Rivian Automotive, Inc. Class A Common Stock Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026
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Thank you, everybody, for joining us. My name is Mark Delaney, and I cover Rivian for Goldman Sachs. I am very pleased to have with me today James Philbin, SVP of Autonomy & AI; Vidya Rajagopalan, SVP of Electrical Hardware; and Chip Newcom, the VP of Investor Relations. Thank you all for coming.
Great to be here. Happy to be here.
Yeah. Well, one of the really exciting things out of Rivian recently has been R2, and the company recently launched that product, which, as many of you know, is a two-row SUV at a more affordable price point than the three-row and more premium R1 line that has been out previously.
Chip, maybe we can start with you for this one. Can you share more on what Rivian is seeing with respect to R2 demand and feedback now that the vehicle has launched?
Well, first, Mark, thanks for hosting us today and great to speak with many of the investors here. Hopefully, many out there have already gotten a chance to go out and demo drive an R2. Still early days in terms of what we're seeing on the R2. Most importantly, from a media perspective, the early feedback we've gotten, it's been absolutely phenomenal. This weekend, The New York Times posted their review. We've seen any number of comparisons against both ICE vehicles, EVs, and across the board, it's been really great feedback. I think from our perspective as a company, it's showing that from a product market fit, we're absolutely hitting the right points for what the consumer is going to be looking for.
Now, of course, it's all about execution and continuing to ramp our supply chain, continuing to ramp within our plant in Normal, but very excited about the early feedback we've seen.
One of the metrics the company shared on the last earnings call was that conversions from the pre-order is roughly tracking ahead of what you had anticipated. I don't know if you can share more on how you're measuring that, any context you can give on that front.
Yeah. For a little bit of context for everyone out there. We've been taking $100 refundable deposits for our potential customers if they'd like to purchase an R2, then we've been inviting folks in waves to then be able to come into our systems, configure their vehicle, and put in their intent to order and purchase, then starting to deliver against that. As we've been inviting those waves in, seeing increasingly a very good conversion rate of folks actually saying, "Okay, yes, I do want to buy the vehicle." It's interesting, as we're now introducing new trims, for example, Coastal Cloud, we just launched, seeing as we introduce each of those new waves, more interest coming through from customers. Continuing to see good progress there.
That is great. In order to meet that demand, the company has been scaling up production. You had already started a single shift in Normal to make the R2. The plan was to add a second by the end of 3Q, so this current quarter, just a few weeks left. How is that ramp progressing?
Yeah, still planning to add a second shift here in the third quarter, so working through the ramp process as you would expect.
Any key bottlenecks the company needs to solve?
Nothing that we have talked about. Continuing to work through, as with any ramp, working through the process of all of our suppliers. We can only move as fast as the slowest supplier in our supply chain, so working through that process.
Great. Well, that's a helpful overview of the R2. We are very privileged to have James and Vidya from the tech team. I know you have a lot of various projects you're working on, and a great opportunity for us to dive into some of those. Well, one of the key themes, of course, at this conference is AI and applicable for Rivian in a few ways, but including some of the autonomy products. James, maybe I can direct this one to you. Where does the company stand with its plan to have supervised point-to-point driving available later this year and then eyes off for 2027?
Yeah. So I think the team's been very hard at work on point-to-point recently. So scaling up the model, scaling up the data, and the validation of that model, and then actually putting the vehicles on the road in a test framework so that we can get feedback and feed it back in. So I think we're seeing very good progress. Actually, we recently gave demos to the Uber CEO and CFO. I think one of those folks posted about it on Twitter. So yeah, great feedback, and I'm very excited to get that feature out towards the end of the year.
And what are the biggest technical challenges remaining?
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