Rivian Automotive Takeaways from R2 Ride & Drive Event and Management Discussions

Research evidence excerpt

Rivian Automotive Takeaways from R2 Ride & Drive Event and Management Discussions

J P M O R G A N North America Equity Research

10 June 2026

Rivian Automotive Underweight

RIVN, RIVN US

Takeaways from R2 Ride & Drive Event and Price (09 Jun 26):$15.73

Management Discussions

Autos & Auto Parts

Rajat Gupta AC

(1-212) 622-6382

rajat.gupta@jpmorgan.com

Yash Beswala

(1-212) 622-0028

yash.beswala@jpmchase.com

RIVN hosted its R2 investor event today at its Irvine, California facility, and

Jash Patwa

we were on the ground for a hands-on ride and drive, a guided R1 vs. R2

(1-212) 622-5472

hardware teardown walkthrough, and a candid Q&A with CEO RJ Scaringe, jash.patwa@jpmchase.com

CFO Claire McDonough, and COO Javier Varela. The R2 is the volume J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

midsize crossover that distills the full engineering learnings of the R1 program into

a vehicle built from the ground up around cost and manufacturability, with

management targeting similar or better feature content at close to half the bill of

materials cost. Our key takeaways from the meetings and the demo are highlighted

below.

• Ride and drive impressions. We drove the R2 Performance variant, the top-

end dual motor AWD trim, for roughly an hour. In our view, the most striking

element was the breadth of the dynamic range across drive modes. Cycling

through Sport and the other modes, we could clearly feel the suspension and

responsiveness change, which was impressive and a meaningful step up in

composure, body control, and cabin quietness. We also put the powertrain

through a standing start acceleration run, and the instant torque delivery and

pull off the line were genuinely impressive (checkout the video of our 0 to 60

run here). We were equally struck by the infotainment system, which was