R2 buyers - will you wait for gen 3 hardware (including LiDAR)?

[Gen(R3)Xer]

They cannot charge what Tesla charges. Rivian's autonomy system is far behind Tesla. I am totally expecting Rivian to increase the price when they reach parity with Tesla, and especially when they are better than Tesla. If they ever are.

Makes sense. They have to be competitive first. Some are saying that there current setup is like FSD ver. 12, so maybe in 2-3 years they’ll have something similar to ver. 14, but where will Tesla be at that point, L3, L4?

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[Gen(R3)Xer]

let’s be fair, it’s not obsolete. It’s obsolete when we chose a different mode of transport altogether!
Remember its still a car. It’ll still do car stuff. It’ll still have the current level of driver safety cruise control stuff. If you don’t need a car to drive for you, why wait?

It’s like an escalator. When it breaks you can still climb the stairs yourself.

I used FSD once before and I noticed my parking abilities started to deteriorate. I quickly turned it off and used the cameras and sensors myself. It wasn’t that difficult.

 

[TLDR_71]

The results of the poll seem to be the inverse of “enthusiast” versus “normal” Rivian owners.

 

[TexasBob]

Makes sense. They have to be competitive first. Some are saying that there current setup is like FSD ver. 12, so maybe in 2-3 years they’ll have something similar to ver. 14, but where will Tesla be at that point, L3, L4?

Can I lobby for a "that's not how this works" moment? These systems are like comparing a llama, a dirt bike, and a four-wheel drive truck climbing a steep off-road trail. You may have the world's finest trained llama and it can do impressive things, but it is in a different category than the dirt bike. Even if the bike rider is inexperienced, the day will come when the llama cannot keep up because it is a freaking llama.

Tesla FSD11 was a technical cul de sac and it got thrown away in favor of end-to-end Neural Nets. FSD12 moved to end-to-end neural nets with a reactive architecture (Rivian confirmed that Autonomy+ works in a similar fashion). FSD14 has the same NN design but an increasingly important reasoning layer.

The Gen 3 Rivian architecture is pivoting to a Waymo Gen 6 type design (multi-modal world model) which Tesla FSD 15 (may not be called that) is also headed toward. Tesla will subordinate the reactive NN as the primary controlling element. Rivian Gen 3 will have compute hardware similar to Tesla's AI5 chipset.

It is not super insightful to compare Rivian's Gen 3 approach to the Tesla approach, but instead to talk about it in comparison to Waymo or Baidu or various systems based on the NVIDIA Thor system.

 

[HeyEllwood]

I think it’s still wild that our Gen1 cameras are worse than an almost 10 year old Tesla Model 3. Always makes me sad when I hop in our Model Y and see the cameras…

Who let that pass in the final production?

To answer your question. I’d rather wait for Lidar.

 

[Dark-Fx]

The results of the poll seem to be the inverse of “enthusiast” versus “normal” Rivian owners.

I would have liked to see it broken out into current owners vs non-owners. I suppose someone could do that manually, but ain't nobody got time for that.

 

[jskyler]

As someone who felt burned by being a Gen 1 R1S owner let down by terrible driving dynamics, scary lane keeping, poor build quality, and general persistent small issues that would not be fixed, my reservation for an R2 will wait until they get the Lidar in place. Will it be better? Who knows. But Rivian has definitely taught me not to be an early adopter. If I get an R2 it will be after several test drives and watching carefully how the rollout goes.

 

[BigSkies]

I didn't vote for the simple reason that I'm not in the market for a car in the next year.

If I were, the whole Lidar autonomy thing wouldn't factor into my decisions. I'm happy if I have quality adaptive cruise control. I'll use anything else provided, but I don't care enough about all this autonomy silliness to make it a factor in my purchase. I certainly won't pay for a subscription to anything.

However, I would wait for QA & production ramp woes to be worked out before making a purchase. I do care about this. My Gen 1 Rivian early adopter issues were real, but relatively minor. I've just had early-adopter issues with other products recently, and I'm over it.

