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Just 6 ingredients required for this (dare we say) MASTERPIECE. It’s going to be on repeat in our ice cream maker all season long. Grab your cones. Let’s make Nutella ice cream!

Just like our 4-Ingredient Nutella, this Nutella ice cream starts with roasting hazelnuts to warm up their natural oils, loosen the skins, and enhance the hazelnut flavor.

Then we blend the roasted hazelnuts with melted chocolate, and ta-da: you’ve got easy homemade NUTELLA with better-for-you ingredients! It’s also a seriously amazing base for ice cream. Just be sure to set some of the “Nutella” aside for swirling into the ice cream later!

Next, we start turning most of the nut butter into ice cream by blending it with canned light coconut milk, cane sugar, vanilla, and salt. After blending, we refrigerate for at least an hour to cool the mixture down. This chilling step also allows you to prep for this recipe ahead of time, meaning summer ice cream parties, coming up!

When you’re ready for ice cream, add the creamy, dreamy mixture to your ice cream maker and churn for about 30 minutes. Then gently fold in the reserved “Nutella,” creating swirls of rich, chocolaty, hazelnutty goodness (hubba hubba)!

We can’t wait for you to try this ice cream! It’s:

Creamy
Chocolaty
Nutty
Fluffy
Perfectly sweet
Light yet satisfying
& SO delicious!

It’s the perfect dessert to make for anyone who loves Nutella, or is dairy-free/vegan and loves ice cream! And speaking of loving Nutella, be sure to check out our Creamy Chocolate Hazelnut Milk, 1-Bowl Nutella Banana Bread (Vegan + GF), 1-Bowl Chocolate Hazelnut Cake (Vegan + GF), and Grilled Nutella Banana Sandwich.

More Vegan Ice Cream Recipes

• Vegan Brownie Chocolate Ice Cream
• Creamy Vegan Chai Ice Cream
• Cherry Pie Ice Cream
• Creamy Vegan Mint Brownie Ice Cream

If you try this recipe, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it, and don’t forget to tag a photo @minimalistbaker on Instagram. Cheers, friends!

Prep Time 3 hours

Total Time 3 hours

Servings 9 (~1/2-cup servings)

Course Dessert

Cuisine Dairy-Free, Gluten-Free, Vegan

Freezer Friendly 1 month

Does it keep? 1 month (in the freezer)

• 1 cup raw hazelnuts
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks (we like Enjoy Life)
• 2 (14-oz.) cans light coconut milk (we like Whole Foods 365*)
• 1/4 cup cane sugar (ensure organic if vegan)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp sea salt

• The day before use, place your ice cream churning bowl in the freezer to ensure a proper chill.

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (176 C) and add the hazelnuts to a bare baking sheet in a single layer. If raw, roast for a total of 10-12 minutes. If already roasted, roast for 8-10 minutes just to warm the natural oils and loosen the skins. This will make them easier to blend into butter. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Then transfer to a large kitchen towel and use your hands to roll the nuts around to remove most of the skins. You want to get as much as possible off because doing so yields a creamier result. But it doesn’t have to be perfect!

• Transfer the hazelnuts (skins removed and disposed of) to your high-speed blender and blend starting on low and working your way up to high, breaking down the hazelnuts as much as possible. They should wind up looking like small crumbs.

• Next, melt your chocolate. Melt chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until about half of the chocolate chips are melted (~1 minute). Remove the pan from the heat and stir until the chocolate is completely melted. You could also do this in the microwave, melting the chocolate in 30-second increments.

• Pour the melted chocolate into the blender. Begin blending on low, working your way up to high until the hazelnut butter is completely smooth and combined. The smoother the better! This should take about 3 minutes. Once completely smooth, remove 3 Tbsp of your freshly made "Nutella" and set aside for later!

• To your blender with the remaining "Nutella," add the light coconut milk, cane sugar, vanilla extract, and sea salt and blend on high until smooth, creamy, and completely combined.

• Transfer the mixture to an airtight container and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

• Add the slightly chilled mixture to your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer's instructions — ours took 30 minutes. It should look like a thick soft serve (see photo). Pour the reserved Nutella on top of the ice cream and gently fold it in to create a swirl, being careful to avoid fully mixing it in. You can enjoy your ice cream now if you prefer a softer, less frozen ice cream (similar in texture to gelato)! Or transfer the ice cream to a large freezer-safe container and smooth it with a spoon. Top with parchment paper and freeze for at least 1 hour or until firm.

• Set out for 10-15 minutes before serving to soften slightly. Store in the freezer well covered for up to 1 month.

