I bought a new salad spinner recently, after having broken yet another one.
I’ve had fancy brands like Zyliss and OXO. I’ve had cheap store brand models and cheaper Amazon MYSSNGVWL type stuff as well. Knowing they would probably break didn’t make it feel better when they eventually broke.
Anyway the new salad spinner is large, heavy, with a steel pin into a brass bushing, has a metal handle and nylon gears in a sealed gearbox with exposed stainless screws for servicing. I opened it up and greased it on first use, mostly just to pretend to be servicing it, just to see what that felt like. It felt good!
The best part is it came with a catalogue that had order codes for spare parts. They wanted to help you maintain it. It was built to last and the manufacturer was on your side.
Can you cite a source for this? There's no question that they're vastly more complex, but I would think that modern car manufacturing is far more exacting (and efficient) than in the past.
If you're saying that older cars are more repairable, I'm happy to agree with you, even without a source to back up that claim.
It's the status quo? Cars last longer than they ever have in history. In 2 decades average age of cars on the road increased from 9.5 to 14.5. They are a little more difficult to maintain for the home mechanic because they are packed with electronics, but what you want seems to exist perfectly. Many use timing chains instead of timing belts that last 20+ years. Radiators rarely crack whereas they used to all the time. Alternators last the life of the vehicle. Cars are often upgraded because the owner is bored or does not feel like paying for rust repair at the 15 year mark, more than unfixable problems.
The [Slate Truck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Truck) seems to be marketing itself with this in mind. But it's backed by Jeff Bezos, so proceed with caution.
Also if you’re dealing with sensitive information intelligence agencies can’t hack your car to go 100% on the throttle in a suburb. (Not sure if this is relevant in any way to salad spinners, though.)
That it should be possible for somebody with a reasonable understanding of car maintenance to actually fix or maintain their car instead of having a blob of proprietary nonsense only meant to lock you in and milk your wallet with mandatory dealer repairs and subscriptions.
Looks like a great car. As Marques Brownlee puts it [1], this is Rivian's "Model Y fighter". And I personally find the R2 to be much more appealing than a Model Y in terms of size, shape, and interior.
But we have been misled so many times about EV prices prior to launch, I think it's important to wait until we see what it actually costs for different trim levels before making comparisons to the Model Y. That $45,000 price they are throwing around could very well be for a trim that isn't even available at launch.
And anyway if I were going to buy a new compact crossover today, I'd probably lean more toward the RAV4 PHEV. It's an EV most of the time, I can refill it up with gas during long trips, it's got tactile buttons, and it has carplay.
None of these car reviewers ever take into account build quality and customer issues. Example they all lashihly praised the EX90, but owners struggled for a year with software problems, then found out the LIDAR they paid for is never going to assist their driving and they need a new computer. Same with Rivian, all of today's reviews praise the R2, but ignore the troubles current owners have not just with the car but with getting service too.
Never buy a first year model and then keep an eye on owners forums before you buy.
> None of these car reviewers ever take into account build quality and customer issues.
Because most car reviewers' job is to explain new releases. Most issues arise after time, which reviewers generally don't get. MKBHD has gone into quality issues at times: see for example Cybertruck [1] and Fisker Ocean [2]. In their Q&A videos, the couple that does Motormouth [3] due mention reliability when asked for recommendations.
There are sources for reliability assessments, like J. D. Power and Consumer Reports.
Everyone commented on the battery life for my model 3 in winter (which is annoying but not a huge deal). The problems with the bushings, the easily cracked (2500$) roof glass, and the lack of spare parts (not as bad as Rivian) were drowned out.
Love the car, but wouldn't have bought it for the price I paid (used) if I had known.
The R2 looks great but like you said, never buy a first year model.
I watched one of those Out Of Spec videos on an earlier Rivian and it was full of praise and raving. Then there was a later video where they almost on the side mentioned when it came out of the factory it felt legitimately unsafe to drive on the highway and had already spent days at service including a total powertrain shutdown, essentially a lemon. These things happened already in the time before their first video yet were never mentioned. That entire YouTube review industry is more rotten and bought than the same show on Cable TV ever was..
Also Doug Demuro raves about it [1]. Personally I can't stand Marques' reviews. Just inspiring and he looks bored. Doug on the other hand really seems to put some of his soul into his reviews.
Doug's problem is that he is never critical, he even calls flaws or omissions with the euphemism 'quirks'. It feels like he is too embedded in the automotive ecosystem to the point where he will not even be critical of Stellantis products.
Marques has no problem calling out inferior products.
The RAV4 EV capacity is so small, the electric engine so weak (cuts to gas well before highway speed), and the charge speed so slow, that in practice its a 100% gas car. Only a small number of disciplined owners are going to be able to run it as an EV most of the time, as its actually impractical to do so.
This is completely false. I own one. It goes up to the low 80s mph before the gas engine kicks in. Acceleration from a stop is sub 6 second 0-60. Hardly weak. Charges from fully empty to full in about 2.5 hours.
Mine gets a 40-45 mile all electric range. I drive 10-12k miles per year, and ignoring extended multi-day vacation road trips once every couple years, I fill up the tank 2-3 times per year.
I watched MKBHD’s review versus Doug DeMuro’s and only one of them took the time to point out the tailgate window and wipers. One reviews cars the other reviews gadgets.
I watched both Marques' review and Doug's, and yeah Doug's was better. I linked the MKBHD review because mainly I wanted to make the Model Y comparison, and Marques called it a "Model Y fighter" in the video title.
And also, Doug feels a little out of touch to me these days. Less about "quirks and features" that appeal to me (although he still covers that), and more about "enthusiast cars" (like his million dollar Porsche and Lambo) that don't really interest me. Although to be fair MKBHD isn't much better in that regard.
The only thing I'd miss about the MY is the 7-seat feature. I love the fact that you can technically cram two more people in the car on the occasional times when you need to, without needing to drive a giant 7-seat boat. I wish more mid-size electric SUVs did the same.
The RAV4 Prime is extremely hard to get if you live outside of SoCal and maybe a few other areas. I'm in the southeast and a few years ago the local dealer told me that this entire region is only allocated a few Prime's each quarter. Even today I've never seen one in the wild.
Not only that, but it sounds like dealerships are still hardcore ripping off people who want to buy a RAV4 Prime. $20k over MSRP, refusing to sell without add-ons / warranty, etc.
The 23-25 RAV4 prime has a recall where the instrument cluster goes blank. AFAIK the whole thing needs to be replaced. Sounds just like the Ioniq ICCU issues.
Toyota is claiming "up to 52 miles on a full charge" on the recently announced 2026 RAV4 PHEV [1]. For me that would be enough to cover the majority of my trips.
Looks like I was mistaken though and you can't actually buy the 2026 model yet (and the Toyota website still shows the older 2025 model). And as another commenter pointed out, it may not actually be possible to buy the older model either due to insufficient production.
here another review from my favorite car reviewer Mat Watson (carwow), from what I remember he complains about cleaning rear window wiper, but it feels all in all like paid ad
The fact that Rivan gave preview access to a UK car reviewer while ignoring Out Of Spec who literally have 3 Rivians in their 'fleet' shows that Rivian is not yet serious about building a quality, customer-centric EV even though I truly want them to be successful.
Marques Brownlee is a kid who did shitty reviews of cell phones and is now a tech influencer, not an objective auto industry reviewer. He knows jack shit about the auto industry. Whatever comes out of his mouth is designed to make his clients - the companies who pay him to pimp their products - look as good as possible.
