The question hanging over the Rivian R2 was never whether people want a smaller Rivian. It is whether a cheaper Rivian still feels like one. Mike Kantorski, who says his last three vehicles were a Tesla Model 3, an R1T and an R1S, drove a performance-spec R2 and built his review around questions he collected from people waiting on the car. Does it feel cheap? Is it big enough? Could it replace a Tesla? His answer to the first is no, with a caveat he states plainly: he has only seen the performance version. The front of the cabin, he says, sits close to R1 territory. The back, he says, is where the cost cutting shows. He also reports the car makes over 500 horsepower. That number is not what he spends the video on, which tells you something about how these cars now get judged.
Every EV startup eventually meets the same test, and it is not a design test. It is a manufacturing one. The R1T and R1S let Rivian charge enough that a few hundred dollars of interior trim vanished into the sticker price. A volume crossover does not offer that cover, which is why the most interesting parts of Kantorski's review are the cargo area plastics and the charge port door rather than the acceleration. For buyers, the useful comparison is packaging, not power. Kantorski says the cabin feels far larger than the exterior suggests, with legroom front and rear that he calls almost impossible for a vehicle this size, and room for three car seats across the back row, forward or rear facing. Anyone cross-shopping a Model Y as the family car is deciding on exactly that, not on a horsepower figure. Cargo space he rates as about right for the class, though he wishes the frunk were bigger. The other benchmark nobody publishes is audio. Kantorski, who has owned a Tesla, says the R2's system will satisfy most buyers coming from other brands but may read as a small step down for Tesla owners, particularly at high volume. He notes Rivian has already pushed a software update to the system since his drive.
On the road, Kantorski says the R2 is noticeably more agile than his R1, with a rear-wheel bias that makes it playful and a semi-adaptive suspension he describes as well tuned over broken pavement. He rates it easier to live with in a city than an R1, quieter than expected, and somewhere between a newer Tesla and the current R1 for cabin noise. The seats, in his view, land between the firm R1 chairs and the softer older Tesla ones. Two complaints stand out. He says the charge port door felt flimsy and appeared to lack an electronic lock, so anyone walking past can push it open. And the Halo dials on the new steering wheel frustrated him: he reports lag when scrolling and difficulty clicking or pushing the dial without scrolling it by accident. He expects a software update to handle the lag. The drop-down rear glass, he says, is the feature nobody understands until they try it. Driving with the windows down and the rear glass open, in his description, changes the character of the whole cabin. His own conclusion is a purchase: he says he is trading his R1T for an R2, partly because he has realized he uses the interior far more than the truck bed, and partly because a smaller vehicle is simply easier in a city. He is still waiting on a VIN.
Bottom line: the R2 does not have to be the best electric crossover on sale. It has to be the one Rivian can build in numbers, at a price, without the reviews turning into a list of where the money was cut. On the evidence of one performance-spec demo drive, the split looks right: spend where hands land, save where they do not. Now watch the standard trim. That is the car most people will actually buy, this reviewer has not driven it, and it is the version that decides whether any of this works.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.