Rivian Recap: 08/28/2026

Hey there,

Here's your weekly Rivian Recap for August 28th, 2026.

What to expect with the Rivian service experience, R2 range anxiety, the double edge sword of software updates, and how to fix Road Cam (for now).

Let's dive in!

Software

Rivians are by nature "software defined vehicles", which can enable truly incredible and useful updates over time.

As noted last week, I think Rivian OS 2.0 is an example of Rivian doing their best work in terms of user experience. However, over the past few years the progress has been anything but linear.

The number of truly awesome new things our Rivians can do today that they couldn't they day we brought them home is incredible. We had a very similar experience with owning our Tesla.

However, unlike the Tesla experience, Rivian has a habit of being 2 steps forward and 1 step back.

To their credit, they do ultimately end up fixing just about everything. However, it can be a bit tiresome riding the roller coaster.

Friend and fellow YouTube creator, Jimmy Tries World, did a candid and fair take on what it's like to live with Rivian software over time.

I want to be clear that this isn't designed as a rant or a hit piece. I still think if you zoom out, Rivian is doing some of the best software work in the automotive space.

But I also think it's important for many potential first time EV owners, or at lest first time Rivian owners, to know what they're getting into.

For me, and many others, the trade offs are worth it because Rivian makes an exceptionally capable vehicle with a unique set of benefits.

My thanks to Jimmy to including me in a small part of the video, I hope I added some balanced color to the discussion.

Speaking of updates, it looks like we are getting components of Waze baked into the Rivian mapping system vs a bespoke Waze app.

Real time alerts, speed cameras, and police reports are coming.

I had mentioned before that 2026.31 is shaping up to be a huge software release, and more and more evidence is backing that up.

Getting the OS 2.0 look in R1 and a huge feature parity release for R2 should be a nice unification of the lineup across the board.

We have the notes so far on 2026.31 for R1 vehicles, mostly filled with things we expected but a few notable surprises.

One of the thing that jumped out to me was:

"Climate settings now persist across drive cycles."

This could potentially be a huge quality of life improvement, as right now when driving with our dog we have to remember to turn on the rear vents every single time we put the vehicle into drive.

Otherwise our black lab is in the back getting too hot, and we have to remember "Oh yeah... It turned the air vents off... again".

So not only are we looking forward to testing this, but Knowles is too :-)

See the full list of notes for R1 here, while we wait for notes on R2 but I expect this build to bring the missing features from R1 down to R2.

There is one particularly odd issue with R2 software right now that is related to Gear Guard and Road Cam video storage.

In my case, I have a SanDisk SSD that has worked flawlessly in my R1T for nearly 2 years, but wouldn't even connect to Gear Guard.

Others have noted about their drives complaining, requiring a reformat at the start of each trip.

Far from the ideal situation, but thanks to our friends over at Soonish EV, the weirdest trick actually works to solve this in both cases.

By swapping the included high speed data cable and replacing it with a much slower USB 2.0 cable, both my connection issue and the prompt to reformat before each trip now seem to work as expected.

My working theory is that there is some kind of handshake error over the high speed protocols that we will hopefully see a fix for in a future update.

If you have an R2 and Gear Guard is giving you issues, give this a shot!

Hardware

My R2 went in for it's first service with fairly minor concerns, but still a few things I wanted to get dialed in before heading off on a big road trip.

I realize that for many this will be either your first EV, or perhaps your first Rivian, so I wanted to document what the service experience was like.

All in, they had my vehicle for about 24 hours and were able to quickly address several of my items, but unfortunately not my number one issue.

That issue is the HVAC noise.

There is a "percolating" or "grumble" that can happen about 80% of the time from the HVAC system in R2 that sounds incredibly cheap. However, it seems to be a design issue not an individual part issue.

I've been able to verify this same noise from multiple other R2 vehicles, and when it does show up I can reliably make it go away if I set the vehicle to defog which routes the air away from the main dash vents.

This uneven noise out of the vents is the cheapest thing about the vehicle that I've noticed so far, and really degrades the $60k+ experience. That's a real shame because there is SO MUCH about R2 that is absolutely brilliant.

