Autonomy Platform for Gen 1 vehicles

[zefram47]

Exactly. Personally I'd be happy and have no complaints with the current state of things if they at least found a way to deliver on these existing promises for G1 owners

I sincerely hope they at least try to improve the phantom braking issues and the LKA constantly wanting to jump lanes when a lane split happens. For that matter, you'd think there would be no reason they couldn't also do lane nudging on HWA so you don't have to constantly disengage because someone is too close to the lane line and truck refuses to move over at all. There are some improvements that really need to come to the Gen 1 system. If they really wind up considering it abandon-ware after basically 2 years, that's disappointing...especially since they'd originally advertised the system as capable of hands-free driving which is obviously never going to come now.

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[Tango001]

Yeah I’m not really happy I waited and waited for an R1S max pack that finally came out and I took delivery in November and now many of the features I was expecting to come are being abandoned 6 months later. Not a great way to treat customers that are dropping $100k on your vehicles.

 

[Zoidz]

Nothing in that image shows it's infeasible to retrofit existing R1's to not be an upgrade dead end. It's lazyness and counter to the mission of sustainability and ecological responsibility. And if Rivian is abandoning those ideals give me my tank turn

The G2 removed miles of wire, dozens of connectors, control units, etc. and uses a new chip set. The G1 system architecture design and hardware is 4 to 6 year old tech. ADAS is suppled by an OEM as an integrated package. It's not technically feasible at a financially practical cost to retrofit ADAS, etc. If they would offer it, you would scream about the $30k price tag. Not enough people will want the upgrade to pay that kind of money for it.

To draw an analogy, would you expect:

- Apple to offer a retrofit of a new camera and audio chip set for a 4 year old MacBook?
- Samsung or Sony to offer a hardware upgrade to a 6 year old TV to improve its smart features?
- Hewlett Packard to offer a motherboard upgrade for a 4 year old Intel PC to an ARM motherboard to improve performance and power consumption?
- BMW to offer an ADAS hardware upgrade for a 2019 X3?

 

[LiamM]

The G2 removed miles of wire, dozens of connectors, control units, etc. and uses a new chip set. The G1 system architecture design and hardware is 4 to 6 year old tech. ADAS is suppled by an OEM as an integrated package. It's not technically feasible at a financially practical cost to retrofit ADAS, etc. If they would offer it, you would scream about the $30k price tag. Not enough people will want the upgrade to pay that kind of money for it.

To draw an analogy, would you expect:

- Apple to offer a retrofit of a new camera and audio chip set for a 4 year old MacBook?
- Samsung or Sony to offer a hardware upgrade to a 6 year old TV to improve its smart features?
- Hewlett Packard to offer a motherboard upgrade for a 4 year old Intel PC to an ARM motherboard to improve performance and power consumption?
- BMW to offer an ADAS hardware upgrade for a 2019 X3?

I understand that. Realistically I’m not looking for a full parity retrofit personally but there are features that are literally still promised on G1 on the website that they’re now saying are impossible they should offer some retrofit to get to that point. Your argument is based on today being the starting point they very much could have worked with the OEM to allow a retrofit of the ADAS system to make most features available for a reasonable price for G1 I’d gladly pay up to 15k for that. If you want to talk direct comparisons Tesla did this with their FSD system, twice in some cases. not all that cable and control unit reduction is directly related to the ADAS either. According to tear downs there was only 1 ADAS computer pre refresh to begin with. So working with the OEM it almost certainly would have been possible

 

[Mousetrap]

To me, the issue is how they billed it. I'm pretty sure they said a couple times, including in this post from over 2 years ago, a couple months before I bought my R1T, that the hardware was designed to have the headroom to support the improvements they deliver for 10 years:

The hardware in Rivian vehicles – everything from interior displays to the interconnected electronic control units that power everything from vehicle dynamics to battery management – were designed and built to deliver amazing experiences both today and in the future – to be ready for the innovation coming three, five, even 10 years down the road.

 

[CharonPDX]

It's seems the answer is a very big no. Multiple folks have reported that there are no additional Driver+ features headed for Gen 1 vehicles at this point. Auto lane changes, for instance, have been mentioned specically is not doable.