*For ideal creaminess, we recommend using a brand of coconut milk that is smooth and creamy (such as Whole Foods 365). These usually contain emulsifiers (such as guar gum), which improve the creaminess of the ice cream!
*Nutrition information is a rough estimate.

Serving: 1 (1/2-cup) serving Calories: 277 Carbohydrates: 21.5 g Protein: 3.6 g Fat: 21.2 g Saturated Fat: 9.4 g Polyunsaturated Fat: 1.2 g Monounsaturated Fat: 6.9 g Trans Fat: 0 g Cholesterol: 0 mg Sodium: 31 mg Potassium: 103 mg Fiber: 2.8 g Sugar: 17 g Vitamin A: 0 IU Vitamin C: 0.9 mg Calcium: 44 mg Iron: 2.2 mg

Did You Make This Recipe?

Tag @minimalistbaker on Instagram and hashtag it #minimalistbaker so we can see all the deliciousness!

Reader Interactions

This word takes me back to my doctoral graduation when my father-in-law said with good-natured humor, “Well, Ev… there’s a lot of [stuff] you can’t learn from a book.” At the time, I didn’t know what to say, but any teacher worth their salt will tell you: he’s right.

Pre-service teachers – myself included – often lament that they didn’t really learn to teach until the rubber-meets-the-road experience of student teaching or that first job. This is the challenge of teaching pre-service teachers. I’ve been doing it for a handful of years now, and I see a trend – the TikTok way of knowing in education. It’s got me wondering how we adapt our practices based on my experience during my recent final exams with pre-service teachers.

The TikTok Way

For example, I ask my students to make two tangible items to try and circumvent AI. One item is a teacher creed. I hand out “fancy” paper and tell them to create something they might read every teaching day – something to remind them not if, but when teaching gets hard. These are heartfelt, colorful creations. They write things like, I will show up with a good attitude. Even on my worst day, I will be someone’s favorite teacher. I cringe a bit, knowing how more seasoned educators might scoff but that is perhaps why I assign them – to bottle that early hopefulness in a landscape that often doesn’t create it for new teachers.

The second item is to create “One One-Pager to Rule Them All!” Students make non-linear, doodle-style notes throughout the semester, and this final asks them to zoom out and represent everything essential we’ve learned through a map of connections, images, and ideas.

I love this assignment because I can see who is connecting the dots and who is simply regurgitating the text. I sit with each student for five to seven minutes as they “show and tell” the work. As they read their creeds, I am heartened and sometimes even tear up. And in conversation after conversation this semester, I heard the same phrase, almost as a confession mid-conference:   “I know it’s not research-y, but in a TikTok I saw…”   “I know it’s not the best source, but I saw a reel that said…”   “This guy I follow always says…”

Each of these notes expanded or connected my own thinking about course content. Some couldn’t be backed in my mind of research, but others could. So, instead of arguing, I asked questions: Who created that content? What might their motivation be? Why does it matter to you? This kind of questioning reflects what Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle describe as “inquiry as stance” – an orientation where teachers are active investigators of knowledge.

An Epistemological Shift

We are in a shift in epistemology. Future teachers are learning not only through peer-reviewed research or textbooks, but also through short-form video, personality-driven content, and lived teacher experience shared in real time – what media scholars like Henry Jenkins describe as a more participatory culture of knowledge. This is democratizing, the dismantling of the silo that has long held educational research out of reach. But this is also destabilizing.

During my first years of teaching, I cried in my car a lot. If I had had the megaphone of TikTok influencers celebrating how they left education, or even my own content microphone, I’m not sure I would have made it through to my later years of teaching that are still hard but more grounded and fulfilling.

Admittedly, some positions are ones to leave. Yes, at times educator working conditions are not what they should be but how do we help pre-service and early-career teachers move through the baptism-by-fire years while being bombarded by voices – many from people who have left the profession and now narrate it from the outside? Some of the content is helpful. Some of it is not. And all of it is loud.

I wonder if our teacher preparation programs are keeping pace with how knowledge is actually being formed. It leads me to my favorite teacher question, “So what? What do we do now?” How long do we hack away at the plant growing up the wall, and when is it time to embrace the aesthetic of a vine-covered building as something worth studying?

Instead, what if we become weavers of stories? What if we help students craft their own and build connections of knowing? What if we engage lived experience not as secondary to research, but as a complementary form of knowing? When have we had so much access to real-time teacher voices about things that happened to them in the classroom that day?

Just because something is visual, narrative, click-baity, and social doesn’t mean it is missing the mark or doesn’t engage a pedagogical question worth exploring. This TikTok wondering is happening whether we embrace it or not, so what if we see it as a new charge to help future teachers engage these voices critically, rather than pretending they don’t exist?

Here are some ideas I’m playing with. I’m curious what you might add.

