Rivian has raised its full-year 2026 delivery forecast on 2 July to between 65,000–70,000 vehicles, up by a few thousand from the prior range of 62,000–67,000, after Q2 deliveries and production volumes both beat Wall Street consensus estimates. Shares rose as much as 7% in premarket trading in the wake of the revised forecast being shared.

The automaker delivered 12,194 vehicles in the second quarter, sitting comfortably above the roughly 10,600 expected by analysts, and produced 12,613—also ahead of forecasts. The growth was attributed by Rivian to strong ongoing demand for its commercial vans and R1 models, as well as the start of deliveries of its long-awaited new R2 SUV.

The R2, a smaller and cheaper model pitched as a direct competitor to Tesla’s Model Y, began production at Rivian’s Illinois plant in April and began making its way to customers the following June. Pricing currently remains at the premium end, starting at US$57,990 for the launch Performance trim, with a US$53,990 Premium version due later in 2026. A US$48,490 rear-wheel-drive Standard model is expected to launch in early 2027; a further US$45,000 variant—which matches the price point initially envisioned as the sweet spot for mass market acceptance by Rivian—is slated for late 2027.

Hitting the new target will, to be sure, require a surge in volumes—halfway through the year, Rivian still requires a ballpark of around 45,000 additional deliveries to get there. The automaker has not said how many will come from the R2 specifically, although presumably it depends heavily on the new model. Before the revision, Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough had offered guidance between 20,000–25,000 R2 deliveries for the year.

Rivian began producing the R2 at its Illinois plant in April 2026

The upgrade comes in spite of an unforgiving market for electric vehicles (EVs) in the US. The elimination of the US$7,500 federal tax credit and the rollback of supportive environmental rules have substantially weakened demand and pushed multiple would-be EV buyers toward hybrid and internal combustion engine options instead. Rivian has affirmed it will remain exclusively an EV maker; its shares remain down nearly 13% for the year, even after the latest gains.

Rivian needs to build a profitable EV business, and fast: its mounting losses have seen it repeatedly cut jobs over the last two years. The most recent slate of cuts, some 300 positions or  around 2% of its workforce, came just a week after R2 deliveries began. It is the automaker’s fourth round of layoffs since 2024, following 600 job cuts in October 2025, and comes as Chief Executive RJ Scaringe has named service capacity, where wait times reached 50 days during the R1 rollout, as the company’s most significant vulnerability.

Longer term, Rivian is leaning on autonomy alongside volume. Uber has committed to invest up to US$1.25bn in the company as part of a deal covering R2-based robotaxis, with reported deployment figures ranging from 10,000 units from 2028 to as many as 50,000 over the rest of the decade. This would, in theory, provide a modest floor of demand for its automotive business, but far from the volumes necessary to help it reach gross profitability in 2027.