Rivians are wildly heavy and inefficient compared to the rest of the industry. The R1T weighs more than two of the heaviest version of the Ioniq 5, for example.
R1T owners seem to average about 2mi/kwhr, whereas the Ioniq 5 gets almost twice that...
Its fitting he would think the reference in EVs is the Model Y of all things, the technologically outdated, slow charging car whose sales are falling off a cliff while the manufacturer is trying to upsell you a monthly subscription for lane keeping.
The R2 was the first time I seriously thought about spending up on a vehicle.
It looks good.
But $45k++ is just wild to me. It seems like the market is undervaluing used EV’s, so hopefully the depreciation curve will bring these down to $30k in a couple years for us old-school folks who prefer not to have a $1000/mo car loan.
I'm a little confused why you think that's wild; It's pricing is inline with other BEV's in the Canadian market at least; it's comparing with the Model Y, the Equinox, the Blazer, the Mach e, the Ioniq 5, the EV6, the BZ4, and the Aryia.
Typically speaking you're going to spend $10,000 to $13,000 more then an equivalent gas car for a BEV vs a comparable gas car in Canada.
It’s just surprising to me that this is surprising to anyone in 2026. New cars are no longer $20-30k in the US and haven’t been since 2021. Average transaction price is now $50k+, so if companies like Rivian that skip the dealership model charge $45k, it really isn’t that expensive. The only new cars under $30k are sedans and hatchbacks. And most of them start at almost $27-30k for base price not including all the bs dealership fees.
The 45k is a myth for now. The vehicles that have been reviewed so far are going to be $60k+ performance models. We'll see if they actually get down to 45k.
From the analysis I've seen with that drag coefficient, the 45k vehicle is going to have to have a range of 220 to 260 miles. Hardly something that will fly off the shelves.
Small, efficient gasoline vehicles are prohibited by CAFE standards in the US, but EVs are exempt. Generally new EV manufacturers have been starting with high-end vehicles, and working their way into mid-range, with hopes on eventual low-range vehicles.
Because EVs are exempt from CAFE standards, it does open up a niche at the very low end, and Slate and Telo are starting up production in that market, so one of their vehicles might appeal to you.
ya same, i can't see spending as much as i did on my first tesla 5+ years ago, the depreciations just too steep, hopefully that holds for rivian too and i'll pick one up in a couple years the R2 is really nice.
That said, china BEV's are 1/2 the cost even accounting for import costs to the USA lol so sort of points toward a issue with US companies at the moment
Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale.
A cursory search of the web shows that TCO for EVs in the US is higher than ICE for all but high mileage commuters. Wish it wasn't the case, but insurance alone is a 30% premium.
People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs.
We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.
Page seems awful light on technical specifications. AWD like other Rivians? How many motors? How much horsepower? How big is it? How heavy is it? What trim levels are / will be available? Will there be the same standard v. large v. max battery options? What will be those battery options' ranges?
As a European: nice, but why is it so BIG? How is that monster called "mid-size"? Why would one want to haul so many tons of extra metal around just to transport one's behind?
As a European (dutch), why are our roads so small, that normal sized cars look like "monsters". I have often thought, that Europe will have a problem in the future with roads, as they are just too small, and expanding and making them more safe, is unlikely to ever happen and often times impossible. Not everyone can get by with a small little hatchback, some of us need a big pickup (I own a building company). And for the people that do not need it from a commercial point of view, have you ever considered that people have hobbies and some hobbies needs a fair amount of space in a car? Or families with multiple kids doing sport need the space for all the gear?
I am worried that in the future, more and more european cities will just address the problem with a disguised "we are making the cities car free, and thus greener and safer". What that means for the average citizen out there is, that any building related work, will just become more expensive, as people will just charge more to get over the hassle of getting into the cities then.
I'm glad the roads are small. Smaller roads cause slower driving (well researched). As for the cities, it is unsustainable to use cars as the primary mode of transportation within cities. We do want to make cities greener and largely car-free, because cars for individuals simply do not make any sense in a city. We still need roads for deliveries and occasional transportation of heavy or large goods, but transporting yourself within a city should rarely be done in a car. See Tokyo for an example of a large metropolis which functions well and which would completely break down if everybody tried to use a car to get somewhere.
Some people need more space, but the road problem is something that can't be retrofitted without demolishing buildings.
As a Dutch person, surely you've seen that Amsterdam decided that the city's car problem in the 70s was unfixable and decided to switch to cycling. The building and delivery problem is real, but I don't think even a 10 euro/day charge for work vehicles would register given how expensive building work is already.
Land in cities is very expensive. Why should vehicles get to use more of it for free?
The R2 isn't even really a mid-size SUV. It is closer to a RAV4, which is considered a "compact SUV" or "crossover" [1]. Mid-size SUVs like the Honda Pilot tend to be even larger.
As a European, I’ve been gently looking forward to Rivian’s R3 for years now. I like the design and it looks much more like a machine that will suit Europe.
Because it's the middle size between the two reasonable car sizes that are being made today: gigantic and fucking enormous.
If you aren't buying at least the gigantic car, then you don't care about your kids safety and that's bad. How are you going to protect them from my gigantic SUV?
What? Walking?? No of course that's illegal! You want to navigate the street without a massive steel bubble? Are you nuts!
>As a European: nice, but why is it so BIG? How is that monster called "mid-size"?
Because it's a nominal size more than a descriptive one. Midsize is the second biggest size with only "full size" stuff being bigger.
It made more sense 30-40yr ago when people who remembered when the domestic auto makers mostly only made a full-size, a midsize and a compact car were still alive and of prime car buying age.
I think insiders would tell you off the record not to get an R1, but that the R2s should be much more robust. Of course it's untested at this point, but hopefully that's the case.
Can they fix that web page? That was so awful to try to get any info.. Just scroll, scroll, scroll and still just a bunch of big pictures and no meaningful info.
If you look at the R1 pages, you'll see those pages, though scroll-heavy, at least contain more useful info. I'm hoping that after R2 is actually available to order, that they'll update the page with more information. It's still early.
This was half the reason I posted to HN, honestly. I've seen several recent examples of modern product pages which render awfully because they're trying to be "quirky".
Edit: look at this, scrolling an entire screen only to have a photo zoom by <1.25x: https://imgur.com/a/G2Hfe3Q
This is their "bet the farm" moment that Elon took with the Model 3. If this doesn't become a best seller, stick a fork in them. If it does, the sky is the limit and we're very likely going to see half a million sold. There's not much in-between room for Rivian as they have no solar wildcard and their charging network is another also ran.
I feel quite bad for people living in the United States. Despite the constant refrain about freedom y'all are actually pretty hindered when it comes to reasonably priced EVs.
On Saturday I put a down on a BYD Shark 6 truck. Hopefully I'll collect it Friday, if not early next week. I'm paying $41,200 USD for the thing brand new.
I saw a MotorTrend review of it last week, they flew down to Mexico City to test one out. The entry level pricing there is $50,060 USD.
Here in Australia they're called the "Raptor Killer" as they will take Ford Ranger Raptors off the line and cost a bit more than half the price of the Raptor.
If it's going to have a gasoline engine anyway, I'd much rather just get the Raptor. By the way, the Ford Ranger Raptor is not to be confused with the Ford F-150 Raptor which is a total beast.
It's funny that the software engineers on this forum are all obsessed with building scalable systems that can provide a service at the lowest cost but when it comes to manufacturing all of a sudden it's "we must protect jerbs".
