Rivian R2: Is This It?

The company’s new, smaller, and more affordable EV will debut on March 7.

Rivian R2 SUV spy photos

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Feb 16, 2024 at 8:22am ET

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Images of what appears to be the all-new Rivian R2 SUV have made their way online ahead of the EV’s official debut on March 7. The Californian startup’s third model will arguably be its most important product, carrying a price tag of around $40,000 to $60,000.

The first photo was posted on the r/Rivian subreddit last night, showing what looks to be a white R2 SUV next to a green R1S and a couple of Rivian DC fast chargers. However, the commenters on that thread pointed out that the rear of the white EV looks strange and that it could just be a badly photoshopped image of an R1S, or that AI was somehow involved. We, too, noticed the strange distortions and decided to wait until something else popped up.

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Rivian R2 SUV spotted from afar

After Rivian published a teaser of the upcoming R2 SUV a couple of days ago, a set of photos that appear to show the new EV in its entirety made their way online last night. The biggest change, besides the fact that it's smaller than an R1S, is the relocation of the charging port from the front-left side to the rear-right.

And that’s exactly what happened a few hours later. Two more photos were published on a Facebook group and then reposted on X by @EVguyZach, giving a bit more weight to the idea that the white car might indeed be the upcoming Rivian R2 SUV.

Also, here's @RivianUpdates weighing in and casting some doubt on the "AI" theory:

All the shots appear to have been taken from very far away, and it’s possible that there was some sort of image correction going on inside the smartphone that was used to snap the pics, although we don’t know for sure.

By the looks of it, the car was parked for an official photo or video session, judging by the high number of cases resting on the parking lot’s floor, pavilion tents, and lots of people. The Rivian DC fast chargers that appear in the first photo seem to have disappeared in the other two photos where some Tesla Superchargers can be seen–leading us to believe that the Rivian stalls were just props.

And now for the car. The first thing that caught our attention was the location of the charging port. On the R1S and R1T, the plug is on the front-left corner of the vehicles, but on the R2 it seems to be on the rear-right corner. This would pose no issue at Rivian chargers, but it could become problematic at older Tesla Supercharger stations that were designed for Tesla EVs with the charging port on the rear-left and have relatively short cables that might not reach.

That said, the latest generation of Supercharger stalls, V4, has a longer cable, as well as an integrated CCS1 adapter and a card reading unit. This should make topping up a non-Tesla as easy as possible. As a reminder, Rivian is one of the companies that has a deal with Tesla to gain access to the Supercharger network starting this year.