Rivian Assistant Makes Siri Look Overqualified

[tate16t]

It's not running on the car. It's running at colossus the last time I asked grok something

I don't know how they get it so much faster

you're basically streaming live audio direct to memphis, it is interpreting the words and sending the response back in what feels like real time. I believe it starts processing the answer before you have even finished what you are saying

Correct most of the processing is not handled in the vehicle. Only the edge processing relies on the vehicle hardware. Grok uses the X platform for real-time information. Also, Elon‘s massive datacenters play a major role.

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[SeaGeo]

I have read about this “executed locally” thing before but have yet to discover anything RA can do locally. Is there something it can do without a cloud connection?

I *think* some vehicle commands are local.

 

[Rade]

I'm still getting use to talking to the truck. I have used it for navigation, but found that I really need to know where I am going to get the right response. Like "Directions to Walmart Supercenter on Paramount Drive in Raynham Massachusetts". If I just say "Directions to Walmart" I get a list of every store within 100 miles.

But I suspect that one setting about letting the assistant learn common locations, etc. for a better response will help.

 

[tate16t]

I'm still getting use to talking to the truck. I have used it for navigation, but found that I really need to know where I am going to get the right response. Like "Directions to Walmart Supercenter on Paramount Drive in Raynham Massachusetts". If I just say "Directions to Walmart" I get a list of every store within 100 miles.

But I suspect that one setting about letting the assistant learn common locations, etc. for a better response will help.

You may be able to say, Directions to Walmart in Raynham and it would route you. If you enable the Memory option saying “Take me to Walmart’ might work at some point.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Is there a source link for this?

Google “r/rivian Wassym AMA”, first result: https://www.reddit.com/r/RivianR2/s/NCFxdnh8Xu

As for folks having problems with RA, upon initiation right after install, there were a sequence of screens with instructions and tips. If you breezed through them without reading… your difficulties most likely started there. Spend some time with release notes and support pages for RA. Make sure you’ve done all of the correct settings and preferences at the car and your phone. If problems persist, best to contact Support. SC does not offer support for software (they told me as much once, when I had a software related question).

IIRC, there is a setting to toggle to allow RA to keep a history of your interactions, so that it has a “memory” of past interactions. And yes some things are kept local, for sake of privacy.

 

[Noplacelikeloam]

Google “r/rivian Wassym AMA”, first result: https://www.reddit.com/r/RivianR2/s/NCFxdnh8Xu

As for folks having problems with RA, upon initiation right after install, there were a sequence of screens with instructions and tips. If you breezed through them without reading… your difficulties most likely started there. Spend some time with release notes and support pages for RA. Make sure you’ve done all of the correct settings and preferences at the car and your phone. IIRC, there is a setting to toggle to allow RA to keep a history of your interactions, so that it has a “memory” of past interactions. And yes some things are kept local, for sake of privacy.

Did all of that, didn't help much. And "Memory" is a bit of a stretch.

Its not all bad, but lets not drink the Koolaid here. Its beta at best.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Did all of that, didn't help much. And "Memory" is a bit of a stretch.

Its not all bad, but lets not drink the Koolaid here. Its beta at best.

Where did I say it’s perfect?! Direct your frustration at Rivian. I did not create RA and your problems.

 

[Ralph]

I don’t get why Rivian would deploy Rivian Assistant without Amazon Music but yet tell folks it’s coming faster than you think. If it is that close to being added, why not wait and release Rivian Assistant with it.

Perhaps a part of a base R2 config? Timing is unlikely to be entirely coincidental.

 

[tate16t]

Did all of that, didn't help much. And "Memory" is a bit of a stretch.

Its not all bad, but lets not drink the Koolaid here. Its beta at best.

I’m just curious what specifically did not work for you? What have you asked RA to do that failed?

 

[Noplacelikeloam]

I’m just curious what specifically did not work for you? What have you asked RA to do that failed?

Just read through the thread and honestly, a lot of the criticism is valid — and pretty consistent with what I’m experiencing too.

What’s frustrating is not that Rivian Assistant exists. I’m genuinely happy they shipped it. The frustration is that it feels architecturally unfinished in a moment where the rest of the AI world has moved *very* far ahead.

Right now RA behaves less like a modern conversational system and more like a thin voice-command layer attached to disconnected services.