I learned very early in my career that being in hardware/software/tech does NOT mean you will be around people that LIKE hardware/software/tech. Then I eventually joined a FAANG, assuming I finally found the nerds! Oof...extreme disappointment.
My friend has the R1S, he likes it a lot, but he's also got a lemon law case open and is hoping that Rivian will have to take the vehicle back. I rode in it and it's nice, but it's way too big for me. The R2 sounds like a step in the right direction, but it still looks too large. I had to shop cars recently and I bought a Golf R. The Golf is "mid-size" to me. I moved across the country in a packed Golf GTI.
If we can have open standards to allow my car to interoperate with my home batteries (Franklin, Enphase, Tesla Powerwall or others), we'll all be better off.
Having a massive heavy steel box that weighs thousands of kilos that can accelerate that quick, that you can operate in public with little to no useful training is not safer. I'm sorry, no car outside of a race track needs to accelerate that quick. It's absurd.
If it pull less current, you can use batteries which aren't specced for high amps.
If use use less amps, you can use thinner cabling and split the batteries up i various compartments. That means heat is more distributed. Less active cooling, if any, is needed, of both batteries and motors.
All of the above can translate to less weight, which mean better range.
In my observation the primary purpose of this performance seems to be to be able to round on-ramps at really slow speeds and then floor it and merge leaving slower vehicles behind you with a crap situation.
Having driven a very slow acceleration car, yes, yes you do, trust me. Nothing worse than merging into dense traffic with high-speed trucks next to you and not being able to come up to speed before the ramp ceases.
Boy it's ugly. While being a great fan of electric engines, I always wonder why electric cars by design must be ugly and have bad patterns (like retractable handles and a huge tablet in the middle)
AIUI this might not be as bigger problem as you’d imagine. Aerodynamics dominate most of the resistance at medium to highway speeds. This was discussed in the recent Rivian R1T cannonball run conversion videos where they doubled the battery capacity (and therefore drastically increased the weight of the vehicle) without substantially affecting efficiency.
Yeah, but does it have CarPlay yet? It's a complete deal breaker despite Rivian being essentially the only company who offers a BEV pickup truck of a reasonable size.
Haptic steering wheel thumb-wheels instead of actual buttons? Hell no. Full pass. And we're in the market for a vehicle like this in the next year or so, looking hard at Santa Fe Calligraphy, or Outback XT (similar size, similar price tag, AFAICT). No physical buttons = no sale.
I think you’re confusing “haptic” for “capacitive”. The wheels are real, physical controls with motors to give tactile feedback about the state of the UI. You can literally feel where the beginning and end of a list are, for example. It’s even better than traditional buttons.
The only problem is that there aren’t also physical controls for media and climate, which there should be. But for everything else, the thumb wheels are going to be awesome.
The haptic feedback on e.g. macbook trackpads is very convincing, so I'm not sure it's impossible to get right in a car, but I wouldn't bet on <random car manufacturer> to get it right.
Former R1S Gen 2 owner. Love this brand and I want to love the car, but the quality and constant maintenance issues were unacceptable.
Rattles, a door mirror motor breaking, doors that wouldn't shut properly, door weather stripping that fell off, a door that just wouldn't open, panel alignment issues, some kind of screaching-to-a-halt-and-terrifying-my-family auto-brake that Rivian never figured out after reviewing log data.
Oh and did I mention the fans or heat pump that sound like a ROCKET LAUNCHING?! At a park one time someone asked me if something was wrong with the vehicle. Nope, that's just the terrible fans they chose!
Insult to injury: someone rear ended me. Insurance "covered" it, but the local collision center --- my only option within 6 hours --- charges a 2X rate for EVs that State Farm would not cover. So a $14,000 MINOR FENDER DENT turned into $7,000 out of pocket for me.
If you look at /r/rivian, it's a near constant stream of issues. While Rivian did expedite service center visits for critical issues, other times repairs were months out. And as the R2 scales, SC growth will probably trail for a while, and so I really fear for the experience early adopters are in for.
I am rooting for them but for me personally I would not consider another Rivian.
I really reality wish rivian create a better self-driving technology soon and make a proper competition to tesla. Rivian cars are so nice and well designed.
Personally I'm in no rush to have self-driving capabilities in my car for at least another decade or so. I'm pretty happy with the current ADAS systems found in most cars like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and collision avoidance - and happy to just see incremental refinements to those systems.
At some point I want a self-driving car, but I'm happy to let Waymo and Tesla users test those systems for another 10+ years before I personally start using them.
Of course everyone has different needs. This is the reason why there are so many different makers and models. I commute a lot (100 miles a day) and tesla self driving is hard requirement. But almost everything else in car sucks compared to other cars. And compared to rivian it sucks big time. The moment rivian gets what tesla have now with fsd I will switch immediately. And some comments suggest rivian is working on that.
The main thing I think about self-driving is if it truly were self-driving and you could sleep in the car while it drives to a destination overnight. Even if it were only highways. That would be really cool.
Are you buying a car in the next 10 years? I’m in a similar boat. But I’m irrelevant to the car market because I’m not buying until I can buy a Level 4 car.
They're working on that. They're partnering with Nvidia and the R2 will get upgraded hardware for self driving in the fall. I couldn't tell from the website if making a reservation now lets you wait for that.
Self-driving seems like something where car companies shouldn’t all “reinvent the wheel.” A couple of the bigger car companies have projects on this, right? Maybe they could share.
> A couple of the bigger car companies have projects on this, right? Maybe they could share
Why should they? We're already approaching geopolitical competition at this problem, given self-driving cars and self-driving self-propelled guns and the like are basically technological twins.
Honestly just decent smart cruise and lane keeping is good enough. Concentrate on making a solid long range reliable EV is the best way to compete with Tesla in the short to medium term.
No, sorry, I wouldn't buy EVs from any US company any more until they are matura enough that the model production surpasses at least Tesla Model S+X since released. Their reliability just suck. I don't want to waste my life again and again in those months-long waiting of service appointments, annoying issues every where and every day, hiring Lemon law lawyers and other BS.
I like the Rivians I've seen. They're actually, y'know, a truck as opposed to a k-hole hallucination. You can lift stuff up and over the bed near the cab.
"No CarPlay" is approximately where I stopped reading -- and I am literally their dream target audience - enough money to buy a second car, easily able to afford one of theirs, have solar on top of my house making my electricity cheap, like techy things.
They will either learn or ... not, I guess. I know I am not the only one. Nobody in my family would buy anything techy without my advice (and a modern EV is basically an iPad on wheels, so it qualifies as techy), and I will never ever give "yes" to a car without CarPlay
yeah, seems extremely weird to not have it, it is a must for newer cars, especially ones that are EVs. I wonder why they don't have it, maybe a beef with the phone makers...
Length and width wise, it's smaller than a Model Y. It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space. Rivian calls it a mid-size SUV, but that is straight up bullshit.
"Matchbox" is rather hyperbolic and would better match the upcoming R3/R3X which is around the size of a VW Golf (though that still isn't that small… Honda Fits, kei cars, and Fiat 500s are smaller still).
It's about a foot longer than my crossover, which is about the same size as a RAV4 or CR-V and there's no way I could call it tiny.
If you want to see a reviewer next to it for scale, Doug DeMuro is 6'4" and has what you're looking for, from various angles over the course of the review. Looks like a reasonable size to me.
> It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space.
I miss the days when men looking to compensate would buy sports cars. It wasn't any less ridiculous, but at least they (edit: the cars) were better looking and more fun to drive.