Ed Content Fridays. Students bring in content that connects with the week’s readings and learning from their own scrolling. Discuss it in a Spider-Web format that employs elements of a librarian CRAAP test to help students develop habits of mind around credibility and content creator motivation.

Use a C3WP writing strategy that engages reels and posts to kick off class. Start with what students know as a free write and then bring in content to have them expand their arguments and defend thoughts with research from our shared text.  If students bring it in, they find it interesting, and we can require a citation connection to the course text or researchers.

Like/Share/Subscribe. Share strong online content that sings from reputable sources with students. Syllabi and course hubs can be places to curate rich content collaboratively.

Have students create their own content. CapCut on a desktop or Edits on a phone are surprisingly easy plug-and-play tools to make short form videos, and we can up the academic requirements with or without student posting. Thoughtful content can grow out of our rich history of educational research, bringing rich, thoughtful voices in among the pervasive ranting. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be about the work of educational reform and that a good rant doesn’t have its place, but this new way of knowing and sharing knowledge is sitting in our desks waiting for us to light the fire.

Yes, my step-dad is right, there is so much we can’t learn from a book, but maybe there is still so much we can learn from our own students in their own ways of knowing, even if we don’t fully understand them ourselves. What if our ways of knowing weave together, creating something beautiful? %!s()

There are days when my own children are crawling into my lap with a book while I continue to process footage of children suffering in conflicts on the other side of the world. My high school students are writing the kind of poetry that leaves me speechless, even as I privately wonder about their career options as artificial intelligence receives more investment than the arts. Yet, my experience in New Mexico has shown me that another approach is possible. 

I have a unique vantage point, both as a parent and an educator who sees these challenges reflected in the lives of my students and their families. My local school district in New Mexico has yet to pivot to hybrid learning in response to the palpable fear parents felt, while the actions of federal agents created widespread fear in their community. My state is not banning books and restricting curricula. Instead, as a recent transplant to the state, I’m in awe of the ways New Mexico invests in children and our more vulnerable residents.

After the 2024 election, a shockwave swept through my school as students grappled with what another Trump presidency would mean for their futures. At the performing arts school where I teach, we have a high percentage of queer and trans students, a stark contrast to my previous school in California, where most LGBTQ+ students often chose to remain closeted until well after graduation. I grieve for what my previous students lost when they did not acknowledge or affirm their queer and trans classmates. In English class, they missed robust discussions; the depth their queer and trans peers bring to literary discussions, while leveraging queer theory, translates into highly analytical and more engaging coursework. In the scope of a school day, there were countless other ways all students missed a more complete experience, while their queer and trans peers chose safety in an environment hostile to their identities. 

And while New Mexico is much less hostile to trans residents, I still can’t imagine what it would be like to be growing up in a world that constantly demands you to defend and fight for your humanity. Guaranteed care by the state means nothing if authority figures are consistently exposed to negative messaging about transgender people or if your lack of insurance prevents you from getting the life-saving care you need. 

And yet, trans students in New Mexico are able to attend school in an environment with teachers who are largely committed to affirming a variety of gender identities, select curriculum that allows LGBTQ students to see themselves, bond with accepting and encouraging peers from across the gender spectrum, and learn from LGBTQ teachers who embody a hopeful future of what it means to be your full self in your career. This is all possible when a school doesn't just accommodate gender and sexual diversity, but embraces it. Extensive research confirms the ways in which affirming environments like ours can be life-saving for LGBTQ teens, especially trans students.

Earlier in my career, I felt optimistic about my queer and trans students’ futures. Today, seeing my trans students grapple with the new political realities has renewed my commitment to making an optimistic future visible for them. In a past article, I reflected on my role as a teacher in presenting a hopeful future for my students during unhopeful times. There is no one for whom this is more crucial than our queer and trans students. 

Ultimately, I wonder what it would look like for our world to care about children as much as the state of New Mexico does. What will happen when all children can attend high-quality early childhood education without adding to the financial burden of a growing family? What does it look like when gender affirming care is protected by law? Or when our lawmakers prohibit book and curriculum censorship? Or when we finally decide that school shootings do not have to be a certainty of American life? 

I know these questions will remain abstract while we watch students as young as Liam Ramos fear for their lives. But we cannot have a different future if we are not imagining a better one in the present. I’m thankful for my students, past and present, who encourage my imagination.

This story is part of an EdSurge series chronicling educator experiences. These stories are made publicly available with support from the Learning Commons. EdSurge maintains editorial control over all content. (Read our ethics statement here.) This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. %!s()

It's much harder to make a smaller, cheaper car as good, especially when that car needs to be a lot more mass-market in terms of sales volume and consumer appeal. And the compact crossover segment is an especially competitive one, whether you're looking just at EVs or at SUVs broadly. Luckily, Rivian seems to have nailed it with the R2. It's fantastic to drive on- and off-road, just as thoughtfully engineered and designed as its big siblings, and its packaging and pricing are aimed right at the heart of the market. The Rivian R2 might be even better than you hoped — it certainly exceeded my own high expectations.

