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

[jemkewl]

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.

Autonomous driving through the trails is what sells. Clearly.

My truck still hauls the family, groceries, 4x8 sheets plywood, mountain bikes, and @$$...dont understand how my truck is outdated.

If there was a quieter cabin, better UX, USB audio, improved range, larger battery, or something like that, maybe then I could understand.

After being in the recent jupiter model y with FSD, I find this Rivian event comical if this is where they want to take their focus. But I guess they need to have AI to make the news.

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[TexasBob]

I’d like to see the prompt that lead to this slop lol

Your inability to understand the output doesn’t make it slop. It just means you’re struggling with the concepts. Let me help you:
Rivian is adopting the same 'Winning Stack' (Multimodal World Models + Lidar + Thor-class Compute) that every actual leader in autonomous driving uses. That is true of Baidu, Waymo, and XPeng.
In certain Reality Distortion Fields, a company running 29 test vehicles with full-time babysittersin Austin (Tesla) is somehow considered 'ahead.' But in the real world of Cabbages and Kings, the company delivering 450,000 paid autonomous rides per week (Waymo) and the one delivering 250,000 paid rides per week (Baidu) are the actual leaders.
The company delivering zero autonomous rides in zero places and holding an accident rate higher than the autonomous leaders is behind.
Rivian is smart enough to mimic the real-world leaders, not the imaginary one.

 

[Budman]

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.

This is what is on the RivianTrackr site regarding initial R2 shipments and LIDAR

 

[mkg3]

This is what is on the RivianTrackr site regarding initial R2 shipments and LIDAR

Okay, I watched the whole thing today too and do not recall Rivian saying that the early R2 will ship without LiDAR. They definitely said the sensor will be a part of the self driving capabilities in late 2026.

Maybe my recollection is off and it's a 2027 model year addition. Just because it was posted on RivianTrackr doesn't mean truth either.

 

[Sgt Beavis]

 

[Taco Corp]

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

Beyond the text messaging, I haven't seen anything demonstrated with the AI Assistant that makes me think I would use it. They showed off some cool party tricks I guess, but on the whole there wasn't anything demonstrated that made me think "wow could use that".

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Alexa...

 

[captainjp]

None. Because FSD 14 needs to improve to have unsupervised

It got past the gimmick stage around FSD 12.5.6 and then 13.2.9 was ultra smooth.

Rivian might have more features than tesla had in a similar amount of time(like parking spot to parking spot) .

HW3 was around 120 TOPS and 8gb of memory. Rivian will have 1600 and much more memory

I do recall at some point this one saying that Rivian vehicles were not capable of autonomous driving. Some crap having to do with the steering wheel motors and not being able to turn 90 degrees.

 

[COdogman]

I do recall at some point this one saying that Rivian vehicles were not capable of autonomous driving. Some crap having to do with the steering wheel motors and not being able to turn 90 degrees.

Which one of his personalities said that?
@pamalabama
@jabanks32
@sunydrm?

 

[captainjp]

Which one of his personalities said that?
@pamalabama 👈🏻
@jabanks32
@sunydrm?

 

[spytap]

VERY disappointed that Rivian's reaction to the continual refrain of "I would buy this but it doesn't have CarPlay/android auto" is "what if we make you pay $15 a month to get the same functionality other vehicles have built in from the start?

I've been hot on the R3X, but this was a big splash of cold water to the face. Voice-texting is just basic functionality at this point, not an infinite money add-on.

 

[madhat]

This is what is on the RivianTrackr site regarding initial R2 shipments and LIDAR

That's not clear whether lidar function is added later or hardware.

 

[Hereforthesnacks]

Your inability to understand the output doesn’t make it slop. It just means you’re struggling with the concepts. Let me help you:
Rivian is adopting the same 'Winning Stack' (Multimodal World Models + Lidar + Thor-class Compute) that every actual leader in autonomous driving uses. That is true of Baidu, Waymo, and XPeng.
In certain Reality Distortion Fields, a company running 29 test vehicles with full-time babysittersin Austin (Tesla) is somehow considered 'ahead.' But in the real world of Cabbages and Kings, the company delivering 450,000 paid autonomous rides per week (Waymo) and the one delivering 250,000 paid rides per week (Baidu) are the actual leaders.
The company delivering zero autonomous rides in zero places and holding an accident rate higher than the autonomous leaders is behind.
Rivian is smart enough to mimic the real-world leaders, not the imaginary one.

This is classic AI slop: “Rivian has effectively positioned itself as the "Western Waymo"—a consumer brand that owns the full "Chip-to-Wheel" stack with the sensor robustness of a Robotaxi and the business model of a luxury automaker.”

 

[captainjp]

That's not clear whether lidar function is added later or hardware.

Agreed.

 

[ATLRivvy]

Agreed.

Here is the thing though - it doesn’t matter. Rivian is years behind the curve on the basics. They haven’t even yet reached the limits of the original MobileEye system, let alone their current Gen 2 platform. Sensor stack isn’t remotely a limitation in their foreseeable future.

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