It's so fun to drive, handles well, and the smaller size makes it not only more dynamic in general but a far easier vehicle to park in a metropolitan setting.

I'll be doing a more thorough impressions video here soon, but the HVAC has easily stuck out as my least favorite thing about thing about the vehicle and I'm quite surprised more people haven't talked about it yet online.

The raw HVAC performance is markedly better than our Gen2 R1 vehicles, but the noises are just... not it.

In terms of the prior drama people felt about range and efficiency, I was able to sit down with the CEO of Electric Era to talk about what I feel is the real road trip and range discussion that needs to happen around R2 and EVs in general.

Both things can be true: R2 missed the mark for highway range efficiency, and that with plentiful high speed charging, the net result is negligible at best.

Given the clearly superior charging ability of R2 compared to the more aero efficient Model Y, the end result ends up being a bit of a wash.

If you found the range of something like a Model Y to be adequate for your needs before, you won't find the R2 to be that much more of a pain. I'm expecting the difference for our cross state trips to be in the 5-10 minute ballpark for added travel time.

When we're talking 5-5.5 hours of total travel anyway, that's basically a rounding error when it comes to time to destination.

I am looking forward to seeing how it impacts our much longer road trip ambitions here in September to compare to our much larger R1S Dual Max vehicle I took on a road trip last year.

While the battery in R2 is far smaller, the efficiency hit at highway speeds is similar to R1S given the similar design. However, I anticipate based on early fast charging with R2, it will be more reliable and consistent. When it comes to charging performance, consistency really hurt us last year in Gen2 R1S.

Last week's "limited test" of Forest Green and Coastal Cloud Signature has now been rolled out wide and is no longer showing coming soon.

Newsletter image

If you were on the fence or waiting for either of these options specifically, the wait times seem to be indicated at 8-12 weeks from placing an order today and accepting delivery.

Here are some real life shots of the Coastal Cloud Signature interior.

We also are seeing some other color combinations wth Costal Cloud show up at service centers for delivery, such as this Launch Green + Coastal Cloud:

That means we are just waiting on one final color: Borealis.

Community

I wanted to put the community spotlight this week on Dominic, who's a PNW local and always puts his Rivian's to good use.

As a home photo/video professional and part of the local search and rescue team, his Rivian sees more "adventure" than most.

He's a nice guy who's also super funny, so feel free to give him a follow.

Worth Checking Out - VION

As my favorite sub $100 Rivian accessory, I'm excited that VION is far along in development for an R2 shade.

I'll be getting one of the first units to stress test on the road trip, which I plan to kick off here in mid September (and if I'm lucky, see many of you!).

While sometimes it's awesome to have an open cabin feel, getting some reprieve along with the huge benefit for a cabin that cools down dramatically faster with quieter HVAC operation is a welcome change on hot days.

VION updated their popular R1S kit that can perfectly fit the 3rd row as well now, and a gray version for light interiors.

As a subscriber to the Rivian Recap, you can get 10% off anything site wide with code "TRAVIS", on what is already a stellar product for the price.

Check out their sunshades, carbon activated air filters, and more:

VION Sunshade // VION Air Filters

My thanks to VION for helping make this newsletter possible.

Latest Deals

Given how minimal the changes are for 2027, unless you have been specifically waiting for captains chairs (or maybe even prefer Slate Sky with a bench seat), it makes the most sense to scoop up a discount on 2026 models.

As a result, we've seen price reduction on many remaining inventory vehicles.

Check out the price reduction on R1S.

Check out the price reduction on R1T.

Here's what's sticking out for deals this week:

Dual Large (3.99% + Price Reduction) [Lease vs Buy Example]

2026 R1S Dual-Large (Premium Audio)

2026 R1T Dual-Large (Premium Audio, Utility V2 Tonneau)

Tri Max ($3k Lease or 1.99% for 60 months) [Lease vs Buy Example]

2026 R1S Tri-Motor

2026 R1T Tri-Motor

All R1 referrals also get 3 months of free charging on the Rivian Adventure Network, as well as some shop credits (varies by trim).

I hope enjoyed this week's edition of the Rivian Recap. Let me know what you'd like to see more of in future editions!