A few examples:

Ask for directions to a hardware store and it’ll happily rank options and assign confidence scores… without checking whether the store is even open. That’s not intelligence; that’s autocomplete with a steering wheel.

I can ask the same question twice and get completely different answers. If I remind it we literally just discussed this 30 seconds ago, it has no memory of the interaction. In 2026, stateless AI feels prehistoric.

Replies will randomly pause for 10 seconds mid-thought.

Latency is rough. By the time RA finishes thinking, I could’ve asked ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini the same thing, gotten a contextual answer, follow-up reasoning, and probably a summarized Wikipedia article for emotional support.

Passenger detection is weak. Unless the driver speaks clearly and loudly, the system struggles. Two people talking completely derails it because RA still behaves like a single-channel voice trigger instead of a modern multi-speaker conversational model.

It goes offline randomly.

Calling and texting are hit or miss.

Dictation quality is rough enough that I occasionally end up spelling words out loud.

And that’s really the core issue: modern AI expectations are no longer “does voice recognition work?” The bar is now:

• persistent conversational memory,
• contextual awareness,
• low-latency multimodal reasoning,
• speaker identification,
• tool orchestration,
• reliability under noisy real-world conditions,
• and graceful recovery when systems fail.

I do give Rivian credit for attempting this early. But the current implementation still feels like a beta-stage orchestration stack trying to impersonate a fully integrated conversational agent.

The irony is that Rivian positions itself as a software-first vehicle company — which means users naturally compare RA not to old car assistants, but to frontier AI systems they already use every day. And that comparison is brutal.

Again: I’m glad they released it. I just wish they waited until it felt less like “voice commands with confidence intervals” and more like an actual in-car AI system.

 

[tate16t]

Just read through the thread and honestly, a lot of the criticism is valid — and pretty consistent with what I’m experiencing too.

What’s frustrating is not that Rivian Assistant exists. I’m genuinely happy they shipped it. The frustration is that it feels architecturally unfinished in a moment where the rest of the AI world has moved *very* far ahead.

Right now RA behaves less like a modern conversational system and more like a thin voice-command layer attached to disconnected services.

A few examples:

Ask for directions to a hardware store and it’ll happily rank options and assign confidence scores… without checking whether the store is even open. That’s not intelligence; that’s autocomplete with a steering wheel.

I can ask the same question twice and get completely different answers. If I remind it we literally just discussed this 30 seconds ago, it has no memory of the interaction. In 2026, stateless AI feels prehistoric.

Replies will randomly pause for 10 seconds mid-thought.

Latency is rough. By the time RA finishes thinking, I could’ve asked ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini the same thing, gotten a contextual answer, follow-up reasoning, and probably a summarized Wikipedia article for emotional support.

Passenger detection is weak. Unless the driver speaks clearly and loudly, the system struggles. Two people talking completely derails it because RA still behaves like a single-channel voice trigger instead of a modern multi-speaker conversational model.

It goes offline randomly.

Calling and texting are hit or miss.

Dictation quality is rough enough that I occasionally end up spelling words out loud.

And that’s really the core issue: modern AI expectations are no longer “does voice recognition work?” The bar is now:

• persistent conversational memory,
• contextual awareness,
• low-latency multimodal reasoning,
• speaker identification,
• tool orchestration,
• reliability under noisy real-world conditions,
• and graceful recovery when systems fail.

I do give Rivian credit for attempting this early. But the current implementation still feels like a beta-stage orchestration stack trying to impersonate a fully integrated conversational agent.

The irony is that Rivian positions itself as a software-first vehicle company — which means users naturally compare RA not to old car assistants, but to frontier AI systems they already use every day. And that comparison is brutal.

Again: I’m glad they released it. I just wish they waited until it felt less like “voice commands with confidence intervals” and more like an actual in-car AI system.

> I agree the memory issue described above is a problem

> if you experienced latency such as you describe there’s definitely a problem. I have not experienced delays like this.

> I had a radio talk show on while driving this morning and attempted to give RA instructions and it did struggle I had to mute the radio.

> going offline may be related to your latency issue. I didn’t experience this.

> Calling and texting work consistently for me

I agree it’s not quite ready. Is the expectation that RA respond like your typical web AI tools?

I think Rivian’s hybrid approach for conversational reasoning with their own Unified Intelligence platform for vehicle instructions may be where latency might be introduced. Or, perhaps their WiFi or Connect + is struggling.

