State of Charge put a Rivian R2 through what host Tom Moloughney says is the first independent 70 mph highway range test of the model, and the number that came back was 259.4 miles from 100 percent down to 1 percent. That figure sits below the R2 Performance's 276-mile EPA highway rating, but the run was stacked against the car. It rode on 20-inch all-terrain tires, climbed and dropped more than 2,000 feet of elevation twice on a Colorado Springs loop, and fought a headwind near 20 mph for a stretch. Moloughney borrowed the launch edition from a friend rather than pulling a press car, charged to 100 percent, and drove Interstate 25 south toward Trinidad and back, ending where he started so the elevation would cancel out.
The result matters because of what the R2 is meant to be: Rivian's cheaper, higher-volume vehicle, and the first real test of whether it goes the distance in mixed conditions. The video notes that the all-terrain tire package alone drops the EPA combined rating from 330 miles to 307, one of the clearest tradeoffs a buyer will face when speccing the truck. Worth adding beyond the video: elevation and cold tax any EV the same way, since climbing converts energy into altitude and cabin heat pulls from the same pack, so a route like this is closer to a worst case than a typical commute. That is the useful framing for anyone reading a single range figure and panicking. On flatter ground in milder weather, the host expects the car to beat its highway rating, which lines up with how most EVs behave once the course stops fighting them. Moloughney is careful to frame the run as a single data point on one hard day rather than a verdict, and he encourages viewers to weigh it against other independent tests as they appear.
On the charging side, the video highlights something unusual about how Rivian built the R2. Moloughney says the truck keeps a 400-volt architecture to hold the price down, then pushes current above 600 amps to still reach up to 230 kW, where most automakers would jump to 800 volts instead. He notes the R2 uses a native NACS port, and that at the Walmart stop the ABB A400's NACS connector is capped at 375 amps, so he switched to CCS with an adapter to capture a clean charging curve. On efficiency, the trip computer showed about 2.97 to 3.01 miles per kilowatt hour across the drive, against Rivian's listed 88 kWh of usable capacity. He ran the R2's Autonomy Plus hands-free system for most of the test and says it worked without glitches, though he wanted it to change lanes on its own with the turn signal. He stopped short of draining the pack to zero, ending near 1 percent with a few miles of indicated range left, out of respect for a borrowed vehicle. He also breaks the drive into quarters, noting the first downhill leg stretched well past three miles per kilowatt hour before the climbs and wind pulled the average back down.
Bottom line: Do not read 259 miles as the R2's ceiling, read it as its floor on a genuinely brutal day. All-terrain tires, two big climbs, and a stiff headwind are exactly the things that punish range, and the truck still cleared 260 with charge to spare. If you are cross-shopping the R2, spec the all-season tires unless you actually go off pavement, and judge the car on a flat-route test when one lands. This looks like an EV that will hit its numbers when the road cooperates, which is about all most buyers can ask of one.
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.