Rivian's $48,490 R2 Standard Will Arrive in Early 2027 With 345 Miles of Range

Rivian's $48,490 R2 Standard, the cheapest and longest-range version of the company's new midsize electric SUV, will reach customers in the first half of 2027.

The company confirmed the Standard's price, a Rivian-estimated 345 miles of range, and 350 horsepower at a launch event in Austin on March 12, 2026, alongside two pricier trims. The Standard is a single-motor rear-wheel-drive Long Range configuration. It would be the longest-range vehicle in Rivian's lineup if EPA testing comes in close to the company's estimate.

Customer deliveries this spring start with the $57,990 R2 Performance, a dual-motor AWD trim. The R2 Premium follows at $53,990 in late 2026. A second Standard variant with a smaller battery, priced near $45,000, is slated for late 2027.

Rivian framed the lineup, in its own materials, as "a more accessible price point without a compromise in capability." Customer R2 production began at the company's Normal, Illinois plant on April 22. Full trim breakdown, dimensions, and off-road geometry are in our R2 entry in the Ordealist vehicle database.

The Standard is the trim most likely to matter to drivers planning longer backcountry trips, where the practical range of shorter-range EVs has often been a limiting factor. The Standard is also a rear-wheel-drive configuration, not four-wheel-drive, which makes it less capable off-road than the dual-motor AWD Performance and Premium trims at the upper end of the lineup. Two further questions sit underneath the Standard's appeal at announcement: whether 345 miles of range translates into useful backcountry capability given where charging infrastructure actually is, and how the heavy electric platform holds up to off-road use over time.

Both questions are answerable only on a long horizon, based on Rivian's published materials and the trajectory of its longer-running R1 line.

The 345-mile range figure is meaningful on its own. If EPA testing comes in close to Rivian's estimate, the Standard opens trip planning that the R1 line never quite made comfortable. The single-motor RWD configuration is the lightest in the R2 lineup, which on a long-distance run tends to mean better real-world range than the dual-motor trims will see.

What it does not solve is the trailhead-charging gap. Every R2 ships with a native NACS charge port and access to about 21,000 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada, plus Rivian's expanding Adventure Network of branded fast chargers. None of that meaningfully reaches the country where multi-day vehicle trips actually happen, and DC fast-charging infrastructure remains thin in remote and federal-land areas regardless of network. More range helps trips where the charger is at the trailhead or near it. It does not change trips where the nearest charger is several hundred miles away.

The other open question is weight. Rivian's own positioning for the R2 line leads with the platform being "nearly 2,000 pounds lighter than R1," which would put an R2 around 5,000 pounds if Rivian's published R1S curb weight holds. It is still a heavy electric vehicle, and heavier vehicles do more cumulative damage to dirt roads and rock obstacles than lighter ones. Long-term durability of heavy EVs in off-road and high-impact use is not yet well documented. The Rivian R1 line is the longest-running mass-market heavy EV with off-road capability, and the oldest customer R1s are only about three years old. Fleet-scale data on suspension, battery enclosures, and tire wear over a decade of dirt-road and trail use will take additional years to come in.

Rivian's product roadmap has more on it than the four R2 variants confirmed in March. CEO Scaringe publicly floated an R2X, a higher-performance off-road-oriented R2 variant, in a May 6 Reuters interview. Reuters and Ars Technica have separately reported an R2 pickup variant is in development; Rivian has not confirmed it.

The Standard arrives in customer driveways in the first half of 2027, roughly a year after the Performance trim begins shipping this spring.

How we reported this

This article draws on the following primary sources, accessed May 13, 2026:

• Rivian — Say Hello to R2 (Rivian Stories post, March 13, 2026) — full trim breakdown, pricing, range and horsepower figures, delivery timing, capability claims, weight-vs-R1 comparison.
• Rivian — R2: Start of Production (Rivian Stories post, April 22, 2026) — start of customer production at the Normal, Illinois plant; spring 2026 delivery timing.
• Rivian — rivian.com/r2 — vehicle specifications page (charging architecture, dimensions, ground clearance).
• Ars Technica — More than just an SUV? Rivian is working on more R2 variants. (Jonathan M. Gitlin, May 6, 2026) — Scaringe R2X tease.
• Reuters — Rivian developing variants of its more-affordable R2 EVs (May 6, 2026) — original Scaringe interview.