$2500 Autonomy+ one time purchase now an option on Rivian configurator

[Eury]

Having something to help with the boring stuff is nice. I drive about 30k a year and a lot of it is the 150mi round trip to work. 60 is highway the rest is Boston traffic. Then the long slog across the country with family a few times a year. It’s great to have for those times. When I’m just doing things around town and locally I drive manually.

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[Ralph]

This is one of the things that baffles me. They build a vehicle that is engaging to drive, then say “hey, pay us to not drive it”. I get that for road trips hwy autonomy can be good, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Maybe they are thinking that there are both types (and more) of people that are potential customers?

 

[FreddyFugazi]

It is not a dumb question.

I don't work for Rivian so of course I don't know the real answer. But I seriously doubt they will remove face monitoring for hands free driving. I think you will get the same thing you get when you turn off face monitoring. Which is what? Standard adaptive cruise, I think. Not hands free.

Someone should turn off the face nanny and see what it actually does. I have not tried it since they rolled out the last update. Probably it uses the steering wheel sensor to make sure you are holding on.

BTW - I am with everyone else who is balking at $50 per month. I will pay that for point-to-point hands free, like Tesla FSD. Not the somewhat crappy hands free thing I have now. I will just go back to adaptive cruise until they come out with point-to-point hands free.

I took a six hour drive when this first rolled out and the camera monitor faulted after the first charging stop so I have accidentally tested this. After the camera fault the truck gave me absolutely no cruise control functionality. I stopped and manually disabled the camera opt-in thinking this would revert back to the hands-on autonomy, but it did not. I was stuck without any cruise control for about half of a six hour drive. Eventually toggling the camera monitor on/off a few times mixed with soft resets cleared the fault.

I can't imagine this is intended, but I could not figure out how to use hands-on autonomy in December. I expect to be able to revert back to the hands-on option for free after this trial period ends and will absolutely not be paying for UHF. I'm pretty annoyed they are taking away automatic lane changing from the free offering, but I will live.

 

[ATLRivvy]

I'm not upset about paying for a good product. The product they're trying to sell here is basically a beta. I wouldn't pay anything for it. They should wait until it's more refined to start charging. Does it not slow down their development to have less folk using it and therefore less data to improve it?

THIS. I'm not sure why everyone isn't screaming this point from the rooftops. The current product isnt that much different than what was in the market in 2023. AND they have already announced that current hardware will reach end of life before true point-to-point autonomy.

If you pay $2,500 for this you are basically making a charitable donation to fund Rivian's R&D so they can sell you a new car and make you pay for it all over agin if you actually want autonomy.

 

[NY_Rob]

...The product they're trying to sell here is basically a beta. I wouldn't pay anything for it. They should wait until it's more refined to start charging.

Hmmm, I wonder who they learned this trick from ????

 

[hammick]

That would be a dream, but I couldn’t keep my free charging from referral points with my new trade-in—they said it isn’t transferable.. let alone this ...

seems like they have inconsistent stories on the free charging. When we were considering adding an R1 T to complement our R1 S they said I could call and have the free charging move back-and-forth between the vehicles depending on which one we would take on a road trip sounds like sales was telling me what I wanted to hear.

 

[Ralph]

Is it possible that Rivian will release an update to Autonomy immediately prior to beginning the sale of the subscription? A release that would demonstrate a markedly better experience?

It's hard to imagine they believe they will have a lot of subscription uptake for what people currently have.

I currently have a 1st Gen R1T, so have already been effectively abandoned with respect to the expectations they set for autonomy. And although I got what I paid for as a total package, and in many ways more with various software updates, this is only true because I was an early adopter and Rivian has updated many other aspects of the vehicle over time.

The purchase of autonomy would be for me an entirely different decision. I'd caution people not to pay in advance for something you have not experienced/tested. Hopefully they have something "soon".

That's how I will approach it for R2/R3. Or a fully updated R1T (R2T?).

 

[Marchin_MTB]

Maybe they are thinking that there are both types (and more) of people that are potential customers?

