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Rivian software stability is a real issue we don't talk about

carsly

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Situation: My wife took my son to a doctor's appointment this morning in our 2025 R1S, all good. Some time during the drive the infotainment display just showed a Rivian logo - nav, climate control, etc. were all gone and unlike a Tesla you can not do a soft reset while driving. Luckily the drivers display was still on and she knew where she was going so proceeded to the appointment. Coming out of the appointment the vehicle was dead. Both screens were just black. Get out, lock, unlock, no change. My son Googled the reset procedure and the soft reset did nothing. He then found the hard reset and was able to get the vehicle restarted. WTF?!

I've owned a number of EV's from Polestar and Tesla over the last few years. Total number of times I've had an unresponsive vehicle: zero.

But this isn't it. Every time there is a software "update" something gets knocked out. One time it was Spotify (soft reset and log back in), another time it was TuneIn (hard reset and log back in twice), another it was my blind spot cameras - just AWOL as was the turn signal cancelling on highways despite both being set to 'on' in settings and nothing changing on my end.

It's one thing if I had a five or six year old vehicle and software updates were buggering things, I'd still be peeved but would understand a bit better. This is a Feb 2025 delivered 2025 model year Gen 2 - theoretically this is the first thing Rivian is engineering and testing against. As a dual motor, it's probably the largest part of the fleet being delivered in 2025. There is nothing newer available, this is as good as it gets in terms of the computing and networking stack. Where is the QA?

Somehow we're supposed to believe Rivian is ready for autonomous driving? Even regular driving seems to be hard to keep going. This isn't some $40K ID.4, MachE or Ioniq 5. This rig costs twice as much as all of those. Heck, I purchased a used Tesla Model Y last September for the kids and that has had fewer issues by far than this Rivian.

Be better Rivian, be better. Not at advertising and brand marketing but you can't tout "software defined vehicles" while not being so good at software. And yes, VW will figure this out as well.
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godfodder0901

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It's one thing if I had a five or six year old vehicle and software updates were buggering things, I'd still be peeved but would understand a bit better. This is a Feb 2025 delivered 2025 model year Gen 2 - theoretically this is the first thing Rivian is engineering and testing against. As a dual motor, it's probably the largest part of the fleet being delivered in 2025. There is nothing newer available, this is as good as it gets in terms of the computing and networking stack. Where is the QA?
This statement is a bit counterintuitive, don't you think? I would expect a product with 6 years of development to be MUCH better sorted than a 3-month-old product. I get the frustration, but your very new product is significantly more likely to suffer from these kinds of things, not less. This isn't unique to Rivian, it happens to ALL tech to some degree, especially those that are highly software dependent.
 

Great Gatsby

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I feel your pain, but we do talk about it, and a lot. Rivian is aware, and sounds like they are addressing it. Just not quick enough. Plenty of threads to be found on this issue, and understandably so. We keep saying be patient, but we'll see.
 

racekarl

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Not that this excuses it at all, but the fact that you have had zero issues with your Polestar is honestly more surprising to me than the issues with the Rivian. The Geely/Volvo/Google software stack has been nothing but trouble for us, including similar "locked out and/or vehicle won't start" sort of things. Our Rivian has been vastly more trouble-free than the last two Volvos we've had (one was so bad they bought it back, hence the second).
 

COdogman

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Yeah, Rivian software is never discussed here…

 

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kyledmb

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I'm hit by a new bug in my Gen2 almost daily. In 19 months of Gen1 ownership I really didn't have issues. Maybe I was lucky?

So far this week:

Map stuck in dark mode, requiring infotainment reset. This fix it temporary, however.
When in Nav, map view randomly zooms out to see the full North American continent. I haven't found a fix. Nav on the driver screen still works fine. Only the center screen affected.

Always an Adventure. It's in the Rivian moto, right?
 

lefkonj

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Guess you never ran a windows update or one with Apple ever right? Are there problems yes, are they discussed, all the time. Software and QA are an industry wide problem that will never get better. Having done updates on my Rivian's over the last 29 months I can say less problems than with my apple devices and probably less than 4 or 5 issues.
 

jambaman84

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This has happened a couple times in our Rivian. Thankfully the screens turn back on within a minute or two, while were driving. Seems the computer restarted itself on it's own. Freaked my wife out when she was driving.