Full disclosure: Rivian flew me to Salt Lake City, put me up in the Waldorf for a night and fed me a few meals so I could drive the R2. There were dozens of Mormon missionaries on my flight home, which I think is why I've spent the past week sick at home.

It lives up to the Performance name

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The only R2s we get to drive are the dual-motor Performance model, which has 656 horsepower and 609 pound-feet of torque. That's only 9 hp less than an R1S Dual Performance (but 220 fewer torques), and the R2's 3.6-second 0-to-60-mph time is just two tenths behind its bigger sibling. It certainly feels quick in practice, especially when in Sport mode, but not in the same way as the R1. Rivian chose to sacrifice some off-the-line punch in favor of improved mid-range acceleration, and it is especially impressive when pressing the throttle on corner exit or on the freeway. The car never feels too reactive or twitchy, though, and it's easy to drive smoothly.

New for the R2 is a front motor that automatically disconnects for better efficiency, as opposed to the rear motor being the one that disconnects in the R1 models, and the transition is imperceptible and immediate. In Sport mode the front motor is always engaged, which is why the whirr from the motors is a lot louder and more noticeable — but don't worry, there's still no fakery or volume enhancement going on. Torque distribution between the axles is constantly variable, defaulting to 40:60 front/rear, though it more often sends more twist to the rear, and the amount sent to the front wheels doesn't typically exceed 60%. Rivian continues to be one of the best at tuning regenerative braking, with the R2's strongest setting offering true one-pedal driving that feels telepathic whether driving around town or in the canyons.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

There's no air suspension like you get in an R1, but you really don't need it. The Performance's semi-active setup has three different settings for the adaptive dampers, with the softest still being composed enough in corners and the stiffest being far from harsh. There isn't much body roll, and it handles weight transfer and quick changes in direction well. It's a comfortable ride no matter the setting, perhaps even more so than the occasionally flinty R1S. The R2 Performance we're driving has 21-inch wheels with Rivian-specific Pirelli Scorpion MS tires, sized 255/55, that are pretty quiet at highway speeds and offer more than enough grip for spirited driving. And you will want to do some spirited driving.

The R2's steering rack is from a different supplier and has a different setup than the R1, and it feels more accurate and provides a bit more feedback. But surely most of the R2's nimbleness can be chalked up to its weight: Rivian has yet to say a curb weight, but the R2 weighs around 2,000 pounds less than an R1S (so peg it at around 4,600 pounds) and it feels even lighter than that. In Sport mode on a very tight and twisty road near Mill Canyon Peak, the R2 is a joy to drive quickly, more akin to a big hot hatch than a small SUV. Making it all even better is the confirmation that a tri-motor, rally-inspired R2X model is coming soon.

Sufficient specs

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Where the R2 doesn't really stand out is its battery and efficiency. Though all three are more expensive than the R2 Performance to start and are more outright luxury cars, the R2's biggest competitors are also new on the scene this year: the BMW iX3, Mercedes-Benz GLC EV and Volvo EX60. Those Europeans all use 800-volt architectures where the R2 only has a 400-volt setup, and all three boast charging speeds of over 300 kW and ranges of more than 400 miles, with the R2 falling short in both regards.

I mean, the R2's range is totally fine; great, even. Dual-motor R2s get an EPA-estimate range of 330 miles depending on the wheel and tire package, beating out cars like the Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Cadillac Optiq. The upcoming rear-wheel-drive Standard Long Range model, which uses the same 87.9-kWh battery pack, will do 345 miles. Rivian hasn't yet said what the R2's peak fast-charging rate is, and that's probably because it's not that impressive — the company says it can charge from 10% to 80% in 29 minutes, about the same as a Toyota bZ. Not exactly class-leading. It has a NACS port on the driver's side rear quarter-panel for easy access at Tesla Superchargers, and in another first for Rivian, it can do bi-directional charging of up to 11 kW.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

Though the R2 won't travel as far on the highway as its competitors, its Autonomy+ suite of driver-assistance systems is very good and makes highway driving a lot nicer. The system's hardware (11 cameras and five radar sensors) is built into every R2, with Launch Package cars getting lifetime access while later buyers will have to pay a $49.99 monthly subscription or a $2,500 one-time fee. In addition to all your regular features like adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and lane-keeping assist, Autonomy+ adds Rivian's Level 2 hands-free driving system that can be activated on 3.5 million miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada.

