If April demo drives occur, which I doubt, I'd expect deliveries to start the following quarter - some time in Q3. If I had to bet? I'd go Sept because Rivian will likely need to /want to build a few hundred in pilot production to ship to showrooms for test drives to get some miles on them before beginning customer production a few months later.
Pretty sure deliveries will start in Q2 and I don't think the demo drives will have anything to do with production tweaks. Just letting people drive the exact vehicle they are going to purchase.
First few might come off the line in Q1, but they won't hit "real" customers this quarter.
There's no way it slips that far. Between the fact that the production line is already up and running (not at 100%, but it's running for sure), and the fact that they have said that there will be a no-lidar/Gen3 tech version launching H1 2026, there will be deliveries happening no later than June.
My post was in response to a previous comment, specifically about whether potential customers would know about LIDAR. Yes, many people will end up buying them, and many people will think they're cool. But those who are going be first in line are people who already know about the R2. The Rivian diehards and people who closely follow the EV industry -- those are the ones who would know what LIDAR is.
But keep in mind the [wide angle] lens distortion. It's stretched.
The SXSW festival is in Austin soon (late Jan to Feb 13). I entered the sweepstakes and it asked if I wanted to do a test drive. I assumed it meant for the R2 since it will be there. Maybe that’s what the Platinum tickets get you?
Surprised to have to come this far into the thread for this to be mentioned. They're marketing this pretty hard: https://rivian.com/events/sxsw
IMO, no harder than what we've seen in the past for R1. R2 is on the horizon and the next big thing for Rivian, so naturally R2 is being featured this time?
I would hope so. What’s the point of bringing the R2 to SXSW and holding a contest to win tickets if you’re not going to let people test drive the vehicle? What does a Platinum ticket even get you?
Previous public R2 appearances have been look only, while few (VIPs, press & influencers) got to touch and sit in it. And that was with the one and only concept show car. This time they're showing a pre-production, or even a production-candidate. Concept show cars generally don't have full functioning systems (i.e. they have only mock-ups of UI, which are not functional beyond scrolling between screens/menus) and are only built to move under its own power at very low speeds—off of the trailer/transport and onto the show stage/floor. Pre-pro and PC units are full-functioned, to test and validate all systems.
