The interior design will also look and feel very familiar to anyone who’s been in an R1, but Rivian has made a lot of little tweaks based on customer feedback and its experience making the larger cars. People wanted more storage space, so Rivian moved the door speakers to the center console, improving audio quality and allowing for large water bottles to fit in the door pockets. There are two gloveboxes, one in the normal spot and another beneath the center screen, and the center armrest has a good amount of room inside and two sizable slide-out cupholders. Ahead of the center console there’s an open space to place bags.
Despite the R2 being so much smaller than an R1S, even the tallest among us won’t be lacking for space, especially if you sit in the back seat. There’s 40.4 inches of legroom and 40.4 inches of headroom in the second row, both figures more than you get in an R1S, and the flat floor is pretty low, so your knees aren’t angled up high. The front seats are supportive for my 5-foot-9 self, and while the driving position is definitely assertive and SUV-like, I don’t feel like I’m sitting too high up. Visibility is also great, especially out the front. The R2’s hood design gives me a good idea of where the corners of the car are and where the wheels are placed, but it doesn’t feel too tall or long. The side windows are big, too.
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With the rear seats up the R2 has 28.7 cubic feet of cargo space, two and a half cubes more than an Ioniq 5, and folding the 40/20/40-split rear seats down flat opens that space to 79.4 cubic feet, 21 whole cubes more than the Hyundai. You also get an underfloor storage area that’s big enough to fit a carry-on suitcase, and the frunk will hold 5.2 cubic feet of stuff, big enough for a carry-on and a backpack or six grocery bags. The hood is power-opening, and while you have to close it yourself, it’ll latch itself.
In addition to looking very similar to the R1’s interior, the R2’s cabin feels just as well-built and high-quality, certainly worth the Performance’s price tag. Rivian’s Adventex bio-based leather alternative is nicer than a lot of other leatherettes, with real accent stitching all over the place. Almost everything you touch has padding behind it, including the grab handles on the doors. There’s a big swath of birch wood trim on the dashboard, and a great textile is used on the door panels and seatbacks. Sadly, if you want the off-white Ocean Coast interior color you’ll have to wait until later this year.
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Rivian continues to have one of the best (if not the best) infotainment systems in the industry, and the R2’s software has undergone a subtle redesign. The bezels around the screens are thinner, and the 11.5-inch gauge screen is short and wider than what you get in the R1. The 15.6-inch touchscreen has redesigned menus, a shortcut bar on the left and some new functionality, like the ability to swipe pop-up boxes showing your current audio from the left to the right of the screen. Rivian has thankfully retained the cel-shaded look, which I absolutely love. All of the graphics, fonts, icons and other bits look wonderful and are easy to read at a glance.
There’s still no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Good. I would never want to use CarPlay when Rivian’s system is this fantastic, especially given how well-integrated everything is to the vehicle functions, and the presence of built-in apps like Apple Music. Rivian’s navigation system and built-in route planning is wonderful, and it uses Google Maps data anyway, so why would I want to navigate from my phone’s connection? I’m sure some of you in the comments will be mad about this, but you shouldn’t be. CarPlay sucks, and Rivian is never going to add it.
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New in the R2 (and added to existing R1s) is the very cleverly named Rivian Assistant, the automaker’s in-house-designed voice assistant. In addition to being able to control various infotainment functions, the assistant can change things like the drive modes and answer all sorts of questions about the car, even if it’s offline. But because I’m having too good of a time talking with my drive partner, friend of Jalopnik (and former intern) Mack Hogan, I don’t try it out while driving, only doing a static demo. Still, it seems like one of the better voice assistants on the market.