Making a purchase decision today about whether Tesla or Rivian will be better in 3 years is also silly. They'll both progress on their own path that we're all just guessing at. Both companies are effectively hiring from the same small talent pool (and each other) that it's a fair bet the systems will look relatively similar three years from now. I'm sure we'll still be having internet arguments about tiny detail differences, but they will be tiny details.

 

[JasonK]

I do not think the high number of people holding off for Gen 3 is a bad thing. This will allow Rivian to slowly ramp up production to make sure things are working smoothly and quality is up before going full tilt in 2027. This will also save the compony money as the battery cells they use before the LG factory goes online at the end of the year will be imported and cost more. I think they may be trying to limit that extra cost. Plus the Gen3 is a great excuse to raise the price, (I hope not too much).

 

[tivoboy]

I’m not sure why nobody thinks that an upgrade to “gen 3 hardware” is possible.. the whole autonomy day details seemed to indicate that the entire architecture of R2, was forward thinking with an I/O system that can handle future upgrades, for processors/CPU/GPU and even possibly cameras.. although Id add that I doubt they are going to put cameras in the new R2, that are going to require upgrades in the “gen 3” version of the compute? It might be that they just put the new lidar in all cars at launch or very shortly thereafter.. I really doubt they are going to release a product in Mar/April 2026, that is out of date/spec by Q4’26, or even 1 yr. Later.. has anything been published that says they won’t be able to upgrade the computer and that I/O/BUS would be different for Gen 3, and so the entire car would require and update or changes?

 

[sparked]

I’m not sure why nobody thinks that an upgrade to “gen 3 hardware” is possible.. the whole autonomy day details seemed to indicate that the entire architecture of R2, was forward thinking with an I/O system that can handle future upgrades, for processors/CPU/GPU and even possibly cameras.. although Id add that I doubt they are going to put cameras in the new R2, that are going to require upgrades in the “gen 3” version of the compute? It might be that they just put the new lidar in all cars at launch or very shortly thereafter.. I really doubt they are going to release a product in Mar/April 2026, that is out of date/spec by Q4’26, or even 1 yr. Later.. has anything been published that says they won’t be able to upgrade the computer and that I/O/BUS would be different for Gen 3, and so the entire car would require and update or changes?

Did you see the InsideEVs article that was pretty detailed about no upgrade path? It wasn't granular about the technical limitations, but it was pretty clear statement from Rivian that there is no upgrade path from them. Maybe it's technically possible, but Rivian isn't offering it.

The only consumer facing Gen3/Lidar benefit that Rivian has mentioned publicly is Personal Level 4 Autonomy and that software is likely far off anyways. So there doesn't seem to be an immediate need to upgrade. Also Rivian talks about R2 getting "an elevated version of the Gen 2 architecture". R2 is also getting the new cameras and dual mode radar at launch.

Here's the article. https://insideevs.com/news/782042/rivian-r2-wont-lidar-retrofit/

 

[dfx]

Did you see the InsideEVs article that was pretty detailed about no upgrade path? It wasn't granular about the technical limitations, but it was pretty clear statement from Rivian that there is no upgrade path from them. Maybe it's technically possible, but Rivian isn't offering it.

The only consumer facing Gen3/Lidar benefit that Rivian has mentioned publicly is Personal Level 4 Autonomy and that software is likely far off anyways. So there doesn't seem to be an immediate need to upgrade. Also Rivian talks about R2 getting "an elevated version of the Gen 2 architecture". R2 is also getting the new cameras and dual mode radar at launch.

Here's the article. https://insideevs.com/news/782042/rivian-r2-wont-lidar-retrofit/

 

[dfx]

Been driving R1S for 3 years and will not wait for LIDAR. My practical question that can't be answered yet, " How much will a replacement windshield cost on the R2 with LIDAR? "
It's a minor detail but it definitely factors into the cost of ownership

 

[mkhuffman]

Been driving R1S for 3 years and will not wait for LIDAR. My practical question that can't be answered yet, " How much will a replacement windshield cost on the R2 with LIDAR? "

$3.00

 

[dfx]

$3.00

I'd start an over/under on it at $3000

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