There is a moment early in the InsideEVs Plugged-In Podcast where Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained says something that stuck with me. He points out that on most press drives, a reviewer is not asking whether they want the car. They are asking whether you should want it. They show up, form an opinion on your behalf, hand it back, and go home in their own vehicle. With the Rivian R2, Fenske said, he caught himself doing something different. He was asking whether he wanted to own it. His answer, on camera: "yes, I do want to own that thing."

That is the whole reason I think the R2 is going to work, and it has very little to do with the spec sheet.

Disclosure before I go further: I owned a Rivian R1T for two years and loved it, and I sold it when I moved to Italy. I am not a neutral observer of this brand, and you should weigh everything below with that in mind. But I am also not the one putting my name on these reviews. The people who are happen to drive more cars in a month than most of us drive in a decade, and several of them just told their audiences they are buying this one.

Reviewers Drive Everything and Buy Almost Nothing

That is what makes the pattern unusual. A professional reviewer's garage is a rotating door. Wanting to actually purchase a press car, with their own money, after the loan is over, is rare. It is the tell that the dispassion slipped.

Watch how many times it slipped with the R2.

Out of Spec Reviews spent two hours nerding out on powertrain calibration, brake-by-wire tuning, and off-road regen, and at the end of it Kyle Conner did not hedge. He said he is buying one, plans to live with it for a year before handing it to his sister, and called it the most exciting car of the year. His three-word verdict was "R2 nails it." This is a reviewer who picks apart clutch-disconnect thunks for fun, and the worst he could say is that most of his complaints are fixable over the air.

On the InsideEVs podcast, it was not just Fenske. Both hosts, Tim Levin and Mack Hogan, hold reservations. Hogan was open that he wants one and is not ready to spend sixty thousand dollars on a car this minute, which is the honest position of a lot of buyers and worth keeping in view. Fenske went the furthest. His own Lucid Air ownership ended when Lucid bought the car back over a long run of software problems, and despite that detour through a troubled EV startup, he said on the show that he has put a deposit down on an R2 and that he wants to own one. He described it as the kind of single vehicle that could cover both the practical and the adventurous jobs he currently splits between two cars.

Then there are the reviewers who did not say "I'll buy it" but said something nearly as loud. Doug DeMuro handed it a Doug score of 70 and called it quite possibly the best all-around electric vehicle he has ever driven, ranking it above every rival he tested except Rivian's own R1S. Marques Brownlee, who reviews cars on his Auto Focus channel and is a Rivian R1T owner himself, said he has not driven much he would prefer over it in the past year at this price. Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything, a channel with nearly ten million subscribers and a former Tesla Model Y in his own history, was impressed enough that his main complaint was that he wants Rivian to also build a truck version. And Johnny of Driving with Jonny, himself an R1T owner since 2022, said flatly that if he were shopping the midsize family SUV segment, he would buy this now. His personal hesitation is that he is holding out for a hotter or truck variant, not that the car fell short.

The Reasons the Wanting Is Rational

Desire is subjective. What makes me trust it here is that the reasons behind it are concrete and they repeat from reviewer to reviewer.

The R2 takes the thing people already wanted from the R1S, the upright adventurous shape, the long-hood visibility, the genuine off-road clearance at about 9.6 inches, the brand that people actually recognize and aspire to, and it puts that in a smaller, lighter, more affordable package. The performance launch edition, which is the version most of these reviewers drove, starts at about 58,000 dollars with roughly 650 horsepower, a 0 to 60 around three and a half seconds, and an EPA estimate near 330 miles. The version that matters for volume, the base car, is supposed to start around 45,000. Several reviewers independently described it as more athletic and more fun on a back road than the much heavier R1S, while staying comfortable enough to cross a state in. The interior quality kept catching people off guard for the price. Two glove boxes, a drop-down rear window, a back seat that fits adults, and the sort of interior a Range Rover chief engineer once told Johnny they could not believe a young company pulled off.

The InsideEVs crew landed on the comparison that I think explains the commercial case best. They called the R2 the Subaru of EVs, a brand built on outdoorsy practicality marketed exceptionally well, sitting on top of a product that is actually good. RJ Scaringe has made the point that the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 together are roughly half the EV market, and that a large group of buyers simply will not pick the egg-shaped option no matter how good it is. The R2 is aimed squarely at the people who want a Model Y alternative with more ground clearance and a different identity, and Rivian is building the factory capacity, in Normal now and a larger plant in Georgia next, to chase that volume.

The Bottom Line

A spec sheet was never going to tell us whether the R2 lands. Range figures and horsepower numbers describe a car. They do not tell you whether anyone will love it enough to choose it over the default. The closest thing we have to a leading indicator is the reaction of the people who drive everything and grow numb to most of it, and that group did something I have rarely seen them do in unison. They reached for their own wallets. Kyle Conner is buying one. Jason Fenske has put down a deposit, after a brand-name EV startup already burned him once. Doug DeMuro ranked it above every rival he tested except Rivian's own R1S. When the professionally unimpressed start describing the car they want in their own driveway, I take that more seriously than any press release. My bet is that the R2 is the hit Rivian needs. The asterisk, and it is a real one, is that the wanting has to survive contact with the volume car and with Rivian's own execution. If it does, this is the vehicle that takes the brand from admired to everywhere.