Rivian is now the #2 EV brand in the US, up from 10th last year, taking GM’s spot as almost every other automaker tries to slow down the inevitable transition to electric cars.
In the last year, the US electric car market has been… volatile, to say the least.
Q3 2025 saw a huge sales jump, in an advance of an effort by US republicans to inflate the price of EVs by $7,500.
So, looking forward to this year, it was inevitable that we would see a large drop in sales in Q3, since records were set in last Q3.
Sure enough, as sales numbers came in, most brands were down. This is to be expected after incentive expiry – though EV sales have been steadily recovering in the intervening months.
Part of the reason for that recovery has been due to a lot of dumb oil conflicts around the world, causing oil prices to rise to record levels (helped by intentional policy decisions to push them even higher). As oil prices rise, the already-obvious case for electric transportation becomes all the more clear.
This has caused EV sales to shoot up in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, American access to affordable EVs has been restricted due to dumb tariffs and other barriers intended to keep Americans spending and polluting more.
EV sales could have been higher in the US, but the reason they’ve stayed depressed from previous levels isn’t due to consumer demand, but because automakers are almost universally refusing to make EVs, according to research from UC Davis.
There are a few exceptions, though. With Rivian as the standout among them.
According to Cox Automotive’s new Q3 sales report, almost every brand saw a decrease in EV sales in Q3, with Mercedes, Lexus, Toyota, Subaru, and Rivian as the exceptions.
Each of these brands have new models which helped to bring up sales. Toyota has its improved bZ and new C-HR, Lexus its new ES, Subaru its Trailseeker and Uncharted, Mercedes its CLA, and most importantly, Rivian has its R2.
Meanwhile, many of the brands with falling sales have cancelled models (even ones that were previously their best-sellers). Unsurprisingly, when Americans are not allowed to buy a car, they won’t buy it.
Rivian’s new R2 is a make-or-break car for the company, a much more affordable, smaller version of its R1S. It just started sales a few months ago, and Rivian hopes to ramp up production, aiming for the same market the Tesla Model Y is in.
The Model Y remains the US’ best-selling EV, but its sales went down year over year as well. Tesla has not so much retreated from EV production, more that its CEO is now spending more money to harm EVs than any other person on the planet. Even with Tesla’s nearly 20% drop in sales year over year, It’s still ahead of the rest of the pack.
But 2nd place used to be taken up by GM, which was proud of that fact. GM has several capable EV offerings, including the newly-improved, affordable Chevy Bolt (which is, nevertheless, being cancelled next year).
Last year, Rivian was all the way back in 10th place. But with its growth in sales and everyone else’s retreat, Rivian has now shot up to second place in Q3, selling more EVs in the quarter than anyone except for Tesla.
And that’s just at the start of R2 sales. Rivian only booked 3,456 units of the R2 in Q3, which is fewer than the number of R1S it sold. Given the R2’s much cheaper sticker price, once the company gets up to speed and starts offering lower-end ~$50k models, volume should be much higher than the ~$80k R1S – just as was the case with the Model X and Model Y.
And given the direction society is currently going, towards hopefully greater realization of the need to get off of unreliable, polluting, foreign sources of energy and onto cleaner, sustainable domestic ones, Rivian is positioning itself well while the rest of the auto industry seems ready to throw everything away and hand China the industry on a silver platter.
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