Rivian Autonomy & AI Day! Lidar, Hands-Free Driving, Rivian Assistant & more announced

[Revelation]

Holding RIVN stock is like riding a roller coaster. Lots of high expectations, ups / downs and queezy moments. I have managed to breakeven buying and selling the up / downs and I don't mind continuing to take small profits on these daily moves, but R2, in whatever form, can't get to market soon enough.

You have to convince Jim Cramer that the stock is worthless so he can advertise it as such, then watch the stock go to the moon.

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[Hereforthesnacks]

“Gen 3 Autonomy hardware including ACM3 and LiDAR is currently undergoing validation and we expect it to ship on R2 models starting at the end of 2026.”

so a reason not to buy an R2 early on? That could be really bad for the unveiling where strong sales are needed most

I wouldn’t touch an R2 without Gen3 autonomy.

 

[AZanella]

Gen 2 obsolete.

 

[Rividiculous]

Its just the beginning of the end for G2 cars Like G1, it starts slow...

Its just the beginning of the end for G2 cars Like G1, it starts slow...

Personally, I prefer to think of it as the end of the beginning.

Hey, I love my Gen2 and I’ll be keeping it for a while. There’s only so much Rivian can do with the rapidly advancing hardware/software conundrum. Maybe we Gen 1 and Gen 2 owners will see some good improvements , maybe not. But this seems like good progress. Rivian has an opportunity to eat Tesla’s automotive lunch while Tesla focuses on robots and seeing how much they can pay Elmo. As for me, I just wonder what my Gen5 R3 is going to be like.

 

[Rividiculous]

Agree, but it will be a valuable asset in the VW acquisition.

Absolutely. If I were allowed to trade, I’d be snapping up Rivian shares before legacy automakers start trying to take it over. VW should pounce.

 

[Hereforthesnacks]

Nowhere in that does it say R2 is launching 1st half of 2026 (Autonomy plus is though). Still bad news either way. They basically knee-capped their R2 sales until the next gen is out, or it's delayed. Neither is good for stockholders.

Folks still think this guy is a good CEO?

 

[Katsudon]

Some Rivian Assistant demo videos from from today's media event:

 

[RivianRiverRat]

Since everyone else is - I will too
YMMV and YOWV
Wifey and I will gladly take what we reserved way back in that March
Ready for that RIVIAN R2 SUV EV

 

[Budman]

Who will want the early R2's without LIDAR???

Me.

Don't give a flying fig about self driving. The sales pitch articulated today is I will get my time back to "be on my phone or read a book". I already spend too much time on my phone and I have audio books. Autonomy turns me from an active and happy driver of a performance vehicle into bored passenger to a computer. Hard pass.

 

[mkg3]

You get the same rapid upgrades in tech for ICE cars. Any new, high tech car, ICE or EV, is obsolete in 5 years (or at least will stop getting meaningful updates). This is not an EV specific problem.

Agree, it's not EV only - it's just more prominent for EVs.

Much of the EV's selling points are electric features embedded into the vehicles. At least for ICE, there are mechanical features that sells some of the vehicles, especially sports cars and sports sedans/CUVs like twin-turbo, DCT, V6, V8, V12 and combination of electric motor and ICE for total performance. These features are not firmware dependent and mature technologies that isn't going to be obsoleted in few years.

My original post probably over generalized it - should have been more explicit in what will be obsoleted within 5 yrs such as energy density of battery cells (hence the range and the vehicle weight), and ADAS so dependent on the latest onboard computer and HW set.

 

[mkg3]

Who will want the early R2's without LIDAR???

Me.

Don't give a flying fig about self driving. The sales pitch articulated today is I will get my time back to "be on my phone or read a book". I already spend too much time on my phone and I have audio books. Autonomy turns me from an active and happy driver of a performance vehicle into bored passenger to a computer. Hard pass.

I believe ALL R2's from the start will be equipped with LiDAR. Makes so much more manufacturing sense to do so. It just won't be turned on until the SW is ready and regulatory compliance has been met.

 

[TexasBob]

Did you see what they demoed? They are using end to end neural networks and it drives like FSD v10

And FSD v10 was done on a computer with 8gb of memory and 72TOPS without the use of end to end neural networks

Rivian is at least 3 years or more (at this rate) from delivering anything approaching FSD v14.

They could cheat some performance increase over FSD by fixing the maps for the entire U.S., but it would only obscure how close they are to self driving. this would be at least 4years away if it ever happened.

