Reminder: Rivian Promised Level 3 "Eyes Off the Road" Autonomy on Gen 1

[pointless]

I own both a Gen 1 R1T and a 2020 Model Y (AP +occasional (S)FSD free trials).
Both vehicles are great.

Rivian’s current lane hunting, and poor visualizations feel about 2 years behind Tesla AP.

I’ve driven the MY long enough to recognize some of the exact same growing pains AP went through that I’m now seeing again with Rivian Driver Assist.

Unfortunately, R1T is surprisingly exceptionally bad on SoCal freeways. 405 in OC near Irvine especially. Don’t tons of Rivian employees drive that route??

Also very surprised Rivians CA vehicles with HOV stickers are clueless about HOV lane navigation. It is as if HOV lanes do. It exist. Very odd omission

Hoping Rivian can greatly reduce disengagements due to missing road info for 1/2 miles stretches. Glad the toll road disengagements have been greatly reduced.
Rivian tends to aggressively pull to the left toward the center median while in the carpool lane - very dangerous. Looking forward to that getting resolved.

R1T is a crazy versatile vehicle - family car, daily driver, off road beast, great towing experience, 0-60 ~3 seconds!

Hate to admit it but 2020 MY is a very good vehicle as well, somewhat bumpier and boomier than I like but love how it handles.
Worst attribute: white supremacist
CEO.

Just my experience. Please don’t debate my post. Internet forum arguments = yawn.

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[pamalabama]

Considering tesla autopilot is basically a software from 2017 being 2 years behind would be 2019

 

[Ngkgb]

I own both a Gen 1 R1T and a 2020 Model Y (AP +occasional (S)FSD free trials).
Both vehicles are great.

Rivian’s current lane hunting, and poor visualizations feel about 2 years behind Tesla AP.

I’ve driven the MY long enough to recognize some of the exact same growing pains AP went through that I’m now seeing again with Rivian Driver Assist.

Unfortunately, R1T is surprisingly exceptionally bad on SoCal freeways. 405 in OC near Irvine especially. Don’t tons of Rivian employees drive that route??

Also very surprised Rivians CA vehicles with HOV stickers are clueless about HOV lane navigation. It is as if HOV lanes do. It exist. Very odd omission

Hoping Rivian can greatly reduce disengagements due to missing road info for 1/2 miles stretches. Glad the toll road disengagements have been greatly reduced.
Rivian tends to aggressively pull to the left toward the center median while in the carpool lane - very dangerous. Looking forward to that getting resolved.

R1T is a crazy versatile vehicle - family car, daily driver, off road beast, great towing experience, 0-60 ~3 seconds!

Hate to admit it but 2020 MY is a very good vehicle as well, somewhat bumpier and boomier than I like but love how it handles.
Worst attribute: white supremacist
CEO.

Just my experience. Please don’t debate my post. Internet forum arguments = yawn.

I live in Irvine and agree with most of what you’re saying especially the truck trying to kill you in HOV lanes. I never use Driver+ in HOV lanes in SoCal. I always feel like it’s going to run into the median.

 

[JM.]

Considering tesla autopilot is basically a software from 2017 being 2 years behind would be 2019

It's really not. AP took a massive leap from 2018 to 2019, then many good increments, and I hear there was another jump with a hardware change recently but have not experienced. My friend's 2018 is pretty limited compared to my 2019 model. Mine is nearly always hands off, his feels a little drunk at times.

 

[RWerksman]

It's really not. AP took a massive leap from 2018 to 2019, then many good increments, and I hear there was another jump with a hardware change recently but have not experienced. My friend's 2018 is pretty limited compared to my 2019 model. Mine is nearly always hands off, his feels a little drunk at times.

I still contend that the Gen 1 ADAS system is actually worse than AP1 Autopilot* from circa 2015 because of one key reason - Mapped Highway Gating.

Both AP1 and Gen 1 ADAS are MobilEye products and both have very similar capabilities on paper and behavior on the road. Tesla however allows lane keeping absolutely everywhere and never threw an 'unavailable' error due to sketchy mapping.

Hands-on lane keeping should be available everywhere. Hands-free lane keeping should be highway only.


* - I used it extensively in the 2016 Model S that I sold for my first R1T

 

[JM.]

I didn't mean to disagree that the Rivian ADAS is bad, that seems to be almost universally agreed. I was just stating that Tesla AP improved a lot over time. It's really not 2017 software.

 

[Milermore]

I occasionally use the driver assist on gen1 Rivian, but it can be dangerous. I have to keep attention on driving the same as normal.
once it tried to swerve into the barrier between lanes because of old marks on the road, and it often hugs the side of the lane when driving freeway next to semis. I have to keep nudging it over and usually end up taking it out of driver + at that point. Plus it doesn’t anticipate upcoming events that we see as humans - but that’s a problem with all adas.
so I just use it as a kind of enhanced cruise control and do not expect anything more.

 

[JM.]

but that’s a problem with all adas.

Actually not true. OpenPilot for example uses a telephoto camera to judge upcoming events. And Tesla AP used to use RADAR for that.

 

[KW_88_SS]

I've said it before, this is something Rivian needs to get ahead of. This will be an easy litigation, one that Rivian will lose. Well they would quickly settle out of court or try to.

Promises were made. Those promises may have enticed people to buy their product. All it takes is one and it will quickly turn into a class action lawsuit.

Seems to have already been started by a group of owners.

I got a call 2 weeks ago from some office out in California. I haven't called back but when I tried to work directly with Rivian almost a year ago they told me to pack sand. I truthfully could care less about the "fsd" or whatever the technical spec is but I also don't love the idea of taking a depreciation hit when my truck won't have the features people may want.

