Rivian Recap: 01/09/2026

Hey there,

Here's your weekly Rivian Recap for January 9th, 2026.

More R2 production progress, Nvidia makes a splash at CES for autonomy, a brand lease Rivian lease calculator, and more thoughts about Premium Audio.

Let's dive in!

R1 & Software

While my timing is nothing is not hilarious, after Rivian just universally made their leasing deals way worse (but finance deals way better), I just launched my all-new Rivian specific lease calculator.

Given that these vehicles can depreciate so quickly, it's helpful to know what factors actually play into your lease deal better better or worse.

I tried to make the "black box" of this formula clear, even for folks who have never leased before (as most EV buyers lease, and for the first time).

Everything you need to get an accurate evaluation of the lease for any particular vehicle, no matter if it's a custom configuration or inventory vehicle, can be analyzed to spit out an easy to understand grade.

Example 👇

Newsletter image

I plan to roll out several more tools to help the Rivian community in 2026, but I would love your feedback as we go so they can be as great as possible.

With all the chatter around autonomy lately, Nvidia is not playing around with advancing their autonomy stack for other automakers to use.

They kicked things off with an interesting talk at CES 2026 that included in-car tech as well as the big AI datacenter solutions.

What stood out to me was the impressive "FSD-like" demonstration they did with a Mercedes Benz that is running with Orin chips and radars.

AKA, the same sensor suite as what's in Gen2 Rivians.

This coupled with my experience riding in the early developer beta around Palo Alto, CA has me believing Rivian can achieve a useful level of point-to-point autonomy, even on Gen2.

Fellow creator "Everyday Chris" had a chance to ride in the demo Mercedes Benz powered by Nvidias solution.

What do you think? Is Rivian going to be able to at least keep up with Nvidia here, and possibly even find buyers for their R&D effort in autonomy?

Now that we've all had more time with 2025.46, I have to say I'm genuinely impressed with the audio improvements - especially in the R1T.

For the majority of songs, the majority of the time... the sound is actually quite enjoyable.

It does make me wonder though, how did Rivian let 18+ months of brand damage accumulate over this when we could have this today that doesn't suck?

I'm so glad they finally delivered on a quality sound system I can actually enjoy every time I hop in the truck, I'm just baffled how it took this long.

That being said, I've never been more thrilled that an early bet on a tech product actually paid off. I was really worried about the sound system when I decided to proceed anyway, with hopes they would figure it out.

They took WAY too long, but thank goodness we are here now. 🙏

Rivian has issued a recall for nearly 20k vehicles after identifying a suspension risk that may have been assembled incorrectly. This recall is limited to vehicles who had service performed prior to March 10, 2025.

R2 & Beyond

The R2 machine continues to gather steam, as we see more R2's (in more colors!!) starting to make the trek through what appears to be some trial production ramps.

How long do you think it will be before we see the exact spec, packaging and pricing for a Launch Edition R2?

I'm guessing mid-March sometime is likely.

Ford announced their vertical integration for their forthcoming affordable EV initiative. It looks a lot like the consolidated ECU and centralized autonomy compute, albeit with more hand waving about actual power and capability.

I'm excited to see more automakers going this route as it feels inevitable that all OEMs will have adopt a tech-first approach here.

Community

While I had read this back in the December Rivian "Let's Go" owner newsletter, I had forgotten to bring attention to it here.

Dominic (an active PNW owner and member of Emerald City Rivian Club) was highlighted. Dom's a great guy and the spotlight is well deserved.

(It was his tweet I called out about the audio above as well).

He's owned a few generations of Rivian's, takes awesome photos and video, and is actively part of a search and rescue team here locally.

Give the whole thing a read, it's a good one.

Worth Checking Out - Sponsor

We've been using A2Z adapters with both our Gen2 Rivians since we took delivery, as we have a Tesla Wall Connector (Gen3) installed and needed to addapt to our J1772/CCS vehicles.

Plus, we took delivery before NACS -> CCS adapters were widely available from the Rivian shop. I legitimately enjoy the design of the A2Z NACS adapter more than the OEM one directly from Rivian.

Last month after just over a year, our level 2 adapter started having issues and failed just outside of warranty. I was frustrated by this, but to their full credit they reached out and rapidly replaced our adapters free of charge.

You may think "Travis, that's just because of your YouTube channel:.

However, I dug around with others who have had experiences with A2Z but don't have much of a platform or audience, and they had the same experience.

After that experience, I have to say, I highly recommend the A2Z products because it's rare to find a company who truly stands behind their products even outside of the warranty window.

Save 10% with the coupon code "TK" at checkout.

J1772 > NACS // CCS > NACS

NACS > J1772 // NACS > CCS

My thanks to A2Z for helping make this newsletter possible.

Latest Deals

Wow, thinks got pretty spicy this week in terms of offers.

Despite my timing of launching the new Rivian-specific lease calculator, essentially every Rivian lease deal got dramatically worse.

As a result, the incentives have squarely flipped to purchasing.

Get 0% financing for 60 months on the following builds (+ must have options):

Dual Large w/Performance:

2026 R1S Dual-Large w/Performance (Premium Audio)

2026 R1T Dual-Large w/Performance (Premium Audio, Utility)