Rivian (RIVN) Q3 2026 earnings: revenue up 38%, R2 now its best-seller

Rivian (RIVN) just released its Q3 2026 earnings, with revenue up 38% year-over-year to $2.155 billion. The R2, in its first full quarter of deliveries, is already the company’s best-selling vehicle, ahead of both the R1 and the Amazon van. The results beat Wall Street’s expectations, and Rivian is raising its 2026 guidance on every metric. But the car business is still losing money, and the R2 ramp made the automotive margin worse this quarter. Rivian Q3 2026 by the numbers We already had the volume side. Rivian reported earlier this month that it built 19,751 vehicles and delivered 19,248 in the quarter, both records. Deliveries were up 46% from a year ago and 58% from Q2. Here’s the rest of the quarter: Revenue: $2.155 billion (+38% YoY) Automotive revenue: $1.550 billion (+36%) Software and services revenue: $605 million (+45%) Gross profit: $176 million (8% margin) Adjusted EBITDA: -$435 million (vs. -$602 million a year ago) Net loss: -$913 million Adjusted EPS: -$0.48 Free cash flow: -$1.124 billion Cash and short-term investments: $5.502 billion Analysts were looking for about $2.02 billion in revenue, an adjusted loss of $0.61 per share, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of roughly $576 million, according to Bloomberg consensus. Rivian beat all three. The R2 is selling, but the cars still lose money The demand signals for the R2 are good. Rivian says reservation conversion for the launch edition trim stayed above its expectations, it added a second R2 production shift in Normal, Illinois, and demo drives jumped to over 103,000 in the quarter, up from 57,000 in Q2. The problem is the automotive gross margin. Rivian’s automotive segment posted an $80 million gross loss in Q3, a -5% margin. That’s better than the $130 million loss a year ago, but worse than the $36 million loss (-3%) we saw in Q2. Rivian blames about $120 million of extra cost of revenue on the R2 ramp, compared to production at “more normalized levels.” And the quarter got help that won’t repeat on demand: $81 million in regulatory credit revenue and an IEEPA tariff refund receivable. Strip out the credits and the automotive segment lost about $161 million at the gross level, or roughly $8,400 per vehicle delivered. Not great. But there’s real progress under that. Rivian says automotive cost of goods sold per unit fell by more than $12,000 quarter-over-quarter thanks to the higher R2 mix and better fixed-cost leverage. Our own math from the filing puts it at about $84,700 per vehicle in Q3, down from $96,700 in Q2. Revenue per vehicle is coming down too, which is the point of a cheaper car: about $76,300 excluding credits, versus $85,000 in Q2. Volkswagen is carrying the gross profit The only reason Rivian posted a consolidated gross profit is its software and services segment, which brought in $605 million in revenue and $256 million in gross profit, a 42% margin. Of that segment revenue, $354 million (59%) came from the joint venture with Volkswagen Group, which pays Rivian for electrical architecture and software development work. Rivian says it expects to recognize that revenue through about mid-2028. Autonomy+, the paid driver-assist package launched in April, is also in there, and Rivian says take rates are “trending ahead of our expectations.” Guidance goes up, capex comes down Rivian updated its 2026 outlook: Deliveries: 67,000 to 70,000 (from 65,000 to 70,000) Adjusted EBITDA: -$1.85 billion to -$1.75 billion (improved by $100 million at the midpoint) Capital expenditures: $1.40 billion to $1.50 billion (down $300 million at the midpoint) With 41,807 deliveries through September, Rivian needs between 25,193 and 28,193 in Q4 to land in the new range. That would be another record by a wide margin. Rivian is providing this guidance a month into the quarter, which gives strong confidence it will hit at leat the lower end of that target. The capex cut is about “timing of spend,” not savings. Phase 1 of the Georgia plant, which is supposed to add 300,000 units of annual capacity for R2 and R3, is still under construction. On cash, Rivian ended the quarter with $5.502 billion, or $7.095 billion in total liquidity once you add its credit facility and the $1 billion term loan Volkswagen funded in October. That’s after the $1.5 billion share sale in July. Free cash flow was -$1.124 billion in Q3 alone. On autonomy, Rivian still plans a limited rollout of “Point to Point” driving through an invitation-only early access program later this year, with a general release to Autonomy+ subscribers in 2027. It also says an Uber milestone expected by year-end would unlock another $250 million equity investment. More details are promised at its Autonomy and AI Day on December 9. Electrek’s Take This is a good quarter for Rivian, and the R2 is clearly working. Becoming the best-selling Rivian within one full quarter, while the ramp is still early, is about as good a start as you could ask for. We saw the R2 roll off the line in April, and the demand side has held up since. But be careful with the headline beat. A lot of it came from outside the car business: Volkswagen’s checks, regulatory credits, and a one-time tariff refund. The thing Rivian actually builds and sells lost more money at the gross level than it did last quarter. The number we care about most is the $12,000 drop in cost per vehicle. If that keeps going as the second shift fills and the $120 million in ramp costs fade, the automotive segment can get to breakeven on its own. If it stalls, Rivian is a software contractor for VW with a money-losing car company attached. I am betting on the former. With a shift added right before the quarter started, production will likely increase significantly in Q4, and Rivian already has strong visibility into demand a month into the quarter. If anything, I’m impressed by the demand Rivian is seeing for the more expensive launch edition of the R2. It bodes well for the cheaper version, as long as it manages to get its cost down over the coming months. 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