If only those ridiculous guys who wanted something fun to drive had realized how much more fun they could have by making fun of people and feeling superior.
I guess it depends on what they were compensating for. Up until the 80's and 90's at least there was more association of racing cars with road cars that you could buy.
So that would associate you with the (A man's manly-man maybe?) driver of that car.
But now race cars are not really much like a production road car. And those older men with money don't necessarily want to be like the ever younger drivers being employed to win races.
As you say, ridiculous, but at least the sports cars were cool.
"straight up bullshit" would be calling a 4runner-sized vehicle a "matchbox". Really highlights how ridiculous American's unnecessary lust is for massive vehicles.
I wish Rivian would stop trying to emulate Tesla on this front and add support for CarPlay. I don't want your UI.
I actually like the look of the Rivian and this is something I'm somewhat in the market for (or will be in the next few years) but I won't touch it without CarPlay.
as a tesla owner, all I can tell, carPlay is ugly child was born due to EU car makers, not capable of building proper infotainment system.
I want to drive, not constantly connect/accept privacy etc. Especially if that is a $100k+ car.
When i get into the car, the last thing I'd like to know how my car is getting connected to my phone, if there are any issues, especially if that is not my car.
I love how my car knows that in the morning i go to work, and wednesday evening i go to yoga, and put GPS, with best traffic options. 0 touch, all super seamless. No phones involved.
CarPlay has become somewhat of a standard. It's fine to say you personally don't need it, but many/most laymen will still expect their new car to support it.
If a PC was launched without Windows support, most people on HN might be able to live with it day-to-day, but it would still be a dealbreaker for the general population. Admittedly this isn't a fair comparison, but hopefully you understand my point.
i have a rivian, and despite being a carplay fan before, i do not miss it. Carplay is a crutch for legacy autos who cant make software, so you just want to overlay a phone feed over their crap. But its very limited, its essentially a video overlay box and has terrible / non-existent integration with the cars smarts, like battery, range, HUD screens, advanced audio controls, etc etc. In my experience with carplay in other smart-ish cars (BMW X series) the carplay experience fights with the car OS constantly and is an awful incoherent experience.
A well made car software solution, like the rivians(mostly), is a better experience overall imho.
I say this as someone who still loves having carplay on my other car, a subaru, because their software is atrocious.
i would say, give one a try you might change your mind.
> the carplay experience fights with the car OS constantly and is an awful incoherent experience.
It seems to me like fixing this is the appropriate path forward. There are things that the car OS is better at (like you mention), but no car OS is ever going to support the various media apps I have on my phone that are automatically supported by Android/Android Auto media controls, and bluetooth playback is an even worse experience than cludging together the car OS + android auto media in one UI.
With FSD , that is a very very capable system in 2026, You need real multi media for driving (once it's solved), for camping , movies during charging, and not phone somehow ugly slapped by some plastic holder to your car.
I bought a new salad spinner recently, after having broken yet another one.
I’ve had fancy brands like Zyliss and OXO. I’ve had cheap store brand models and cheaper Amazon MYSSNGVWL type stuff as well. Knowing they would probably break didn’t make it feel better when they eventually broke.
Anyway the new salad spinner is large, heavy, with a steel pin into a brass bushing, has a metal handle and nylon gears in a sealed gearbox with exposed stainless screws for servicing. I opened it up and greased it on first use, mostly just to pretend to be servicing it, just to see what that felt like. It felt good!
The best part is it came with a catalogue that had order codes for spare parts. They wanted to help you maintain it. It was built to last and the manufacturer was on your side.
https://www.dynamicmixers.com/en/our-products/salad-spinner/...
I’m starting to feel silly writing all this about a salad spinner, but where is my car version of this?
The car version of this stopped being produced 15 years ago.
Old petrol Toyotas and Hondas met your criteria.
And the back catalogue of parts is huge and supported for a long time.
Modern cars aren't built as well.
Maybe the modern non-turbo petrol Mazdas are the best fallback.
Modern cars aren't built as well.
Can you cite a source for this? There's no question that they're vastly more complex, but I would think that modern car manufacturing is far more exacting (and efficient) than in the past.
If you're saying that older cars are more repairable, I'm happy to agree with you, even without a source to back up that claim.
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> but where is my car version of this?
It's the status quo? Cars last longer than they ever have in history. In 2 decades average age of cars on the road increased from 9.5 to 14.5. They are a little more difficult to maintain for the home mechanic because they are packed with electronics, but what you want seems to exist perfectly. Many use timing chains instead of timing belts that last 20+ years. Radiators rarely crack whereas they used to all the time. Alternators last the life of the vehicle. Cars are often upgraded because the owner is bored or does not feel like paying for rust repair at the 15 year mark, more than unfixable problems.
This won’t fit the usual hate, but.. https://epc.tesla.com Vast majority of parts can be ordered directly from the catalogue.
I mean, the vast majority of parts for the vast majority of cars can be ordered from:
https://www.rockauto.com/
Ordering parts feels like less of the issue than the ability to fix and service it yourself.
Has tesla started supporting third party shops doing battery replacements for instance?
How can you replace the idiotic console and door handles with manageable parts? Is there a sane charging port yet?
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That's a salad spinner with a price of ~4x the cost of the OXO one. Would you buy a new car that cost 150,000 dollars?
That's a $125 salad spinner... I get the appeal, but it's definitely a premium product.
The [Slate Truck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Truck) seems to be marketing itself with this in mind. But it's backed by Jeff Bezos, so proceed with caution.
>Fast and efficient, it respects the product’s fragility.
>Heavy duty construction for an intensive daily use.
Wait is it fragile or is it heavy duty? I guess they used "product" instead of "produce".
Also if you’re dealing with sensitive information intelligence agencies can’t hack your car to go 100% on the throttle in a suburb. (Not sure if this is relevant in any way to salad spinners, though.)
I’ve had a cheap (was $15) single salad spinner, for about 15 years. Decent amount of usage in that time, but not professional level.
So my question to you is: what the heck are you doing to your salad spinners?
If you spin low-grade uranium ore just right, the heavier particles will deposit on the edges, giving you high-grade uranium.
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https://www.worldpac.com/
Every car manufacturer has a catalog of spare parts you can order. I really don't understand what you're on about with your post.
That it should be possible for somebody with a reasonable understanding of car maintenance to actually fix or maintain their car instead of having a blob of proprietary nonsense only meant to lock you in and milk your wallet with mandatory dealer repairs and subscriptions.
Looks like a great car. As Marques Brownlee puts it [1], this is Rivian's "Model Y fighter". And I personally find the R2 to be much more appealing than a Model Y in terms of size, shape, and interior.
But we have been misled so many times about EV prices prior to launch, I think it's important to wait until we see what it actually costs for different trim levels before making comparisons to the Model Y. That $45,000 price they are throwing around could very well be for a trim that isn't even available at launch.
And anyway if I were going to buy a new compact crossover today, I'd probably lean more toward the RAV4 PHEV. It's an EV most of the time, I can refill it up with gas during long trips, it's got tactile buttons, and it has carplay.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfReqcUJfBU
None of these car reviewers ever take into account build quality and customer issues. Example they all lashihly praised the EX90, but owners struggled for a year with software problems, then found out the LIDAR they paid for is never going to assist their driving and they need a new computer. Same with Rivian, all of today's reviews praise the R2, but ignore the troubles current owners have not just with the car but with getting service too.
