Rivian’s R2 will have a heat pump to help efficiency in winter
Rivian’s newly-unveiled R2 will make use of a heat pump to help with efficiency in cold weather, which should be a boon to those in the Northern parts of North America, and in Europe.
We learned a lot about the R2 at its unveiling last week, and learned even more secrets about the car while hanging around after the event. But it turns out that the vehicle still has some secrets to tell.
Today, one twitter user asked Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe whether the R2 would have a heat pump, to which RJ answered a simple “Yes.”
Not only that, but the question said “does the R2 platform have a heat pump?”, which suggests that perhaps this feature may carry over to the R3 as well, which is going to be built on the same platform as the R2.
Rivian’s current vehicles, the R1T and R1S, do not have a heat pump, instead relying on resistive heating to warm the cabin, like many EVs.
Resistive heating runs an electric charge through a highly resistive coil of wire to generate waste heat. While this works well to rapidly heat a cabin (without needing to wait for the engine to warm up to generate heat, as is the case in gas cars), it’s also relatively energy intense.
A heat pump, however, works by moving heat from one place to another. It takes latent heat in outside air and brings it into the cabin, which can be up to 3-4x more efficient than generating that heat through resistive heating.
The net effect of this is that in cold weather you have to use less battery charge to run the heater, and thus get higher winter range in a car with a heat pump than in one with resistive heating.
Heat pumps have been a popular feature for more Europe-focused cars, because Europe tends to get colder weather than the parts of the US where EVs are the most popular (e.g. California). This is particularly relevant since the R2 signals Rivian’s entry into the European market, and the car has already been redesigned in some more EU-focused ways (e.g. moving the charge port to the passenger side, which is better for street charging).
Heat pumps are also of great use in the colder parts of the US, and in Canada.
Rivian’s vehicles have been quite popular among the “adventure” crowd, a reflection of Rivian’s slogan: “Keep the world adventurous forever.” So they’ve seen a lot of use in snow and ice conditions, like this video of a Rivian towing a semi truck out of a ditch in Utah winter.
Due to the R1’s extremely large battery, using a little bit of extra energy on a resistive heater hasn’t been all that bad. But this change makes us wonder if a heat pump might get incorporated into the R1 in the future as well.
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![Day 1 of the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025 [Gallery]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/07/54629423281_6315c46dff_k.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Today was the official start of racing at the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025! There was a tremendous energy (and heat) on the ground at NCM Motorsports Park as nearly a dozen teams took to the track. Currently, as of writing, Stanford is ranked #1 in the SOV (Single-Occupant Vehicle) class with 68 registered laps. However, the fastest lap so far belongs to UC Berkeley, which clocked a 4:45 on the 3.15-mile track. That’s an average speed of just under 40 mph on nothing but solar energy. Not bad!
In the MOV (Multi-Occupant Vehicle) class, Polytechnique Montréal is narrowly ahead of Appalachian State by just 4 laps. At last year’s formula sun race, Polytechnique Montréal took first place overall in this class, and the team hopes to repeat that success. It’s still too early for prediction though, and anything can happen between now and the final day of racing on Saturday.
Congrats to the teams that made it on track today. We look forward to seeing even more out there tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some shots from today via the event’s wonderful photographer Cora Kennedy.
Stay tuned for more!
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The numbers are in and they are all bad for Tesla fans – the company sold just 5,000 Cybertruck models in Q4 of 2025, and built some 30% more “other” vehicles than it delivered. It just gets worse and worse, on today’s tension-building episode of Quick Charge!
We’ve also got day 1 coverage of the 2025 Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix, reports that the Tesla Optimus program is in chaos after its chief engineer jumps ship, and a look ahead at the fresh new Hyundai IONIQ 2 set to bow early next year, thanks to some battery specs from the Kia EV2.
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Tesla has launched its new Oasis Supercharger, the long-promised EV charging station of the future, with a solar farm and off-grid batteries.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to the Supercharger stations, and CEO Elon Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
All of these pieces have been in place for years, and Tesla has now discontinued the Powerpack in favor of the Megapack. The Supercharger network is also transitioning to V4 stations.
Yet, solar and battery deployment haven’t accelerated much in the decade since Musk made that comment, but it is finally happening.
Last year, Tesla announced a new project called ‘Oasis’, which consists of a new model Supercharger station with a solar farm and battery storage enabling off-grid operations in Lost Hills, California.
Tesla has now unveiled the project and turned on most of the Supercharger stalls:
The project consists of 168 chargers, with half of them currently operational, making it one of the largest Supercharger stations in the world. However, that’s not even the most notable aspect of it.
The station is equipped with 11 MW of ground-mounted solar panels and canopies, spanning 30 acres of land, and 10 Tesla Megapacks with a total energy storage capacity of 39 MWh.
It can be operated off-grid, which is the case right now, according to Tesla.
With off-grid operations, Tesla was about to bring 84 stalls online just in time for the Fourth of July travel weekend. The rest of the stalls and a lounge are going to open later this year.
Electrek’s Take
This is awesome. A bit late, but awesome. This is what charging stations should be like: fully powered by renewable energy.
Unfortunately, it will be much harder to open those stations in the future due to legislation that Trump and the Republican Party have just passed, which removes incentives for solar and energy storage, adds taxes on them, and removes incentives to build batteries – all things that have helped Tesla considerably over the last few years.
The US is likely going to have a few tough years for EV adoption and renewable energy deployment.
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