Which is sad, since it means many features that were listed as “coming soon” *WHEN I BOUGHT MY VEHICLE* likely aren’t coming at all. We still don‘t have anything that resembles “Trailer Assist”. Hands-free has gone the way of the dodo.

 

[Zoidz]

I understand that. Realistically I’m not looking for a full parity retrofit personally but there are features that are literally still promised on G1 on the website that they’re now saying are impossible they should offer some retrofit to get to that point. Your argument is based on today being the starting point they very much could have worked with the OEM to allow a retrofit of the ADAS system to make most features available for a reasonable price for G1 I’d gladly pay up to 15k for that. If you want to talk direct comparisons Tesla did this with their FSD system, twice in some cases. not all that cable and control unit reduction is directly related to the ADAS either. According to tear downs there was only 1 ADAS computer pre refresh to begin with. So working with the OEM it almost certainly would have been possible

I disagree that Tesla is a direct comparison. When Tesla started offering upgrades, they had 5 years of production behind them and 1 million vehicles that were potential upgrade candidates during a rapidly expanding market, and the architecture had not changed going forward so there were millions more units to build. Thats a Big economy of scale opportunity. Rivian has about 2.5 years and 100k vehicles produced, during an extremely difficult supply chain climate that is finally improved.

Could they have worked with their ADAS OEM to offer a plug in compatible upgrade, independent of the G2 architecture change? Perhaps, but I suspect the relatively limited market vs the cost of executing the upgrade wouldn’t make sense to a company losing money the way they are. I could be wrong, but I think less than 10% of current owners would upgrade. The upgrade rate might be 50% or more here on this forum. But we are not representative of the average buyer, lol. Cindy Soccer Mom with three kids in the back seat could probably care less about spending $15k to upgrade to get better cameras and a few more piloting features. I doubt I would spend $15k for it myself.

As a comparison, Mach E owners can’t even get progressive software updates at all, let alone dream of hardware updates. Rivian has been stellar in that regard.

 

[LiamM]

I disagree that Tesla is a direct comparison. When Tesla started offering upgrades, they had 5 years of production behind them and 1 million vehicles that were potential upgrade candidates during a rapidly expanding market, and the architecture had not changed going forward so there were millions more units to build. Thats a Big economy of scale opportunity. Rivian has about 2.5 years and 100k vehicles produced, during an extremely difficult supply chain climate that is finally improved.

Could they have worked with their ADAS OEM to offer a plug in compatible upgrade, independent of the G2 architecture change? Perhaps, but I suspect the relatively limited market vs the cost of executing the upgrade wouldn’t make sense to a company losing money the way they are. I could be wrong, but I think less than 10% of current owners would upgrade. The upgrade rate might be 50% or more here on this forum. But we are not representative of the average buyer, lol. Cindy Soccer Mom with three kids in the back seat could probably care less about spending $15k to upgrade to get better cameras and a few more piloting features. I doubt I would spend $15k for it myself.

As a comparison, Mach E owners can’t even get progressive software updates at all, let alone dream of hardware updates. Rivian has been stellar in that regard.

I disagree with your reasoning the fact that tesla had more years of production under their belt at the time may have had some benefits sure but it also mean far more vehicles they needed to upgrade and eat the labour and parts costs. And they did it for free so the economies of scale had to be far better than they would need to be for a paid upgrade. I'm not even suggesting Rivian do it for "free" like Tesla did I'm suggesting it should be a paid upgrade option. As well I dispute that there's a blocker so fundamentally different in the new system it prevents a reasonable retrofit. We've seen no evidence of that. Cameras and the ADAS computer is what we've been told at this point even with a few additional components there's really no fundamental reason it should be unreasonably difficult

 

[909phillyman]

To me, the issue is how they billed it. I'm pretty sure they said a couple times, including in this post from over 2 years ago, a couple months before I bought my R1T, that the hardware was designed to have the headroom to support the improvements they deliver for 10 years:

Great point! Indeed...they did tout the fact, in that Rivian article, that their platform had the bandwidth and capability to accommodate future feature set changes/upgrades for 3, 5 or 10years down the road. My R1S turns a year old in 3 days (after a 3 year wait), and will apparently be significantly outdated...and not upgradable to an large extent. If Rivian holds firm on such a large feature set NOT coming to Gen 1 R1's, then that is a disappointment...to say the very least.