Never buy a first year model and then keep an eye on owners forums before you buy.
> None of these car reviewers ever take into account build quality and customer issues.
Because most car reviewers' job is to explain new releases. Most issues arise after time, which reviewers generally don't get. MKBHD has gone into quality issues at times: see for example Cybertruck [1] and Fisker Ocean [2]. In their Q&A videos, the couple that does Motormouth [3] due mention reliability when asked for recommendations.
There are sources for reliability assessments, like J. D. Power and Consumer Reports.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0cs8aIXgkc&t=8m
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xWXRk3yaSw
[3] https://www.youtube.com/user/Motormouthcanada/videos
Underrated comment.
Everyone commented on the battery life for my model 3 in winter (which is annoying but not a huge deal). The problems with the bushings, the easily cracked (2500$) roof glass, and the lack of spare parts (not as bad as Rivian) were drowned out.
Love the car, but wouldn't have bought it for the price I paid (used) if I had known.
The R2 looks great but like you said, never buy a first year model.
(Unless it is the Honda 0 Saloon)
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I would love to come in and buy a BYD with the exact same design flaws, but for 1/3 of the price. Sadly protectionism disallows me from doing that
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I watched one of those Out Of Spec videos on an earlier Rivian and it was full of praise and raving. Then there was a later video where they almost on the side mentioned when it came out of the factory it felt legitimately unsafe to drive on the highway and had already spent days at service including a total powertrain shutdown, essentially a lemon. These things happened already in the time before their first video yet were never mentioned. That entire YouTube review industry is more rotten and bought than the same show on Cable TV ever was..
I think Consumer Reports does large quality surveys of customers and includes that in their reviews.
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Also Doug Demuro raves about it [1]. Personally I can't stand Marques' reviews. Just inspiring and he looks bored. Doug on the other hand really seems to put some of his soul into his reviews.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUl_0087dyM
Doug's problem is that he is never critical, he even calls flaws or omissions with the euphemism 'quirks'. It feels like he is too embedded in the automotive ecosystem to the point where he will not even be critical of Stellantis products.
Marques has no problem calling out inferior products.
Doug's format is beyond worn out and tiresome.
He hasn't innovated or improved upon anything in years.
Don't even get me started on his voice...
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The RAV4 EV capacity is so small, the electric engine so weak (cuts to gas well before highway speed), and the charge speed so slow, that in practice its a 100% gas car. Only a small number of disciplined owners are going to be able to run it as an EV most of the time, as its actually impractical to do so.
It’s a gas car, with greenwashing.
This is completely false. I own one. It goes up to the low 80s mph before the gas engine kicks in. Acceleration from a stop is sub 6 second 0-60. Hardly weak. Charges from fully empty to full in about 2.5 hours.
Mine gets a 40-45 mile all electric range. I drive 10-12k miles per year, and ignoring extended multi-day vacation road trips once every couple years, I fill up the tank 2-3 times per year.
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I watched MKBHD’s review versus Doug DeMuro’s and only one of them took the time to point out the tailgate window and wipers. One reviews cars the other reviews gadgets.
I watched both Marques' review and Doug's, and yeah Doug's was better. I linked the MKBHD review because mainly I wanted to make the Model Y comparison, and Marques called it a "Model Y fighter" in the video title.
And also, Doug feels a little out of touch to me these days. Less about "quirks and features" that appeal to me (although he still covers that), and more about "enthusiast cars" (like his million dollar Porsche and Lambo) that don't really interest me. Although to be fair MKBHD isn't much better in that regard.
The only thing I'd miss about the MY is the 7-seat feature. I love the fact that you can technically cram two more people in the car on the occasional times when you need to, without needing to drive a giant 7-seat boat. I wish more mid-size electric SUVs did the same.
I sat in the back seat of a model Y with two other adults and it was extremely painful.
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The RAV4 Prime is extremely hard to get if you live outside of SoCal and maybe a few other areas. I'm in the southeast and a few years ago the local dealer told me that this entire region is only allocated a few Prime's each quarter. Even today I've never seen one in the wild.
Not only that, but it sounds like dealerships are still hardcore ripping off people who want to buy a RAV4 Prime. $20k over MSRP, refusing to sell without add-ons / warranty, etc.
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The 23-25 RAV4 prime has a recall where the instrument cluster goes blank. AFAIK the whole thing needs to be replaced. Sounds just like the Ioniq ICCU issues.
> It's an EV most of the time
Nowhere on the Toyota site did I see anything about range on battery only. Still, I wouldn't mind having one.
I settled for a refurbed Leaf and have only needed an ICE vehicle twice, because of cargo capacity, not range.
Toyota is claiming "up to 52 miles on a full charge" on the recently announced 2026 RAV4 PHEV [1]. For me that would be enough to cover the majority of my trips.
Looks like I was mistaken though and you can't actually buy the 2026 model yet (and the Toyota website still shows the older 2025 model). And as another commenter pointed out, it may not actually be possible to buy the older model either due to insufficient production.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a69059379/2026-toyota-r...
A friend of mine bought one. It ended up being kind of awful. 53mi of range for a 40kwH battery? That's abysmal. Where's all the power going?
He traded it in for a used 2023 Model Y. Does 9-hr road trips all the time. I don't think he's going back.
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here another review from my favorite car reviewer Mat Watson (carwow), from what I remember he complains about cleaning rear window wiper, but it feels all in all like paid ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eepauvC5LU
The fact that Rivan gave preview access to a UK car reviewer while ignoring Out Of Spec who literally have 3 Rivians in their 'fleet' shows that Rivian is not yet serious about building a quality, customer-centric EV even though I truly want them to be successful.
Marques Brownlee is a kid who did shitty reviews of cell phones and is now a tech influencer, not an objective auto industry reviewer. He knows jack shit about the auto industry. Whatever comes out of his mouth is designed to make his clients - the companies who pay him to pimp their products - look as good as possible.
Rivians are wildly heavy and inefficient compared to the rest of the industry. The R1T weighs more than two of the heaviest version of the Ioniq 5, for example.
R1T owners seem to average about 2mi/kwhr, whereas the Ioniq 5 gets almost twice that...
Its fitting he would think the reference in EVs is the Model Y of all things, the technologically outdated, slow charging car whose sales are falling off a cliff while the manufacturer is trying to upsell you a monthly subscription for lane keeping.
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The R2 was the first time I seriously thought about spending up on a vehicle.
It looks good.
But $45k++ is just wild to me. It seems like the market is undervaluing used EV’s, so hopefully the depreciation curve will bring these down to $30k in a couple years for us old-school folks who prefer not to have a $1000/mo car loan.
I'm a little confused why you think that's wild; It's pricing is inline with other BEV's in the Canadian market at least; it's comparing with the Model Y, the Equinox, the Blazer, the Mach e, the Ioniq 5, the EV6, the BZ4, and the Aryia.
Typically speaking you're going to spend $10,000 to $13,000 more then an equivalent gas car for a BEV vs a comparable gas car in Canada.
> But $45k++ is just wild to me
It’s just surprising to me that this is surprising to anyone in 2026. New cars are no longer $20-30k in the US and haven’t been since 2021. Average transaction price is now $50k+, so if companies like Rivian that skip the dealership model charge $45k, it really isn’t that expensive. The only new cars under $30k are sedans and hatchbacks. And most of them start at almost $27-30k for base price not including all the bs dealership fees.
The 45k is a myth for now. The vehicles that have been reviewed so far are going to be $60k+ performance models. We'll see if they actually get down to 45k.