It's easy to turn on, requiring a simple tug on the shifter while on the freeway, and the system works extremely well. It stays nicely centered in the lane, and the car doesn't yell at me to take control or look ahead if I gaze at the landscape for a couple seconds. While it won't pull off unprompted lane changes, hitting the blinker will activate an automatic lane change. Rivian is working on a Level 2 point-to-point hands-free system that's also possible with the R2's current hardware, with the aim to launch it later this year through an OTA update.

What a cutie!

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If you're reading this review then the R2's exterior design is probably very familiar to you already, but I will at least say the longer I look at it in person and the more specs I see, the better it looks — and the more different it is from the R1S. Yes, they're clearly siblings, but the R2 has a lot of details that set it apart and make it look even better to my eyes. For instance, I really love the crisp line that flows from the top of the pill-like headlights to form the U-shaped valley in the hood, how the shorter headlights' three-dimensional surrounds stick out from the nose, and the turn signals built into the front wheel arch trim. The hood itself is a nice clamshell, with the shutlines aligning with a crease along the body side, and short overhangs, tucked-in bumpers and strong shoulders give the R2 a great stance.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

There's one major problem with the design, though — the incredible Borealis purple paint won't be available until next year, and if you want the darker Forest Green that won't be available until later this year. The Catalina Cove blue is nice, at least, but other than those options and the Launch Green color, the R2's color palette is pretty tame. The wheel designs are also boring. Come on, Rivian, at least give us one rally-style wheel option!

Performance and Premium trims get one feature that's very rare in the automotive world, and one that could end up being solely responsible for a big chunk of R2 sales: the rear drop glass. Like on a Toyota 4Runner, the rear window is powered, lowering down into the tailgate so you can fit longer stuff in the cargo area or, more likely, so you and your dog can enjoy some fresh air. In addition to a button near the rear view mirror that lowers just the rear glass there's another button that lowers all five windows, and it can also be lowered from outside the car by pressing a touch-sensitive button in the rear window surround.

Rivian really knows how to design interiors

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The interior design will also look and feel very familiar to anyone who's been in an R1, but Rivian has made a lot of little tweaks based on customer feedback and its experience making the larger cars. People wanted more storage space, so Rivian moved the door speakers to the center console, improving audio quality and allowing for large water bottles to fit in the door pockets. There are two gloveboxes, one in the normal spot and another beneath the center screen, and the center armrest has a good amount of room inside and two sizable slide-out cupholders. Ahead of the center console there's an open space to place bags.

Despite the R2 being so much smaller than an R1S, even the tallest among us won't be lacking for space, especially if you sit in the back seat. There's 40.4 inches of legroom and 40.4 inches of headroom in the second row, both figures more than you get in an R1S, and the flat floor is pretty low, so your knees aren't angled up high. The front seats are supportive for my 5-foot-9 self, and while the driving position is definitely assertive and SUV-like, I don't feel like I'm sitting too high up. Visibility is also great, especially out the front. The R2's hood design gives me a good idea of where the corners of the car are and where the wheels are placed, but it doesn't feel too tall or long. The side windows are big, too.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

With the rear seats up the R2 has 28.7 cubic feet of cargo space, two and a half cubes more than an Ioniq 5, and folding the 40/20/40-split rear seats down flat opens that space to 79.4 cubic feet, 21 whole cubes more than the Hyundai. You also get an underfloor storage area that's big enough to fit a carry-on suitcase, and the frunk will hold 5.2 cubic feet of stuff, big enough for a carry-on and a backpack or six grocery bags. The hood is power-opening, and while you have to close it yourself, it'll latch itself.

In addition to looking very similar to the R1's interior, the R2's cabin feels just as well-built and high-quality, certainly worth the Performance's price tag. Rivian's Adventex bio-based leather alternative is nicer than a lot of other leatherettes, with real accent stitching all over the place. Almost everything you touch has padding behind it, including the grab handles on the doors. There's a big swath of birch wood trim on the dashboard, and a great textile is used on the door panels and seatbacks. Sadly, if you want the off-white Ocean Coast interior color you'll have to wait until later this year.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

Rivian continues to have one of the best (if not the best) infotainment systems in the industry, and the R2's software has undergone a subtle redesign. The bezels around the screens are thinner, and the 11.5-inch gauge screen is short and wider than what you get in the R1. The 15.6-inch touchscreen has redesigned menus, a shortcut bar on the left and some new functionality, like the ability to swipe pop-up boxes showing your current audio from the left to the right of the screen. Rivian has thankfully retained the cel-shaded look, which I absolutely love. All of the graphics, fonts, icons and other bits look wonderful and are easy to read at a glance.