Slippery slope.

 

[LeeD804]

Hi, Friends -

I've been pretty active on this topic on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook, but wanted to get involved here, too.

Let's agree on some facts regarding promises:
1) Rivian promised hands-free driving as part of the G1 roll-out. This can be verified in interviews with RJ, screenshots from the website, saved conversations with guides, etc.
2) Rivian promised a 'class leading' sensor and compute suite that would allow many years of upgrades, specifically including Driver+/
3) Rivian promised that Driver+ would become available on more and more roads as they became mapped.
4) When G2 was released, they were quite emphatic that substantial development would continue on the G1 platform, including Driver+. I feel like they said "If G1 can do it, it will do it" or something similar.

So let's therefore agree on where we are today:
1) Hands-free driving goal is abandoned on the G1 platform.
2) Far from being class-leading, the G1 ADAS falls well short of it's competitors. Indeed, a 2018 Nissan Leaf can keep lanes on any road, mapped or not.
3) Highway mapping remains incomplete and spotty; no new road types (such as rural divided highways) have been added.
4) Driver+ development on the G1 platform appears, from the outside, to have been stopped entirely

I want to level set, a bit: I do think a G2 product should be better than the G1 product, and I do understand that we signed away our rights to any promises. I get it.

But here's where they lose me: I do not believe the G1 system has been maximized. They moved on to a new architecture - as one would certainly eventually expect - but I believe they have prematurely wrapped up feature development on the G1 ADAS, falling far short of the promised capabilities and almost certainly falling short of the potential capabilities.

I don't think I'm interested in joining any kind of class action thing; I'm invested in the financial future of this company. I do think we should join together on a PR pressure campaign - open letters, blog posts, enlisting the support of the big Youtube/Blogger folks, etc. I think we need to present a unified front.

I don't think we're going to get a hardware retrofit kit to a G2 computer. I don't think we're going to get a magical trade in to a new vehicle. But I do think we, as a group, should insist on the following:

1) A comprehensive understanding of the G1 platform limitations. Some are technical, some are financial, and some are strategic. I think they should be honest with us about those decisions.

2) A continued effort to maximize the capabilities of the G1 ADAS system, including driving model improvements, continuing to improve the interstate mapping, and adding as many road types as the system is technically capable of handling.

3) If for any reason (technical, financial, or strategic) G1 ADAS development is simply dead, I propose that Rivian form an active partnership with Comma with the specific purpose of working to deliver on the promises made to G1 customers. This could take all kinds of forms, in no particular order:
- Porting OpenPilot to run natively on the vehicle
- Creating an API allowing OpenPilot to access additional sensors and controls, such as blind spot sensors and full-torque steering
- Providing some kind of program whereby G1 customers can receive a discount on Comma hardware, or whereby purchasing a Comma through Rivian would fund a staff position to facilitate the integration

For me, it really boils down to this: We were lead to believe we were purchasing a car that would be as future-proof as possible. With that understanding, we accepted that the ADAS was not competitive with other vehicles on the market at the time of purchase - they literally told us that it would be - sooner than later.

Instead of doggedly pursuing that goal, they moved on to their next architecture and left us with a Driver+ system that - far from being the most capable - is significantly less capable than other systems that are several years older.

I think that's a problem they should work to rectify to the best of their reasonable ability, and I don't think we've seen that from Rivian so far.

So, the next steps as I see it are:

1) Gather in to one spot the evidence of the promises they made. YouTube links, screenshots, etc.
2) Gather in to one spot the list of owners who would like to put forward this request as a unified front.
3) Agree, as best we can, on what exactly we're asking.

I've outlined my thoughts above; I'd be interested to hear yours.

 

[NY_Rob]

^ at least Rivian is still in business.. you could have bought a Fisker, then you would have no one to sue

Rivian is just keeping it's head above water as is, expending lots of cash on devs and hardware upgrades on Gen 1 vehicles could put a huge burden on them with no upside (as far as added income is concerned).

 

[risingphoenix]

Just get a comma 3x and enjoy the equivalent of Tesla AutoPilot (or better). No, it's not FSD but it's miles above where Driver+ is and is a pretty minimal $1100 investment for a $100K vehicle. Seems like a much better mental health solution than complaining on an Internet forum and/or joining a class action lawsuit.

 

[pamalabama]

Just get a comma 3x and enjoy the equivalent of Tesla AutoPilot (or better). No, it's not FSD but it's miles above where Driver+ is and is a pretty minimal $1100 investment for a $100K vehicle. Seems like a much better mental health solution than complaining on an Internet forum and/or joining a class action lawsuit.

not the equivalent of autopilot. Comma 3x does not take steep curves and it looks like there are limitations with the steering control

It's worth mentioning that most cars could not be upgraded to ever have city streets driving because the steering control is a limiting factor. You would have to replace the control module in the steering column to allow faster steering.

 

[risingphoenix]

not the equivalent of autopilot. Comma 3x does not take steep curves and it looks like there are limitations with the steering control

It's worth mentioning that most cars could not be upgraded to ever have city streets driving because the steering control is a limiting factor. You would have to replace the control module in the steering column to allow faster steering.

Your opinion. It is the equivalent of autopilot in my 2018 Model 3 (which also has FSD).

 

[KW_88_SS]

expending lots of cash on devs and hardware upgrades on Gen 1 vehicles could put a huge burden on them with no upside (as far as added income is concerned).

I don't disagree with you, but this is pretty cut and dry as far as precedent and, the law is concerned. Rivian did what they did, and have made absolutely 0 efforts to make it right with existing customers.

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