From the analysis I've seen with that drag coefficient, the 45k vehicle is going to have to have a range of 220 to 260 miles. Hardly something that will fly off the shelves.
Small, efficient gasoline vehicles are prohibited by CAFE standards in the US, but EVs are exempt. Generally new EV manufacturers have been starting with high-end vehicles, and working their way into mid-range, with hopes on eventual low-range vehicles.
Because EVs are exempt from CAFE standards, it does open up a niche at the very low end, and Slate and Telo are starting up production in that market, so one of their vehicles might appeal to you.
ya same, i can't see spending as much as i did on my first tesla 5+ years ago, the depreciations just too steep, hopefully that holds for rivian too and i'll pick one up in a couple years the R2 is really nice.
That said, china BEV's are 1/2 the cost even accounting for import costs to the USA lol so sort of points toward a issue with US companies at the moment
Do they depreciate any worse than their gas counterparts? You’re also saving money on gas and maintenance - that’s gotta count for something, no?
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You can get a used EV for pretty cheap these days
Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale.
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/19/cars-prices-inflation-suvs
A cursory search of the web shows that TCO for EVs in the US is higher than ICE for all but high mileage commuters. Wish it wasn't the case, but insurance alone is a 30% premium.
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Are you sure about that? The cost of repairing even minor collision damage on a Rivian is ridiculous.
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People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs.
We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.
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Page seems awful light on technical specifications. AWD like other Rivians? How many motors? How much horsepower? How big is it? How heavy is it? What trim levels are / will be available? Will there be the same standard v. large v. max battery options? What will be those battery options' ranges?
As a European: nice, but why is it so BIG? How is that monster called "mid-size"? Why would one want to haul so many tons of extra metal around just to transport one's behind?
As a European (dutch), why are our roads so small, that normal sized cars look like "monsters". I have often thought, that Europe will have a problem in the future with roads, as they are just too small, and expanding and making them more safe, is unlikely to ever happen and often times impossible. Not everyone can get by with a small little hatchback, some of us need a big pickup (I own a building company). And for the people that do not need it from a commercial point of view, have you ever considered that people have hobbies and some hobbies needs a fair amount of space in a car? Or families with multiple kids doing sport need the space for all the gear? I am worried that in the future, more and more european cities will just address the problem with a disguised "we are making the cities car free, and thus greener and safer". What that means for the average citizen out there is, that any building related work, will just become more expensive, as people will just charge more to get over the hassle of getting into the cities then.
I'm glad the roads are small. Smaller roads cause slower driving (well researched). As for the cities, it is unsustainable to use cars as the primary mode of transportation within cities. We do want to make cities greener and largely car-free, because cars for individuals simply do not make any sense in a city. We still need roads for deliveries and occasional transportation of heavy or large goods, but transporting yourself within a city should rarely be done in a car. See Tokyo for an example of a large metropolis which functions well and which would completely break down if everybody tried to use a car to get somewhere.
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What I've observed, is that 90% of journeys people make can be done without a car.
Designing a city that helps people make those journeys car free, makes it better for the 10% of journeys that do need to be made with a car.
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Some people need more space, but the road problem is something that can't be retrofitted without demolishing buildings.
As a Dutch person, surely you've seen that Amsterdam decided that the city's car problem in the 70s was unfixable and decided to switch to cycling. The building and delivery problem is real, but I don't think even a 10 euro/day charge for work vehicles would register given how expensive building work is already.
Land in cities is very expensive. Why should vehicles get to use more of it for free?
The R2 isn't even really a mid-size SUV. It is closer to a RAV4, which is considered a "compact SUV" or "crossover" [1]. Mid-size SUVs like the Honda Pilot tend to be even larger.
[1] https://www.carmax.com/articles/suv-size-comparison-guide
As a European, I’ve been gently looking forward to Rivian’s R3 for years now. I like the design and it looks much more like a machine that will suit Europe.
Because it's the middle size between the two reasonable car sizes that are being made today: gigantic and fucking enormous.
If you aren't buying at least the gigantic car, then you don't care about your kids safety and that's bad. How are you going to protect them from my gigantic SUV?
What? Walking?? No of course that's illegal! You want to navigate the street without a massive steel bubble? Are you nuts!
when every car around you is even bigger than this, you’ll appreciate not driving a minuscule car in america.
it is terrifying
>As a European: nice, but why is it so BIG? How is that monster called "mid-size"?
Because it's a nominal size more than a descriptive one. Midsize is the second biggest size with only "full size" stuff being bigger.
It made more sense 30-40yr ago when people who remembered when the domestic auto makers mostly only made a full-size, a midsize and a compact car were still alive and of prime car buying age.
I want Rivian to succeed, more competition is a good thing, but reading about the all the buy backs on r/rivian is disheartening.
Tip: do not get Rivian unless a service center is close.
I think insiders would tell you off the record not to get an R1, but that the R2s should be much more robust. Of course it's untested at this point, but hopefully that's the case.
Can they fix that web page? That was so awful to try to get any info.. Just scroll, scroll, scroll and still just a bunch of big pictures and no meaningful info.
If you look at the R1 pages, you'll see those pages, though scroll-heavy, at least contain more useful info. I'm hoping that after R2 is actually available to order, that they'll update the page with more information. It's still early.
The scrolling was so bad I had to close the page when I was actually interested.
This was half the reason I posted to HN, honestly. I've seen several recent examples of modern product pages which render awfully because they're trying to be "quirky".
Edit: look at this, scrolling an entire screen only to have a photo zoom by <1.25x: https://imgur.com/a/G2Hfe3Q
This is their "bet the farm" moment that Elon took with the Model 3. If this doesn't become a best seller, stick a fork in them. If it does, the sky is the limit and we're very likely going to see half a million sold. There's not much in-between room for Rivian as they have no solar wildcard and their charging network is another also ran.
I feel quite bad for people living in the United States. Despite the constant refrain about freedom y'all are actually pretty hindered when it comes to reasonably priced EVs. On Saturday I put a down on a BYD Shark 6 truck. Hopefully I'll collect it Friday, if not early next week. I'm paying $41,200 USD for the thing brand new. I saw a MotorTrend review of it last week, they flew down to Mexico City to test one out. The entry level pricing there is $50,060 USD. Here in Australia they're called the "Raptor Killer" as they will take Ford Ranger Raptors off the line and cost a bit more than half the price of the Raptor.
A BYD Shark 6 is not an EV?
Yeah, I didn’t realize we were calling hybrids “EV”s now.
Also, the BYDs I’ve been in were chintzy garbage as far as fit and finish goes. Can’t speak to their reliability, or other aspects of them, though.
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If it's going to have a gasoline engine anyway, I'd much rather just get the Raptor. By the way, the Ford Ranger Raptor is not to be confused with the Ford F-150 Raptor which is a total beast.
It's funny that the software engineers on this forum are all obsessed with building scalable systems that can provide a service at the lowest cost but when it comes to manufacturing all of a sudden it's "we must protect jerbs".
It's about time people woke up to the fact China is not just after jerbs.
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HNers so grumpy you’d think this was an AI story submission…
I learned very early in my career that being in hardware/software/tech does NOT mean you will be around people that LIKE hardware/software/tech. Then I eventually joined a FAANG, assuming I finally found the nerds! Oof...extreme disappointment.