 

[Zoidz]

I disagree with your reasoning the fact that tesla had more years of production under their belt at the time may have had some benefits sure but it also mean far more vehicles they needed to upgrade and eat the labour and parts costs. And they did it for free so the economies of scale had to be far better than they would need to be for a paid upgrade. I'm not even suggesting Rivian do it for "free" like Tesla did I'm suggesting it should be a paid upgrade option. As well I dispute that there's a blocker so fundamentally different in the new system it prevents a reasonable retrofit. We've seen no evidence of that. Cameras and the ADAS computer is what we've been told at this point even with a few additional components there's really no fundamental reason it should be unreasonably difficult

There is a HUUUUUUGE difference between the old and the new systems, that IS the blocker. It's a major shift that has taken place in automotive systems architecture. R1x Gen 1 is called Domain architecture. There is a separate network and controller for each "domain" - infotainment, ADAS, body control module, etc. etc. They use multiple gateway modules to convert between multiple communications buses. See the first picture at the bottom.

The Gen 2 Rivian uses an architecture that has become mature over the past 3 to 5 years, well after the Gen was designed. It is called "Zonal" architecture. There are many less controllers that do support multiple systems simultaneously and communicate on a high speed backbone. It reduces over a mile of wiring as Rivian has said. See the second picture at the bottom. Read this article. Google "Domain vs Zonal vehicle architecture". Vastly different. Rivian shut the factory down for a month to make the changes to the assembly line.

To illustrate the practical difference, the current ADAS has a set of wires for each and every camera, sensor, etc. all home running to the ADAS module. Then that ADAS connects to a gateway to pass data to the infotainment system which is on a different network. It in turn has individual wires running to each and every device that is part of the infotainment system. Now the infotainment system also needs to talk to the body control module. Another connection, and possibly another gateway to talk to another network.

In the Zonal architecture, the cameras, sensors, headlights, hood release, etc. etc. in the front left of the vehicle all connect to a front left zone controller. It communicates all of that data on the high speed backbone to the infotainment or any other device that needs the data. Faster communication, much less wiring, many fewer control modules.

So:
Camera only upgrade - How do you connect the new Zonal cameras to the old ADAS?
Camera and ADAS upgrade - How do you communicate from the new ADAS to the old Infotainment gateway, body control module, etc.?

The answer is you could but it's not financially viable and not technically practical. If you do this, you have yet another branch of software to develop and support.

In summary, the difference is huge between Gen 1 and Gen 2. It's not unlike the differences between landline phones vs. cell phones.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Camera and ADAS upgrade - How do you communicate from the new ADAS to the old Infotainment gateway, body control module, etc.?

ADAS and Infotainment computers share a cooling block, which looks like it was redesigned between generations as well, because the cooling port location moved.

 

[drstancpa]

They're still advertising features coming to Driver+ on the current (live) website, even though what they said today seems to conflict with that, and I think the deactivation & removal of the driver attention monitoring camera a while back made it pretty clear that hands free was never going to come to the existing Gen 1 hardware.

I'm still holding out a little bit of hope that they will add these (or the fear of litigation will lead them to offer a paid path to upgrade to compute / vision hardware like Tesla did with HW4), but only time will tell.

I’ve got a folder with a handful of screenshots from the website and official communications and notes of what I think can generously be called overcommitments and what a hungry lawyer would call fraud in the inducement. I can’t be the only person thinking that Rivian is risking a class-action, costly settlement, and some follow-up shareholder litigation for good measure. Love my R1T and have had a great experience with Rivian, but this pattern would currently prevent me from buying another. Very sad.

 

[LiamM]

There is a HUUUUUUGE difference between the old and the new systems, that IS the blocker. It's a major shift that has taken place in automotive systems architecture. R1x Gen 1 is called Domain architecture. There is a separate network and controller for each "domain" - infotainment, ADAS, body control module, etc. etc. They use multiple gateway modules to convert between multiple communications buses. See the first picture at the bottom.