There's still no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Good. I would never want to use CarPlay when Rivian's system is this fantastic, especially given how well-integrated everything is to the vehicle functions, and the presence of built-in apps like Apple Music. Rivian's navigation system and built-in route planning is wonderful, and it uses Google Maps data anyway, so why would I want to navigate from my phone's connection? I'm sure some of you in the comments will be mad about this, but you shouldn't be. CarPlay sucks, and Rivian is never going to add it.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

New in the R2 (and added to existing R1s) is the very cleverly named Rivian Assistant, the automaker's in-house-designed voice assistant. In addition to being able to control various infotainment functions, the assistant can change things like the drive modes and answer all sorts of questions about the car, even if it's offline. But because I'm having too good of a time talking with my drive partner, friend of Jalopnik (and former intern) Mack Hogan, I don't try it out while driving, only doing a static demo. Still, it seems like one of the better voice assistants on the market.

I can see your halos

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The R2's real party piece is something you definitely haven't seen on any other car: the Haptic Halo wheels that are placed in the steering wheel, negating the need for any other buttons or controls. First of all, they look fantastic, appearing to float within the wood-trimmed spokes. There's a knurled finish on the rims, with a nice lined texture on the inner side. But then you actually use them, and your eyes will really widen.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

In addition to spinning them like you'd expect, you can click the halos in like a button or click them over side to side in either direction, and there's a different sort of haptic feedback to each type of action. When you get to the bottom of a menu, resistance is added into the haptics so you aren't just spinning it aimlessly. In addition to controlling things you'd expect, like the audio volume and track, they can also adjust the temperature and fan speed, change the gauge cluster display, and set the speed, follow distance and other settings for the driver-assist features. You can also spin or click the halos from the back side of the steering wheel, and doing so can have different functionality — for example, clicking in from the back of the right wheel brings up the drive mode selector.

I find myself adapting to the halos very quickly — it helps that what they're doing is clearly shown in the gauge cluster — but sometimes I scroll the wheel when I mean to click it to the side, especially when doing it from the back side. Rivian's engineers acknowledged they're still tweaking how the halos feel, and adjustments to both the action and functionality will be possible through over-the-air updates. Though they didn't say any specifics, in the future the halos will be able to control and adjust even more aspects of the car.

Ready for adventures

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

After our initial street drive we swap into R2s equipped with the 20-inch wheels and all-terrain tires, specifically 255/60 BF Goodrich Trail Terrain T/As. On tarmac there is barely more roughness and road noise than the bigger all-seasons, though they bring the range down to 307 miles. Still, it's not a bad trade-off for the capability you get, and it's just an extra $1,000. We start the off-road portion of the drive on a hard-packed dirt road, on which the R2 remains very smooth and quiet, with no annoying chattering or shudders. The general All-Terrain mode is suited for basically everything, but the Performance trim also has a Soft Sand mode and, best of all, Rally mode. Rally reduces the stability control (you can fully turn it off, too) and gives the car a more tail-happy setup, and it is pretty easy to slide around in the dirt, though I don't have much opportunity to drive sportily here.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

When we get onto the actual slow-going off-road trail, we switch back into All-Terrain. Every R2 regardless of wheel/tire setup has 9.6 inches of ground clearance, a tenth more than an Outback Wilderness, and it can wade through nearly 20 inches of water. Every obstacle the trail throws at us is tackled with ease in the R2, from steep inclines covered in huge rocks to off-camber turns with treacherous ruts. There's never a moment where it feels like the car is struggling for traction, and the regenerative braking and powertrain tuning makes it really easy to modulate the throttle in tricky sections. The 360-degree cameras are even higher-resolution than the facelift R1, and unlike some other cars, Rivian doesn't cut out the feed above low speeds.

While the initial trail could probably be tackled by your average crossover on all-terrains, Rivian also has us go up an especially tough route that's even narrower and rockier. Again, the R2 bounds up it no problem, like a happy little mountain goat. There's only a couple moments where we hear the underbody scrape, and when we do get some two- or three-wheel action to show off the articulation, the R2 always feels stable. There's no need for any hill-descent control, off-road crawl function, anti-roll bar disconnect or other fancy off-roader features. Out of the box, the R2 is well set-up and ready to go do whatever outdoorsy stuff you want.

The base model is no penalty box

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

The first production R2s have already made it into the hands of customers, with the Performance being the only variant currently rolling off the line. All the R2s come with the Launch Package right now, which comes with lifetime Autonomy+, the towing package, a special finish for the key fob and the ability to get Launch Green paint. Its starting price of $59,485 really ain't bad, especially given how much stuff it comes with.

