Rivian jumped from 10th to No. 2 among US EV brands, passing Chevrolet

Rivian sold 19,239 electric vehicles in the United States in the third quarter of 2026, enough to rank second among EV brands behind only Tesla. In the same quarter of 2025 the company sold 13,201 and ranked 10th. Electrek reported on Oct. 20 that the jump pushed Chevrolet out of the number two spot it had held, a notable reversal for a brand that sold roughly three times as many EVs as Rivian a year earlier.

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The Kelley Blue Book brand table behind the ranking

The ranking traces to the Q3 2026 Kelley Blue Book EV Sales Report, which Cox Automotive updated as of Oct. 13. Tesla led with 144,094 vehicles, or 54.0 percent of the quarter’s total. Rivian followed with 19,239, then Toyota at 12,904, Cadillac at 12,358, Hyundai at 12,185 and Chevrolet at 10,031. Kia, Ford, BMW and Honda rounded out the top ten. Rivian’s total is up 45.7 percent from the 13,201 vehicles in the report’s year-earlier column, a gain that Cox’s own commentary also puts at 46 percent.

Electrek’s Jameson Dow, who wrote the Oct. 20 analysis, put the result bluntly: Rivian is now the second-ranked EV brand in the United States, up from 10th last year, taking Chevrolet’s spot. Dow also noted that Tesla’s own sales fell nearly 20 percent, with the Model Y still the best-selling EV in the country.

Cox’s published commentary, dated Oct. 12, supplies the market-wide frame. Total U.S. EV sales came to 262,649 in the quarter, up 6.1 percent from the second quarter but down 39.5 percent from the third quarter of 2025, which Cox called the best quarter ever for U.S. EV sales. EVs took about 6.4 percent of new-vehicle sales, up from 5.8 percent in the second quarter. Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox Automotive’s director of industry insights, described a market that is finding its footing again after that drop.

Chevrolet’s slide and the General Motors caveat

Chevrolet’s side of the swap is the larger story in raw volume, and the Cox PDF shows how lopsided the comparison was a year ago. The brand sold 10,031 EVs in the third quarter of 2026 against 39,498 a year earlier, a decline of 74.6 percent, and it now sits sixth in the table. Rivian’s gain of about 6,000 vehicles is small beside the roughly 29,500 vehicles Chevrolet lost, so the new order reflects a collapse at the incumbent at least as much as a surge at the challenger.

Brand rankings can mislead on that point, and Dow acknowledged as much. General Motors is still second among automakers if its brands are combined. Cadillac’s 12,358 and Chevrolet’s 10,031 add up to 22,389, which is more than Rivian’s 19,239, before counting any other GM badge. The Rivian result is therefore a statement about individual nameplates, not about which corporation sold more EVs.

Dow’s explanation for the weakness across the industry is pointed. He argued that automakers are almost universally refusing to make EVs, citing research from the University of California, Davis, in a UC Davis transportation research blog post on the EV sales cliff. The cliff followed the end of the federal tax credit, which Electrek covered in its Oct. 1, 2025 report that the $7,500 credit was gone.

R1S demand, R2 bookings and the price gap

Rivian’s quarter leaned on its established SUV. According to Dow, the company booked only 3,456 units of the new R2 in the third quarter, fewer than the number of R1S models it sold. The R1S starts near $80,000, and Dow expects the lower-priced models, around $50,000, to bring the higher volume once they ramp. Rivian’s R2 launch was scheduled around June 9, which puts the first full quarter of deliveries still ahead.

Rivian was not the only brand to grow. Dow lists Mercedes, Lexus, Toyota and Subaru as the other names with year-over-year gains, while almost every other brand declined. The Kelley Blue Book table shows the scale of the Toyota gain: 12,904 vehicles against 3,015 a year earlier. Cox’s commentary separately reports that Toyota and Lexus EV sales rose nearly fivefold, and that Subaru grew 31 percent.

Ford, Hyundai and Honda show the same pattern as Chevrolet in the report’s year-over-year columns. Ford fell from 30,612 vehicles to 6,047, Hyundai from 28,780 to 12,185 and Honda from 20,236 to 4,882. Cadillac slipped from 18,383 to 12,358. Against that backdrop, a brand that merely held its ground would have climbed several places, and Rivian did considerably better than hold.

The open question is whether a second-place finish built on a shrunken market holds. Tesla’s 144,094 vehicles are more than seven times Rivian’s total, and the next four brands sit between 12,000 and 13,000 vehicles, close enough that a single product launch could reorder them in the fourth quarter. Cox’s report will show whether Rivian’s R2 ramp, which Dow expects to matter most once cheaper trims arrive, widens the gap over Toyota and Cadillac or whether Chevrolet’s lower-priced Bolt, which Dow says is being cancelled next year, gives the Chevrolet brand a late rebound.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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