The Gen 2 Rivian uses an architecture that has become mature over the past 3 to 5 years, well after the Gen was designed. It is called "Zonal" architecture. There are many less controllers that do support multiple systems simultaneously and communicate on a high speed backbone. It reduces over a mile of wiring as Rivian has said. See the second picture at the bottom. Read this article. Google "Domain vs Zonal vehicle architecture". Vastly different. Rivian shut the factory down for a month to make the changes to the assembly line.

To illustrate the practical difference, the current ADAS has a set of wires for each and every camera, sensor, etc. all home running to the ADAS module. Then that ADAS connects to a gateway to pass data to the infotainment system which is on a different network. It in turn has individual wires running to each and every device that is part of the infotainment system. Now the infotainment system also needs to talk to the body control module. Another connection, and possibly another gateway to talk to another network.

In the Zonal architecture, the cameras, sensors, headlights, hood release, etc. etc. in the front left of the vehicle all connect to a front left zone controller. It communicates all of that data on the high speed backbone to the infotainment or any other device that needs the data. Faster communication, much less wiring, many fewer control modules.

So:
Camera only upgrade - How do you connect the new Zonal cameras to the old ADAS?
Camera and ADAS upgrade - How do you communicate from the new ADAS to the old Infotainment gateway, body control module, etc.?

The answer is you could but it's not financially viable and not technically practical. If you do this, you have yet another branch of software to develop and support.

In summary, the difference is huge between Gen 1 and Gen 2. It's not unlike the differences between landline phones vs. cell phones.

you’re looking at it wrong. I understand those architecture changes. I’m not suggesting a retrofit changes the architecture from that perspective even in part it’s not necessary to.Upgraded Cameras and an upgraded ADAS computer could still function in the gen 1 architecture, the reverse is what would actually be impossible. The architecture change is not what is enabling the Gen2 ADAS functions and new processor it’s incidental to them. There are multiple other systems comparable to what Gen2 offers that are domain architecture systems still. And your analogy is not accurate it’s not like the difference between cellular and landline it would be more accurate to compare it to something like star topology vs mesh topology networks

 

[Zoidz]

you’re looking at it wrong. I understand those architecture changes. I’m not suggesting a retrofit changes the architecture from that perspective even in part it’s not necessary to.Upgraded Cameras and an upgraded ADAS computer could still function in the gen 1 architecture, the reverse is what would actually be impossible. The architecture change is not what is enabling the Gen2 ADAS functions and new processor it’s incidental to them. There are multiple other systems comparable to what Gen2 offers that are domain architecture systems still. And your analogy is not accurate it’s not like the difference between cellular and landline it would be more accurate to compare it to something like star topology vs mesh topology networks

What you are suggesting just does not work from a business/financial perspective, and that why Rivian isn't and won't be offering it. Why would Rivian go to the expense of adding a retrofit "Gen2" Domain ADAS when the entire industry is moving on to Zonal? As a Rivian investor, I would not support a dead end move like that.

My analogy is accurate. Landline phone system is an analog transmission network with multiple signaling methods (automotive discrete sensors and wiring) with digital controllers and gateways (numerous automotive processors and gateways) akin to Domain architecture. Cellular network is a hub and spoke or star network, akin to the Zonal architecture.

 

[LiamM]

What you are suggesting just does not work from a business/financial perspective, and that why Rivian isn't and won't be offering it. Why would Rivian go to the expense of adding a retrofit "Gen2" Domain ADAS when the entire industry is moving on to Zonal? As a Rivian investor, I would not support a dead end move like that.

My analogy is accurate. Landline phone system is an analog transmission network with multiple signaling methods (automotive discrete sensors and wiring) with digital controllers and gateways (numerous automotive processors and gateways) akin to Domain architecture. Cellular network is a hub and spoke or star network, akin to the Zonal architecture.

Again disagree the economics are there to offer updated cameras and compute in gen 1. it doesn’t require the new architecture. I don’t even understand your dead end argument. it’s no more a dead end than any product, they don’t need to sell it at a loss and it keeps the early adopter good will at an acceptable level, theres a lot of people who are pissed they’ve abandoned long standing features that were promised in writing on the gen 1 platform that’s not good for the brand period


the entire industry is not moving to zonal many are adopting central instead


and I’m fine with the expanded explanation of your analogy my gripe was the connotation of a wired to wireless architecture. it’s not quite that far of a jump

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