Can The Rivian R2 Be The Game-Changer The EV World Needs Right Now?

After every good party comes a hangover (if you can’t avoid one, anyway) and September’s electric-vehicle sales blowout led to some nasty headaches for carmakers in October. And already, after one month, people are writing the obituary for the EV in America.

But is it that simple? Did EVs just never stand a chance without help from the $7,500 tax credit? I don’t think that’s the case—but I do think that larger economic forces are at work here that the American auto industry needs to address sooner than later. 

On this week’s Plugged-In Podcast, Senior Editor Tim Levin and I dig into some preliminary EV sales data for the U.S. in October. And it’s not good—even usually strong-selling mainstays like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 saw big drop-offs when the tax credit ended in September. 

But I also think there’s a problem with new-car affordability in America, agnostic of what powers those cars. The average new car in the U.S. is now around $47,000 to $50,000, depending on the data you’re looking at. Cars are more expensive than ever. I don’t think people were securing $229 a month lease deals on the Honda Prologue because they were passionate about EVs; I think they bought EVs in part because that’s where the best deals were for months.

That was a good thing because it got a great many more people into EVs for the first time. But without those deals in place, nothing’s here to make cars of any sort cheaper. And we’ll see what that means for the entire market in the next few months.

Yet EVs always needed to stand on their own at some point, and Rivian is hoping that its upcoming R2 can do exactly that. We also discuss what we know about the R2 Launch Edition, which may not be the promised $45,000 base price but will be nicely equipped and not too wildly expensive. At least, that’s what CEO RJ Scaringe says. We’ll find out in a few months.

Meanwhile, we didn’t get to cover Tesla’s big trillion-dollar payday for its CEO, Elon Musk. But we will discuss what we’ve heard about the new Tesla Roadster, and whether it’s worth believing in at all anymore.

Catch our show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you consume podcasts. And let us know: What do you want us to talk about next? Which guests should we have on the show?

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com