Did you provide feedback to Rivian?

 

[HaveBlue]

I was in the mountains over the weekend where there's intermittent cell and it died completely. Activate and it listens for two seconds and turns off. No local commands work as it doesn't listen at all. Got back into cell service in greater LA but it was still dead. Maps and all other data services worked. Did a UI reset the next day and RA seems to be back.

So teething problems but works decent when it works. Mostly use it for text or calling but I asked some search type questions and got a nice long paragraph of info.

 

[DuoRivian]

Just read through the thread and honestly, a lot of the criticism is valid — and pretty consistent with what I’m experiencing too.

What’s frustrating is not that Rivian Assistant exists. I’m genuinely happy they shipped it. The frustration is that it feels architecturally unfinished in a moment where the rest of the AI world has moved *very* far ahead.

Right now RA behaves less like a modern conversational system and more like a thin voice-command layer attached to disconnected services.

A few examples:

Ask for directions to a hardware store and it’ll happily rank options and assign confidence scores… without checking whether the store is even open. That’s not intelligence; that’s autocomplete with a steering wheel.

I can ask the same question twice and get completely different answers. If I remind it we literally just discussed this 30 seconds ago, it has no memory of the interaction. In 2026, stateless AI feels prehistoric.

Replies will randomly pause for 10 seconds mid-thought.

Latency is rough. By the time RA finishes thinking, I could’ve asked ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini the same thing, gotten a contextual answer, follow-up reasoning, and probably a summarized Wikipedia article for emotional support.

Passenger detection is weak. Unless the driver speaks clearly and loudly, the system struggles. Two people talking completely derails it because RA still behaves like a single-channel voice trigger instead of a modern multi-speaker conversational model.

It goes offline randomly.

Calling and texting are hit or miss.

Dictation quality is rough enough that I occasionally end up spelling words out loud.

And that’s really the core issue: modern AI expectations are no longer “does voice recognition work?” The bar is now:

• persistent conversational memory,
• contextual awareness,
• low-latency multimodal reasoning,
• speaker identification,
• tool orchestration,
• reliability under noisy real-world conditions,
• and graceful recovery when systems fail.

I do give Rivian credit for attempting this early. But the current implementation still feels like a beta-stage orchestration stack trying to impersonate a fully integrated conversational agent.

The irony is that Rivian positions itself as a software-first vehicle company — which means users naturally compare RA not to old car assistants, but to frontier AI systems they already use every day. And that comparison is brutal.

Again: I’m glad they released it. I just wish they waited until it felt less like “voice commands with confidence intervals” and more like an actual in-car AI system.

This seems very exaggerated criticism. Prehistoric, others moving far ahead etc. Really? No other car company (maybe with the exception of Tesla) has anything remotely comparable and the vehicle linkage (changing regencies, drive modes etc) is industry leading. Of course this is. It the of final state and it will continue to improve. Glad they released it so it can benefit most people and then improve.

I have never had to spell out words or some of the other issues you mention. Maybe I was lucky or you were unlucky.

 

[Noplacelikeloam]

This seems very exaggerated criticism. Prehistoric, others moving far ahead etc. Really? No other car company (maybe with the exception of Tesla) has anything remotely comparable and the vehicle linkage (changing regencies, drive modes etc) is industry leading. Of course this is. It the of final state and it will continue to improve. Glad they released it so it can benefit most people and then improve.

I have never had to spell out words or some of the other issues you mention. Maybe I was lucky or you were unlucky.

I actually agree RA is ahead of most OEM systems — especially with vehicle integration. That part is genuinely impressive.

My point is just that the benchmark has changed. Rivian markets itself as a software-first company, so people naturally compare RA to modern AI systems, not legacy car voice assistants.

And under that comparison, issues like latency, weak conversational memory, inconsistent dictation, poor multi-speaker handling, and random offline behavior stand out pretty quickly.

I’m still glad they shipped it. It just feels more like an early conversational layer than a mature AI assistant right now.

Also, I envy the fact you’ve never had to spell words out loud to it

 

[tate16t]

I still asked a question whether RA is intended to compete with other modern web-based AI tools?

I haven’t used Grok yet, but I’m told that it excels at answering questions about breaking news, trending topics, or real-time web events. Is that due to the X platform integration? I wonder if Grok would provide you the answer to whether or not a store was open or not?

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