Wishful thinking. There will need to be some interface between any lifting device (floor, commercial, etc.) for this to work.
The only load‑bearing surface is that 2" × 4" pad, and most floor jacks don’t match that footprint. Nothing I’ve seen would sit on it securely. Some scissor jacks, though, have a narrow top saddle that might mate with it natively if Rivian includes one.
Bingo!!
My first thought when I saw the design was that it looks like a saddle top on almost every scissor jack I've ever used would fit into those grooves. If that's the case, it would actually be easier to lift on my own than my old Jeep was because getting that saddle aligned right was a pain.
Incredibly questionable design decisions. I would love to hear from Rivian about these choices because I struggle believing these are the right tradeoffs even for cost reduction purposes.
I run flat‑top scissor jacks in both R1s for our magnetic pucks, but the R2 kills the safety net. There’s no keyed feature to lock a puck in place, so alignment has to be dead‑on every time. The R1 had a centering pin location, and shops STILL lifted them wrong. The R2’s design is basically an invitation for tire‑shop carnage.
Have you had an opportunity to see the jack that's included with the R2 spare tire kit? Will be interesting to see the contact point design...
That's facing down, right? So the weight is being born by the cross-hatched part I would think. The divot is for registration and to keep it from slipping off, no? I'm no engineer, but I suspect the engineers at Rivian have good reasons. And it's not some puny bit of money they might get for making people by a new set of pucks for less than $200 while selling $2,000 paint jobs.This is the new jack point for the R2. The 2"×4" high‑density polymer pad is the designated load surface, and the cavity in the center is difficult to justify from a functional standpoint. Nothing outside that small rectangle is weight‑bearing, which means no traditional floor jack or bottle jack can properly interface with it. From a serviceability perspective, it’s an unusual choice.
Rivian uses a small‑diameter round aluminum puck with a cross‑hatched top for lifting, and as a vendor, I’ve seen both that puck and the service‑center lift adapter firsthand. This design has the potential to create real challenges for tire shops and general service facilities unfamiliar with the R2’s lift geometry, as well as the DIY crowd.
When speaking with the Rivian team, they noted the jack point was optimized for their service centers. Even so, the R1 design is significantly more forgiving when it comes to locating and securing a jackpuck (lift adapter). Below is an example (photo taken by me) of the cross‑hatch imprint from the production R2 lift puck provided by Rivian Engineering.
The 2"×4" pad is the only load‑bearing surface, and it’s a slick high‑density polymer, so magnets are off the table. The cavity helps with rough location, but the rounded corners make it less than ideal. With no magnetic coupling, every puck has to be hand‑held or placed on a floor jack and guided precisely onto a very small contact patch, which I can do readily at home. The question is. Can a tire shop do this reliably?
I like the Mercedes and BMW jack points. However this looks slippery and too big in one dimension to fit most floor jacks. If it is replaceable, like some German cars, maybe someone will come up with a better design.
