Rivian delivered 19,248 vehicles in Q3 2026, a 46% jump from a year ago and well above Wall Street's 18,000 estimate. The company reaffirmed its 65,000-70,000 full-year guidance, with the new mass-market R2 SUV doing most of the heavy lifting — though profitability is still a 2027 story.
Rivian delivered 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter of 2026, a 46% jump from a year earlier and a new quarterly record for the company. It's also well ahead of Wall Street, which had penciled in roughly 18,000 deliveries. Rivian produced 19,751 vehicles in the quarter at its Normal, Illinois plant, and reaffirmed its full-year delivery guidance of 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles.
The growth is being driven by the R2, Rivian's smaller, cheaper SUV that started reaching customers earlier this year as the company's push into the mass market. Before the R2 ramp, Rivian had struggled to push annual production much past 50,000 vehicles; R2 volume is now the main reason deliveries are up so sharply from a year ago.
Hitting the top of that guidance range will require a steep ramp in Q4 — Rivian would need to deliver north of 23,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter alone, a more than 20% jump from Q3. That's not unprecedented for a company still ramping a new model, but it leaves little room for a stumble.
Rivian's stock rose roughly 2-4% on the delivery news, but the company is still spending heavily to get here. It's in the middle of building a second major assembly plant near Atlanta, Georgia, and has previously pushed back its own profitability timeline to 2027 to keep funding that expansion alongside its autonomous driving program.
The bottom line: This is Rivian's best delivery quarter yet, and the R2 is clearly doing what it was built to do — pull in volume Rivian couldn't get with the R1 alone. But a record delivery number isn't the same as a healthy balance sheet, and with a new factory under construction and profitability still a year-plus away, the October 29 earnings report will say a lot more about whether this growth is sustainable.
Tesla's third-quarter deliveries fell 2.1% from last year's all-time record, but came in roughly 25,000 ahead of Wall Street's consensus and beat every individual analyst estimate. The company also delivered more cars than it built for a second straight quarter, clearing the excess inventory it built up earlier in 2026.
Tesla has rolled the 16-inch center touchscreen out to every Model 3 sold in the US, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, a day after the same upgrade landed in China. The Performance trim also picks up more range and more horsepower, and the Premium AWD gets a faster 0-60 — but Tesla hasn't said why, and Canada was left out entirely.
Tesla has rolled out a software feature that overrides the lockout preventing a car from shifting into Drive while connected to a Supercharger. It's US-only, requires holding the brake and confirming a warning, and Tesla says it will damage both the vehicle and the charger. The feature arrives two months after a deadly shooting at a Twin Falls, Idaho Supercharger station.