My friend has the R1S, he likes it a lot, but he's also got a lemon law case open and is hoping that Rivian will have to take the vehicle back. I rode in it and it's nice, but it's way too big for me. The R2 sounds like a step in the right direction, but it still looks too large. I had to shop cars recently and I bought a Golf R. The Golf is "mid-size" to me. I moved across the country in a packed Golf GTI.
Anyone have insights on V2G or V2H capabilities?
If we can have open standards to allow my car to interoperate with my home batteries (Franklin, Enphase, Tesla Powerwall or others), we'll all be better off.
I saw on one of the review videos that you can get 2400W out of the R2
At 240v? Or thru a regular plug somehow?
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Do you really need a 0-60mph time of 3.0 seconds in a mommymobile?
That's like asking if mommy needs a razor sharp knife in the kitchen or if we should keep it dull for legacy reasons.
Uhhh, what? No it isn't.
Having a sharp knife is safer than a dull one.
Having a massive heavy steel box that weighs thousands of kilos that can accelerate that quick, that you can operate in public with little to no useful training is not safer. I'm sorry, no car outside of a race track needs to accelerate that quick. It's absurd.
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How much of that performance comes for free, from optimizing for range/efficiency?
What's the obvious "that could be less" in the system that wouldn't negatively impact efficiency?
None of it.
It the motor is smaller, it pulls less current.
If it pull less current, you can use batteries which aren't specced for high amps.
If use use less amps, you can use thinner cabling and split the batteries up i various compartments. That means heat is more distributed. Less active cooling, if any, is needed, of both batteries and motors.
All of the above can translate to less weight, which mean better range.
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In my observation the primary purpose of this performance seems to be to be able to round on-ramps at really slow speeds and then floor it and merge leaving slower vehicles behind you with a crap situation.
Having driven a very slow acceleration car, yes, yes you do, trust me. Nothing worse than merging into dense traffic with high-speed trucks next to you and not being able to come up to speed before the ramp ceases.
Boy it's ugly. While being a great fan of electric engines, I always wonder why electric cars by design must be ugly and have bad patterns (like retractable handles and a huge tablet in the middle)
Still a massive vehicle! Bulky electric cars make so little sense, because then you need bigger batteries, which... further increase the weight.
The upcoming R3/R3x is likely to be a way more practical vehicle for most people, unless you have a large family to haul around. [0]
[0] https://www.caranddriver.com/rivian/r3
AIUI this might not be as bigger problem as you’d imagine. Aerodynamics dominate most of the resistance at medium to highway speeds. This was discussed in the recent Rivian R1T cannonball run conversion videos where they doubled the battery capacity (and therefore drastically increased the weight of the vehicle) without substantially affecting efficiency.
Yeah, but does it have CarPlay yet? It's a complete deal breaker despite Rivian being essentially the only company who offers a BEV pickup truck of a reasonable size.
This is a beautiful car.
Haptic steering wheel thumb-wheels instead of actual buttons? Hell no. Full pass. And we're in the market for a vehicle like this in the next year or so, looking hard at Santa Fe Calligraphy, or Outback XT (similar size, similar price tag, AFAICT). No physical buttons = no sale.
I think you’re confusing “haptic” for “capacitive”. The wheels are real, physical controls with motors to give tactile feedback about the state of the UI. You can literally feel where the beginning and end of a list are, for example. It’s even better than traditional buttons.
The only problem is that there aren’t also physical controls for media and climate, which there should be. But for everything else, the thumb wheels are going to be awesome.
Marques Brownlee seems to like the wheels in his latest video review, FWIW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfReqcUJfBU
And unsafe electronic door handles so your kids an unable to get out of the car in an emergency. https://old.reddit.com/r/Rivian/comments/1r1etyr/zack_demons...
That video makes it look like a physical button for the rear door manual release (albeit in a very hidden location)?
The haptic feedback on e.g. macbook trackpads is very convincing, so I'm not sure it's impossible to get right in a car, but I wouldn't bet on <random car manufacturer> to get it right.
The Outback is an incredible car for the money
My BYD Sealion 7 has been an absolute joy.
Former R1S Gen 2 owner. Love this brand and I want to love the car, but the quality and constant maintenance issues were unacceptable.
Rattles, a door mirror motor breaking, doors that wouldn't shut properly, door weather stripping that fell off, a door that just wouldn't open, panel alignment issues, some kind of screaching-to-a-halt-and-terrifying-my-family auto-brake that Rivian never figured out after reviewing log data.
Oh and did I mention the fans or heat pump that sound like a ROCKET LAUNCHING?! At a park one time someone asked me if something was wrong with the vehicle. Nope, that's just the terrible fans they chose!
Insult to injury: someone rear ended me. Insurance "covered" it, but the local collision center --- my only option within 6 hours --- charges a 2X rate for EVs that State Farm would not cover. So a $14,000 MINOR FENDER DENT turned into $7,000 out of pocket for me.
If you look at /r/rivian, it's a near constant stream of issues. While Rivian did expedite service center visits for critical issues, other times repairs were months out. And as the R2 scales, SC growth will probably trail for a while, and so I really fear for the experience early adopters are in for.
I am rooting for them but for me personally I would not consider another Rivian.
Car manufacturer websites are one of the worst things on the web.
I want to throttle whoever decided that scroll driven animations should be added to CSS/browsers. Just a load of gee-whiz bullshit
Why do they think we want to look at snail-paced scrolling, stuttery animations?
Genuine question: why are you interested in buying a brand new car as opposed to a used one given the massive markdown on even 2 year old cars?
BYD's electric SUV is currently available here in Australia for the local equivalent of $40,000.
Selling well like all BYD models.
Cheaper models like the Atto are the equivalent of $20,000.
Put some physical buttons in there and maybe I’ll consider it.
I really reality wish rivian create a better self-driving technology soon and make a proper competition to tesla. Rivian cars are so nice and well designed.
Personally I'm in no rush to have self-driving capabilities in my car for at least another decade or so. I'm pretty happy with the current ADAS systems found in most cars like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and collision avoidance - and happy to just see incremental refinements to those systems.
At some point I want a self-driving car, but I'm happy to let Waymo and Tesla users test those systems for another 10+ years before I personally start using them.
Of course everyone has different needs. This is the reason why there are so many different makers and models. I commute a lot (100 miles a day) and tesla self driving is hard requirement. But almost everything else in car sucks compared to other cars. And compared to rivian it sucks big time. The moment rivian gets what tesla have now with fsd I will switch immediately. And some comments suggest rivian is working on that.
The main thing I think about self-driving is if it truly were self-driving and you could sleep in the car while it drives to a destination overnight. Even if it were only highways. That would be really cool.
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Are you buying a car in the next 10 years? I’m in a similar boat. But I’m irrelevant to the car market because I’m not buying until I can buy a Level 4 car.
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Agreed! But I have to say, lane centering and adaptive cruise control have been amazing, coming from a previous vehicle with neither.
They're working on that. They're partnering with Nvidia and the R2 will get upgraded hardware for self driving in the fall. I couldn't tell from the website if making a reservation now lets you wait for that.
Self-driving seems like something where car companies shouldn’t all “reinvent the wheel.” A couple of the bigger car companies have projects on this, right? Maybe they could share.
It will probably follow the same pattern as ADAS. Bosch or someone will develop a package, sell it to car manufacturers, and it will become widespread
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> A couple of the bigger car companies have projects on this, right? Maybe they could share
Why should they? We're already approaching geopolitical competition at this problem, given self-driving cars and self-driving self-propelled guns and the like are basically technological twins.
