Rivian

• Rivian started producing “manufacturing validation builds” of the R2 at its plant in Normal, Illinois, on Thursday. 
• It’s a big step toward full-scale production. 
• The R2 will start around $45,000, and Rivian reiterated plans for customer deliveries to start in the first half of this year. 

The Rivian R2 is one of the most anticipated electric vehicles of 2026 and a make-or-break product for the startup. Now it’s one crucial step closer to production. 

On Thursday, Rivian said it had completed the first R2 “manufacturing validation builds” at its factory in Normal, Illinois. These pre-production vehicles are meant to test factory equipment and manufacturing processes to ensure the company is ready for mass production with minimal hiccups. 

“A Manufacturing Validation Build (MVB) is a phase in vehicle development where an automaker builds near-production vehicles using production-intent tooling and processes to validate that the factory can reliably make the car at scale,” Rivian spokesperson Courtney Richardson said in an email. “Think of it as the moment where the question shifts from ‘Can we build the vehicle?’ to ‘Can we build it correctly, repeatedly, and at volume?'”

The company also reaffirmed plans to start delivering R2s to customers in the first half of 2026. 

The R2, a crossover pegged to start at $45,000 and aimed at the Tesla Model Y, is critical for the young automaker, as its founder and CEO said on the InsideEVs Plugged-In Podcast last summer. The R1S and R1T are some of the best EVs you can buy today, but they cost north of $90,000 on average. Rivian is leaning on the R2 to build real economies of scale and chart a path to profitability. 

It’s also one of the electric vehicles we at InsideEVs are most looking forward to in 2026. Over 30 new EVs are set to launch in the coming year, and if Rivian can distill what makes the R1 great into a smaller, cheaper package, it may have a Model Y moment on its hands. 

But none of that can happen unless the California startup can reliably churn out R2s on a large scale. Ramping up a brand-new vehicle is always a challenge, and EV upstarts have generally hit snags of one kind or another—whether it’s build quality on earlier Teslas or software bugs in the Lucid Gravity. That’s where these validation builds come in. 

Rivian has an appealing concept in the R2—and one that experts believe could be a bright spot in an uncertain EV market. Now comes the hard part: executing. 

Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com