Every R2 Performance has heated and ventilated front seats with 12-way adjustment and power lumbar, heated rear outboard seats, a 9-speaker premium audio system with 2 midwoofers and 2 subwoofers, matrix LED headlights with adaptive high beams, integrated tow hooks, a pop-out flashlight in the driver's door that also doubles as a hand warmer, and the rear drop glass.

Coming later this year will be the dual-motor Premium, starting at $55,485. It's got 450 hp and 537 lb-ft with a 0-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds, still nothing to sneeze at, and the same 330-mile range as the Performance. Aside from the extra, um, performance, the only actual features that the Performance gets over the Premium is the semi-active suspension, the Soft Sand and Rally modes, and launch control. All that other stuff I mentioned above is present in the Premium.

Daniel Golson/Jalopnik

In the first half of next year Rivian will start building the Standard model (the silver one seen above), which will cost you $49,985. It has 19-inch wheels, a less-nice interior without heated seats, a less-nice sound system, no matrix headlights and none of the off-road drive modes. The rear-wheel-drive Standard has 350 hp and 355 lb-ft, but it'll be available with dual-motor all-wheel drive as an option. But that won't be the cheapest one.

Originally Rivian said it wouldn't be putting the real base-trim R2 Standard into production until late 2027, but that timeline has been moved up by half a year due to strong demand, with the car now set to launch in the summer. While the Standard Long Range has the same battery pack as other R2s, the base one will get a smaller pack with a range of only 275 miles. Rivian says it will start at $46,485, and though it doesn't have as many features, you aren't getting a penalty box. The automaker brought along an R2 Standard for us to poke around while parked, and the interior is still really damn nice. Its surfaces are just as padded, there's cool flecked plastic trim, and wonderful textiles on the dash and doors.

Rivian is aiming to sell around 25,000 R2s this year, more than half the total vehicles it sold in 2025, and eventually, Rivian says its plant in Normal, Illinois, could produce more than 150,000 R2s annually. That's a big goal, especially given the current appetite for EVs in the U.S., but given how damn good the R2 is, I don't think it'll be a hard one to hit if Rivian can pull off the launch. This is a real Goldilocks product — it's the right size, it's the right price, it's got the right specs, it's got the right design and engineering. The 2027 Rivian R2 is simply satisfying in basically every regard, a crossover all sorts of people will easily fall in love with. And that bodes really well for the R3, which is still on track to come out next year with an even better design and an even lower price. %!s()

Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is tempting to believe that these theories aren’t just accurate, but inevitable – that any sufficiently intelligent civilisation would eventually uncover the same truths.

I used to believe that, too. But lately I have started to wonder whether physics is less a window onto universal reality and more of a mirror, reflecting the particular kind of minds we happen to have.

That unsettling thought emerges when you ask a deceptively simple question: would alien scientists, shaped by a different biology or culture, arrive at the same physics that we have? Or might they develop something that works just as well, but looks utterly foreign – built on concepts and assumptions we would struggle to recognise?

This question sits at the heart of my book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, which imagines various scenarios of first contact, each designed to probe a foundational assumption of modern physics. In developing it – often in conversation with philosophers of science – I have come to realise something surprising: many pillars of physics that feel hardwired may actually be contingent. But recognising that doesn’t weaken science. It may be how we make it better.

I’ve spent my life doing physics. When I am not teaching at the University of California, Irvine, I work at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider. But a few years ago, conversations with philosophers forced me to revisit a question I hadn’t seriously considered since my student days: what is physics, really?

At its core, physics aims to explain how the universe works – not just what we observe, but what lies behind those observations. It looks for patterns, builds models that expose hidden structure and, ideally, distils everything down to a small set of rules from which the rest follows. By that measure, it has been spectacularly successful.

Yet physics never describes the universe in full. It describes carefully chosen versions of it.

Consider predicting the path of a comet. In principle, we could account for every gravitational tug, the slow loss of material as ice sublimates, even the way an irregular shape causes the comet to tumble. In practice, we must decide what to include and what to ignore. There is no single correct model – only models that are good enough for the question at hand.

This is true throughout physics. Even our most precise theories rely on approximations and assumptions that make the mathematics tractable. And it isn’t clear that the theories we treat as fundamental really are. They may simply be effective descriptions that work at human scales. There is no guarantee that, by probing nature ever more finely, we will eventually strike bedrock.

If physics depends on choices – about simplification, representation and emphasis – then alien physicists might reasonably make different ones.

What if aliens don’t experience time the way we do?

Imagine that aliens arrive on Earth. They have mastered interstellar travel and touched down near Paris. We send linguists and scientists to greet them, hoping for a technological windfall. The delegation returns empty-handed.