Honestly just decent smart cruise and lane keeping is good enough. Concentrate on making a solid long range reliable EV is the best way to compete with Tesla in the short to medium term.
Deadly door handles, all around ugly. Why?
See also:
https://insideevs.com/reviews/786814/rivian-r2-prototype-fir...
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/first-drive-2026-rivian-r...
I prefer Lucid Air ~ https://youtu.be/JxuB4H6uCq8
R1S looks better than R2
No, sorry, I wouldn't buy EVs from any US company any more until they are matura enough that the model production surpasses at least Tesla Model S+X since released. Their reliability just suck. I don't want to waste my life again and again in those months-long waiting of service appointments, annoying issues every where and every day, hiring Lemon law lawyers and other BS.
Data points:
- one Model X
- one R1s
- My neighbor: one Model X, one R1t
- My collegemate: one Model X
I'm tired of EVs using the electric usage to gut their interiors of $50k+ cars.
It’s really hard to judge the size of the R2. It looks like I’m looking at an updated R1S.
Is this thing crossover sized like a Kia Soul or a Rav4? Or is it bigger?
R2's dimensions are 185.6" x 75" x 66.9". The 2026 RAV4 is 181" x 73" x 66.5". So the R2 is slightly bigger than a RAV4.
The R1S is significantly larger at 200" x 82" x 77.3".
No CarPlay,UI with toxic translucent floating buttons, "evolving" steering wheel.
Have they learned nothing?
I like the Rivians I've seen. They're actually, y'know, a truck as opposed to a k-hole hallucination. You can lift stuff up and over the bed near the cab.
The R1 is a body on frame, so a traditional truck chassis.
This new R2 is a unibody- so more of a car, less so a truck
deadly door handles, no thanks
I'd rather have a slate.
Or perhaps even two Slates for the price of a high end R2
https://www.slate.auto
That 300+ miles means nothing without more specs. What’s the size of the battery? The usual 130-140 kWh?
In addition, that's presumably not on the base model price point. Will be interesting to find out.
"No CarPlay" is approximately where I stopped reading -- and I am literally their dream target audience - enough money to buy a second car, easily able to afford one of theirs, have solar on top of my house making my electricity cheap, like techy things.
They will either learn or ... not, I guess. I know I am not the only one. Nobody in my family would buy anything techy without my advice (and a modern EV is basically an iPad on wheels, so it qualifies as techy), and I will never ever give "yes" to a car without CarPlay
yeah, seems extremely weird to not have it, it is a must for newer cars, especially ones that are EVs. I wonder why they don't have it, maybe a beef with the phone makers...
Length and width wise, it's smaller than a Model Y. It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space. Rivian calls it a mid-size SUV, but that is straight up bullshit.
Based on the published dimensions, it's almost the exact same size as a Toyota 4Runner - which I'd consider a midsize SUV.
Comparison image: https://www.reddit.com/r/RivianR2/comments/1inep90/r2_vs_4ru...
"Matchbox" is rather hyperbolic and would better match the upcoming R3/R3X which is around the size of a VW Golf (though that still isn't that small… Honda Fits, kei cars, and Fiat 500s are smaller still).
It's about a foot longer than my crossover, which is about the same size as a RAV4 or CR-V and there's no way I could call it tiny.
If you want to see a reviewer next to it for scale, Doug DeMuro is 6'4" and has what you're looking for, from various angles over the course of the review. Looks like a reasonable size to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUl_0087dyM
I just looked up the dimensions and it's ridiculously big. You'd have trouble parking in it most places where I am from.
it's 1" shorter but it's not teardrop shaped so volume wise should be good
Wait … so you’re saying they want a small car but are in denial?
> It's deceptively styled to look a big boy car, but it's a matchbox. That's why no reviewers will show themselves or anyone else towering over it. It's for those who want a big car, but without all that space.
I miss the days when men looking to compensate would buy sports cars. It wasn't any less ridiculous, but at least they (edit: the cars) were better looking and more fun to drive.
If only those ridiculous guys who wanted something fun to drive had realized how much more fun they could have by making fun of people and feeling superior.
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I guess it depends on what they were compensating for. Up until the 80's and 90's at least there was more association of racing cars with road cars that you could buy.
So that would associate you with the (A man's manly-man maybe?) driver of that car.
But now race cars are not really much like a production road car. And those older men with money don't necessarily want to be like the ever younger drivers being employed to win races.
As you say, ridiculous, but at least the sports cars were cool.
Nice edit.
"straight up bullshit" would be calling a 4runner-sized vehicle a "matchbox". Really highlights how ridiculous American's unnecessary lust is for massive vehicles.
No CarPlay, not interested.
I wish Rivian would stop trying to emulate Tesla on this front and add support for CarPlay. I don't want your UI.
I actually like the look of the Rivian and this is something I'm somewhat in the market for (or will be in the next few years) but I won't touch it without CarPlay.
as a tesla owner, all I can tell, carPlay is ugly child was born due to EU car makers, not capable of building proper infotainment system.
I want to drive, not constantly connect/accept privacy etc. Especially if that is a $100k+ car.
When i get into the car, the last thing I'd like to know how my car is getting connected to my phone, if there are any issues, especially if that is not my car.
I love how my car knows that in the morning i go to work, and wednesday evening i go to yoga, and put GPS, with best traffic options. 0 touch, all super seamless. No phones involved.
CarPlay has become somewhat of a standard. It's fine to say you personally don't need it, but many/most laymen will still expect their new car to support it.
If a PC was launched without Windows support, most people on HN might be able to live with it day-to-day, but it would still be a dealbreaker for the general population. Admittedly this isn't a fair comparison, but hopefully you understand my point.
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Apparently there's a aftermarket device that will add Android Auto / CarPlay support by selectively taking over the infotainment display:
https://evplay.io/shop/ev-play-for-rivian
(I can't vouch for it, just something I stumbled upon recently.)
I was on team CarPlay/AndroidAuto too. But I’m willing to give Rivian the benefit of the doubt
The challenge for them is can they integrate a better in-car experience
CarPlay needs to get battery level
CarPlay supports that, the car just needs to pass it through. I believe Ford and Toyota both do.
i have a rivian, and despite being a carplay fan before, i do not miss it. Carplay is a crutch for legacy autos who cant make software, so you just want to overlay a phone feed over their crap. But its very limited, its essentially a video overlay box and has terrible / non-existent integration with the cars smarts, like battery, range, HUD screens, advanced audio controls, etc etc. In my experience with carplay in other smart-ish cars (BMW X series) the carplay experience fights with the car OS constantly and is an awful incoherent experience. A well made car software solution, like the rivians(mostly), is a better experience overall imho.
I say this as someone who still loves having carplay on my other car, a subaru, because their software is atrocious.
i would say, give one a try you might change your mind.
> the carplay experience fights with the car OS constantly and is an awful incoherent experience.
It seems to me like fixing this is the appropriate path forward. There are things that the car OS is better at (like you mention), but no car OS is ever going to support the various media apps I have on my phone that are automatically supported by Android/Android Auto media controls, and bluetooth playback is an even worse experience than cludging together the car OS + android auto media in one UI.
Yes, copy FSD instead that no CarPlay cult.
> copy FSD instead
They are. It’s also subscription based, however.
(For what it’s worth, my friends with Rivian are fine with its phone interface. As are most people who own Tesla’s fine without CarPlay.)
With FSD , that is a very very capable system in 2026, You need real multi media for driving (once it's solved), for camping , movies during charging, and not phone somehow ugly slapped by some plastic holder to your car.