With the end of the Federal EV tax credit quickly closing in, some OEMs are starting to scramble on getting more affordable electric vehicles out to market. Tesla has promised a low-buck vehicle for what seems like forever, finally revealing it’s actually a de-contented Model Y, but the heat is on after Ford and Slate confirmed to release EV pickups in the $30,000 space. Now it seems that Rivian is the next American automaker to announce an affordable EV—promising to add new R4, R5, and R6 models to its sequentially numbered “R” naming scheme.
According to a report by Autoevolution, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe made an appearance on comedian Daniel Tosh’s Tosh Show podcast and revealed that there are Rivians coming after the compact R2 and smaller R3. The plan is for “five or six different vehicles,” with the R4 and R5 among them and now a possibility of an R6 model.
Each one of these newly mentioned vehicles is slated to be a part of Rivian’s Affordable Mass Market lineup, so we’d expect these to be well within the $30,000 price point. There is a bit of a catch, at least according to Autoevolution—there will be a wait, and not all of these new Rivians might be sold here.
The R4 and R5 appear to be subcompact vehicles, and the R6 is potentially a wagon body style. Scaringe has already stated that subcompacts “don’t work well” in the U.S. and the wagon is a more popular body type in Europe (though, the not-affordable 2026 BMW M5 Touring has been a standout success stateside). There is also the current financial side of Rivian, which continues to face pressures to turn a profit, and, if these are truly European-bound vehicles, it might require quite a new factory on that side of the Atlantic, which would demand quite a bit of capital to get going. Rivian is already struggling to get its new Georgia plant open to build the R3, so even if these later, cheaper Rivians are bound for sale in the U.S., there will likely be some time between now and the launch of the R4/5/6 due to the lack of manufacturing capacity for them.
We’ve reached out to Rivian to see what the future holds for the R4/5/6, and we’ll update this story once we hear back from them. It’s certainly an exciting time for anyone looking to get into a cheap, new EV in the near or even slightly distant future.