I'm more annoyed after the latest software update, maps is completely gone crazy. It randomly zooms out to the entire globe screen and will stay there for minutes then zoom in and back out. After a screen reset, it fixes the issue. But every time I've gotten into the car, the same issue comes back. Hopefully they fix this issue.
 

PaythePiper

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Yeah wished they would take a few months and stop adding features and fix the damn software. I give a rats ass that my climate opens faster. Apps and the whole stack rebooting all the time is not optimal.
 
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carsly

carsly

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Yeah wished they would take a few months and stop adding features and fix the damn software. I give a rats ass that my climate opens faster. Apps and the whole stack rebooting all the time is not optimal.
I think this is a fantastic idea. Stop shipping random features and spend six months getting things working all the time on every vehicle. If they need to force them to auto-reboot every night for a while, that's fine too.

BTW, I've noticed in my mobile app that I turn on seat heaters even when the app doesn't have a connection to the vehicle. It's just a false indication. Turning on climate can take 5-10 mins and who knows how many attempts. Meanwhile the charging level slider is hyper sensitive and laggy as all hell (I'm on an iPhone 16 Pro, it shouldn't lag) so it's very difficult to set anything other than a preset charging level.
 

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VandalSibs

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I think this is a fantastic idea. Stop shipping random features and spend six months getting things working all the time on every vehicle. If they need to force them to auto-reboot every night for a while, that's fine too.

BTW, I've noticed in my mobile app that I turn on seat heaters even when the app doesn't have a connection to the vehicle. It's just a false indication. Turning on climate can take 5-10 mins and who knows how many attempts. Meanwhile the charging level slider is hyper sensitive and laggy as all hell (I'm on an iPhone 16 Pro, it shouldn't lag) so it's very difficult to set anything other than a preset charging level.
There's a version of the "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" song that I've heard about from people that work in software testing:

99 bugs left in the code,​
99 bugs in the code,​
Take one down,​
Patch it around,​
127 bugs in the code!​

The point is, computer software is insanely complex. No matter how long you test and how many testers you have, once an update is out in the wild, something weird will pop up.... and fixing it may well cause one or more errors.
 

AaronTV

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So far this week:

Map stuck in dark mode, requiring infotainment reset. This fix it temporary, however.
When in Nav, map view randomly zooms out to see the full North American continent. I haven't found a fix. Nav on the driver screen still works fine. Only the center screen affected.
I'm more annoyed after the latest software update, maps is completely gone crazy. It randomly zooms out to the entire globe screen and will stay there for minutes then zoom in and back out. After a screen reset, it fixes the issue. But every time I've gotten into the car, the same issue comes back. Hopefully they fix this issue.
This was happening to me on my Gen 1 R1T on Sunday. Yesterday it was back to normal. I'm about to see what experience today brings...
 

jambaman84

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This was happening to me on my Gen 1 R1T on Sunday. Yesterday it was back to normal. I'm about to see what experience today brings...
Do share what the results are!
 

DuoRivian

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I think this is a fantastic idea. Stop shipping random features and spend six months getting things working all the time on every vehicle. If they need to force them to auto-reboot every night for a while, that's fine too.

BTW, I've noticed in my mobile app that I turn on seat heaters even when the app doesn't have a connection to the vehicle. It's just a false indication. Turning on climate can take 5-10 mins and who knows how many attempts. Meanwhile the charging level slider is hyper sensitive and laggy as all hell (I'm on an iPhone 16 Pro, it shouldn't lag) so it's very difficult to set anything other than a preset charging level.
You seem to be in a very small minority with such delays and issues. In 20 months of ownership I have not had it randomly switch off or need rebooting after a software update.
 

vigorousRival

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I'm hit by a new bug in my Gen2 almost daily. In 19 months of Gen1 ownership I really didn't have issues. Maybe I was lucky?

So far this week:

Map stuck in dark mode, requiring infotainment reset. This fix it temporary, however.
When in Nav, map view randomly zooms out to see the full North American continent. I haven't found a fix. Nav on the driver screen still works fine. Only the center screen affected.

Always an Adventure. It's in the Rivian moto, right?
I've also had the "stuck in dark mode" adventure recently.
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