FSD v10 was a hybrid stack (NN perception + C++ heuristic control) running on HW3. It hit a ceiling because you can't hand-code the planning rules for L4.
Three reasons why your '3 years behind' math is off:
1. The Compute Floor: You can run a 'good enough' L2 demo on 72 TOPS. You cannot run a redundant, safety-critical L4 system on that. Rivian is deploying Thor-class compute (1,600 TOPS) in 2026. Tesla is stuck on HW4 (~300-500 TOPS) until AI5 arrives in 2027. Rivian has the hardware headroom today that Tesla is waiting two years for.
2. Model Architecture: Rivian isn't using 'End-to-End' in the sense of 'Imitation Learning' (Monkey See, Monkey Do). They are using World Models (predicting physics/future states). This is the architecture Waymo uses, and it requires massive compute. It looks like v10 now because it’s a baby, but it scales linearly with compute—unlike heuristics which plateau.
3. Maps aren't Cheating, they are Safety: Calling maps 'cheating' is 2019 thinking. Using priors (maps) + real-time perception is how you get to 99.999% reliability. Trying to derive the speed limit from pixel analysis every single frame is an unnecessary compute tax.
Rivian’s demo wasn’t about 'Look how smooth it is today.' It was about 'Look at the massive silicon and architecture we built to solve the edge cases that stalled Tesla for the last 5 years.

 

[ATLRivvy]

I don’t know how anyone is seeing this announcement as anything other than a muddled mess of a strategic train wreck for Rivian (the company). Vertical tech integration by a company struggling with reliably getting baseline car features working. The way I read it:

1) Rivian just effectively announced they are giving up plans of being cash-flow positive / profitable in the foreseeable future - that ain’t happening with custom built silicon and autonomy platform

2) They are diluting their brand messaging at hyperspeed - being all in on driverless pods isn’t exactly super compelling for adventure buyers. Tradeoffs of the “adventure” tuned suspension will limit inroads in the $80K+ luxury SUV market. Not sure who they are selling to.

3) Product positioning of R1S Gen 2 vs R2 Gen 1 vs R2 Gen 2 make absolutely no sense - who is going to pay for a R2 Gen 1 platform that is effectively end of life literally at launch? Why have your $100K+ halo 3-row SUV basically on an EoL autonomy platform 18 months after a Gen 2 refresh

4) You would have to be out of your mind to buy into Rivian having a hope of L4 autonomy within 3 years of R2 release (2029, a typical lease length). They haven’t even caught up to where good L2 systems were in 2022 yet.

 

[COdogman]

Did you see what they demoed? They are using end to end neural networks and it drives like FSD v10

And FSD v10 was done on a computer with 8gb of memory and 72TOPS without the use of end to end neural networks

Rivian is at least 3 years or more (at this rate) from delivering anything approaching FSD v14.

They could cheat some performance increase over FSD by fixing the maps for the entire U.S., but it would only obscure how close they are to self driving. this would be at least 4years away if it ever happened.

Delusional, wishful thinking pamalabama
jabanks32
sunydrm

 

[mkg3]

I don’t know how anyone is seeing this announcement as anything other than a muddled mess of a strategic train wreck for Rivian (the company). Vertical tech integration by a company struggling with reliably getting baseline car features working. The way I read it:

1) Rivian just effectively announced they are giving up plans of being cash-flow positive / profitable in the foreseeable future - that ain’t happening with custom built silicon and autonomy platform

2) They are diluting their brand messaging at hyperspeed - being all in on driverless pods isn’t exactly super compelling for adventure buyers. Tradeoffs of the “adventure” tuned suspension will limit inroads in the $80K+ luxury SUV market. Not sure who they are selling to.

3) Product positioning of R1S Gen 2 vs R2 Gen 1 vs R2 Gen 2 make absolutely no sense - who is going to pay for a R2 Gen 1 platform that is effectively end of life literally at launch? Why have your $100K+ halo 3-row SUV basically on an EoL autonomy platform 18 months after a Gen 2 refresh

4) You would have to be out of your mind to buy into Rivian having a hope of L4 autonomy within 3 years of R2 release (2029, a typical lease length). They haven’t even caught up to where good L2 systems were in 2022 yet.

Maybe bit of confusion here.

Rivian's language for R2 was consistent that it is the gen 3 platform. They talked about R1's being the first two generations. There was no mention of gen 1 and 2 R2 platform at the meeting today.

As for all other points, you do have some valid points. The one you didn't say but probably. already know is that Rivian gave RJ pay package tied to the stock price with big pay day. They knew about the AI work and are trying to catch the wave so that $RIVN price will get off the floor and be priced like an AI company valuation. You might call it as a Tesla path for lack of another auto company pivoting to an AI robotics company.

The whole thing today was intended to boost share price but had just the opposite effect today - maybe over the next week, it will turn around.

RJ was asked on CNBC about the share price drop directly and he gave a standard corporate long term vision response that didn't answer the question.

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