“They can’t share their technology,” the lead physicist explains. “Because of what will happen 74 years from today.”

The implication is disturbing. These aliens don’t experience time as a flowing sequence, but as a complete structure, something navigable rather than endured. Human physics, by contrast, is built on the idea that the present generates the future. Causes precede effects. The universe computes itself forward, moment by moment.

But what if that picture is a human convenience, rather than a cosmic necessity?

We know that any workable physics must obey certain constraints. A universe that allows unrestricted messages from the future quickly collapses into a paradox. But within those limits, the structure of time may be more flexible than we usually admit.

Hints of this already exist in our own theories. Quantum entanglement links distant particles so that measuring one appears to instantaneously fix the state of the other, despite the fact that there can be no information exchanged between them. This alone strains our intuitions. But matters become stranger when relativity enters the picture. Observers moving at different speeds disagree about the order of events. In some frames of reference, one measurement appears to influence another before it occurs.

The standard response is to insist that nothing physically problematic has happened: no faster-than-light signals, no causal contradictions. But that reassurance relies on clinging tightly to a classical notion of causality that quantum mechanics has never fully respected.

Some physicists have taken a more radical approach. In so-called retrocausal interpretations of quantum mechanics, future events are allowed to help shape the present. Measurements don’t merely reveal outcomes; they help define them, even backwards in time. The universe no longer computes itself strictly step by step.

If aliens had a radically different construct of time, they might adopt such ideas naturally, rather than treating them as unsettling exceptions. And perhaps we may eventually need to do the same.

What if aliens don’t insist on a single theory of nature?

Now imagine the aliens invite us aboard their ship for a scientific conference. Earth sends its brightest minds. We present our best theories. The aliens listen politely, then respond.

One group describes a framework that reproduces all known experiments using unfamiliar concepts. A second presents another, incompatible approach. Then a third. Each works. Each is internally consistent. None can be reduced to the others.

Finally, someone asks the obvious question: which one is true?

The aliens seem puzzled. All of them, they say. Why choose?

Human science assumes that competing theories must ultimately fight it out, with only one surviving as the correct description of reality. When multiple explanations fit the data, we design experiments to eliminate all but a single winner.

This strategy is powerful and often effective. But it is a preference, not a logical necessity. Science today often tolerates pluralism more than it admits. Weather forecasting is a striking example. Modern meteorology relies on suites of models, each tuned to different assumptions and scales. These models routinely disagree, and experts decide which to trust depending on context. No single model is treated as the uniquely correct one.

Another example comes from classical mechanics. At school, we learn Newton’s laws as a story about forces pushing and pulling objects through space. But the same motions can be derived in a very different way, by tracking how energy flows through a system, or by assuming that nature somehow “chooses” the path that minimises a quantity called “action”. To most physicists, these are just alternative ways of doing the same sums.

Philosophers of science, however, would point out that each framework elevates a different concept to centre stage – force, energy, optimisation – and offers a different account of what, at bottom, is driving the motion. The fact that these pictures cannot be told apart by experiment shows that empirical success alone may not be enough to tell us which account, if any, deserves to be called the “true” one.

This suggests an alternative vision of science – not a march towards a single, final theory, but a toolbox of frameworks, each useful in different situations. Aliens might adopt such an approach from the outset, without ever feeling the need to crown a single description as the truth.

What if aliens never felt the need to do physics at all?

Finally, imagine that aliens arrive by opening a wormhole. The technology is astonishing. Surely they must possess deep insights into gravity, perhaps even quantum gravity.

But what if they don’t?

What if their space-bending technology is the result of millions of years of trial and error rather than theoretical understanding? They know how to build it and how to use it, but not why it works – and they may not care.

This sounds implausible only because we are used to thinking of technology as the offspring of science. Historically, the relationship often ran the other way. Humans made steel, glass and antibiotics long before understanding the underlying chemistry or biology. Cathedrals were built before calculus.

The tight coupling between science and technology that we take for granted is a recent and culturally specific achievement.

It is tempting to assume that any intelligent species would be driven to ask “why”. But that urge may reflect human psychology rather than a universal feature of intelligence. Other species might value reliability over explanation, or usefulness over understanding. They could build extraordinary technologies without ever developing anything recognisable as physics – not because they failed to take the next step, but because the step never seemed necessary.

These scenarios are speculative. But they point to something easy to forget. Physics is the cumulative result of many human choices: about what counts as an explanation, which inconsistencies matter and which questions are worth asking at all. It reflects our history, our tools and our values as much as it reflects the structure of the universe.

Recognising that doesn’t diminish physics. It does the opposite. The more aware we are of the assumptions baked into our theories and methods – about time, causality, truth and explanation – the more freedom we gain to rethink them. %!s()