges, which I max at 80% on DCFC, was 171 miles. I’m looking forward to getting my R2 for a lot of reasons – more space for stuff, a better ride and suspension, and modern tech. I’ll still stop every 2.5-3 hours to stretch and pee. And with the R2’s better charging curve, I can be on my way much sooner.