Never said there aren’t. There is for sure some sort of market for this. And it has that “hey look ma, no hands!” Cool factor to it. I would just personally prefer that the system gets better at monitoring for my mistakes, rather than the other way around.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Is it possible that Rivian will release an update to Autonomy immediately prior to beginning the sale of the subscription? A release that would demonstrate a markedly better experience?

It's hard to imagine they believe they will have a lot of subscription uptake for what people currently have.

Id say an update right before charging goes into effect is an almost certainty but I question the strategy of charging without developing value first. I’d say most people will agree that at 50 dollars a month the value isn’t there for the current offering.

Say the update comes a week before everyone’s “trial” runs out. Will that act as a teaser to get people to subscribe, or will it be a case of too little too late? For me 50 a month is point to point driving money. I get it, set a destination and it goes there with minimal involvement from me. Current software seems miles away from this.

I get that Tesla charges 99 a month but I wouldn’t pay that, even for point to point. I’d buy a comma because you’d have it paid off in less than a year at that rate.

 

[hammick]

Sounds like I’m an outlier here, but I’ll probably pay the $2500 since it stays with the vehicle. Will make our R1 a little easier to sell hopefully 10 years down the road. Not sure I would buy it if I didn’t have enough gear shop points. The wording of the email I received makes it pretty clear that gear shop points cannot be used for the monthly payment but can be used for the full 2.5k

if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to check out the AI day video showing what’s coming with point to point city self driving. That should be coming at some point to G2. I would assume in the next update. It looked impressive.

 

[jrproli]

I'd pay about $15 a month to keep what we have now. Beyond that, with how much I still have to monitor it, I won't be purchasing.

I agree. it's pretty annoying to have to monitor it every 30s...

 

[mkhuffman]

AND they have already announced that current hardware will reach end of life before true point-to-point autonomy.

It depends on your definition of "true point-to-point autonomy".

LiDAR will allow Rivian to offer L4, driverless autonomy. The current camera setup will allow supervised L3 point-to-point autonomy, on par with Tesla FSD. That level of functionality is worth the subscription price to me.

 

[NY_Rob]

Is it possible that Rivian will release an update to Autonomy immediately prior to beginning the sale of the subscription? A release that would demonstrate a markedly better experience?

It's hard to imagine they believe they will have a lot of subscription uptake for what people currently have.

Hopefully they have some sort of "significant" feature upgrade planned?

On the other hand... I've been a member here for 4 full years now and every single time any new feature is simply mentioned or imagined by a forum member, not by Rivian, at least one person 100% of the time states "I'd pay extra for that!", so now's their big chance to pay extra

 

[ATLRivvy]

It depends on your definition of "true point-to-point autonomy".

LiDAR will allow Rivian to offer L4, driverless autonomy. The current camera setup will allow supervised L3 point-to-point autonomy, on par with Tesla FSD. That level of functionality is worth the subscription price to me.

Sure maybe that’s worth it if it actually performs. But we know the take rate for FSD on Tesla is only like 15% across all models though and I seriously doubt Rivian is getting close to FSD performance before 2027. I seriously doubt they will get there before 2028 even based on the current system performance.

So you take the chance of paying for years of under delivery if you buy now. Feels like getting scammed to me but it’s not my money

 

[Thedude]

Sounds like I’m an outlier here, but I’ll probably pay the $2500 since it stays with the vehicle. Will make our R1 a little easier to sell hopefully 10 years down the road. Not sure I would buy it if I didn’t have enough gear shop points. The wording of the email I received makes it pretty clear that gear shop points cannot be used for the monthly payment but can be used for the full 2.5k

if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to check out the AI day video showing what’s coming with point to point city self driving. That should be coming at some point to G2. I would assume in the next update. It looked impressive.

I don’t think you’ll see any benefit on resale in ten years. That’s like saying you’re going to buy the computer with dual 3.5” drives in 1990 so that people will want to buy it later.

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