Rivian just announced an all-electric hatchback called the R3. This was a big “one more thing” announcement at an event that was meant to be all about the company’s new R2 SUV, like Apple.
A lot of people who were thinking about buying an electric car were interested in the Honda e a few years ago. The hatch also looks a lot like the boxier Volkswagen Golf. Rivian will be trying to get into a whole new market of smaller electric vehicles (EVs), which is very important because Tesla already rules this market. We all knew Rivian was working on a “R3,” but I don’t think many people thought it would look this good.
There were no real information given by the company right away about when the R3 will be released or how much it will cost. It’s likely still years away from coming out. At Thursday’s event, CEO RJ Scaringe made it sound like it would be built at the company’s new factory in Georgia, which hasn’t been built yet.
We do know that the R3 will have a slightly shorter wheelbase than the R2 (2800 mm vs. 2935 mm), and there will be a fast, brightly colored R3X version. It will be made on the same base as the R2, so it won’t be hard to understand, and it will cost “less” than the $45,000 R2. The R3 will come in single-, double-, and tri-motor versions, just like the R2. The company is not yet taking preorders like they did for the R2.
Scaringe said at the event, “[R3] takes the packaging of R2 and the platform, shrinks it, and puts it into our take on what is a crossover. It’s almost hard to define what it is, but it so beautifully captures our brand and what we stand for as a company.”
But it’s good news for the company, which plans to make about the same number of cars this year as it did in 2023, which was bad news for Wall Street. It looks like the R3 will fix that soon, since Rivian’s stock price went through the roof after the big show.
There are still a lot of questions, mostly about the price and range, or even about whether the prototype we saw on Thursday is even a working one. But it’s nice to see that a company that started out making huge, heavy SUVs and pickup trucks is now working on something much easier to get and maybe even cheaper.
