Rivian Has A Completely different Take On Autonomous Automobiles

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R. J. Scaringe, the founding father of Rivian, is making some daring claims about how his firm will combine autonomous driving know-how into its automobiles. In an interview with Fortune this week, he mentioned, “you possibly can personal a automobile, however it will possibly drop you on the airport, it will possibly decide your youngsters up from college, it will possibly go get issues from the shop for you.”

He additionally thinks his vehicles ought to have the ability to service themselves. “If the automobile has a problem, it’s really not a optimistic a part of the shopper expertise to need to coordinate a service exercise or to coordinate elements, ship any of these issues. We wish all that to occur behind the scenes and all that to be powered by way of AI.”

Proper now, if my Tesla Mannequin Y wants service, I must drive 75 miles to the closest service middle. If repairs can’t be made in at some point, I want to remain in a motel and purchase my meals till the automobile is able to drive residence. In Scaringe’s imaginative and prescient, Rivian automobiles will have the ability to drive themselves to a service middle and drive themselves residence once more when the wanted repairs are accomplished.

In an interview with Enterprise Insider final 12 months, Wassym Bensaid, the top of software program growth for Rivian, mentioned, “We’re not essentially chasing full self-driving, we’re not chasing robotaxis. Our objective is incremental enhancements to the protection and comfort for purchasers.”

AI Day At Rivian

On December 11, 2025, Rivian held a splashy “AI Day” occasion at its headquarters in California, the place it introduced it could not be utilizing pc chips from outdoors suppliers like Nvidia for its autonomous driving methods. As a substitute, it’s designing its personal chip that shall be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm. The corporate’s inventory worth instantly plummeted 10% on the information earlier than recovering considerably by the closing bell.

Two of the brand new chips will energy Rivian’s subsequent era onboard pc known as Autonomy Compute Module 3, which shall be able to processing 5 billion pixels per second and ship 4 instances the efficiency of the Nvidia-powered system that’s at the moment supplied in Rivian automobiles.

Say Whats up To Lidar

Starting in 2027, the quickly to be launched Rivian R2 — priced at round $45,000 — will even be outfitted with a windshield mounted Lidar sensor. Elon Musk has been stubbornly crucial of Lidar, claiming it prices an excessive amount of and results in unpleasant bumps and bubbles the skin of automobiles. A fast look at a Waymo robotaxi confirms the disfiguration of the outside of the automobile these additional sensors trigger. Reportedly, the suite of sensors Waymo makes use of is reported so as to add $100,000 to the worth of the automobile, so Elon is right — kind of.

“Lidar has modified so much,” Scaringe mentioned. “It’s not a giant expense, it’s a really small proportion of the automobile’s invoice of supplies.” And whether it is mounted behind the windshield, no unpleasant adjustments to the outside are required. James Philbin, Rivian’s head of autonomy and AI mentioned, “Including lidar creates the final word sensing mixture. It provides essentially the most complete 3D mannequin of the area the automobile is touring by way of. The objective for our onboard sensing stack isn’t simply human degree, it’s superhuman degree.”

“We anticipate that at launch in late 2026, this would be the strongest mixture of sensors and inference compute in shopper automobiles in North America,”  Vidya Rajagopalan, senior vice chairman {of electrical} {hardware}, added. “This isn’t a wager one takes evenly. It is a big dedication that’s taken us years,” Scaringe added. “Often, you possibly can’t decrease value and enhance efficiency. However right here, we improved efficiency dramatically and concurrently lowered value by a whole bunch of {dollars} per automobile.”

Level To Level

As the corporate provides options to its automobiles, they are going to have the ability to journey point-to-point with out drivers needing to maintain their fingers on the wheel or eyes on the highway. To start with, the methods shall be restricted to freeway use, with higher functionality added over time. Rivian’s final objective is to promote clients and buyers on a better margin software program enterprise, the place private automobiles are able to working autonomously with out anybody within the driver’s seat.

The corporate will start charging for its Autonomy+ software program platform, beginning with present R1 house owners, early in 2026. Clients can both pay $2,500 up entrance to entry new options over the lifetime of the automobile, or a $49.99 month-to-month subscription. The primary iteration of the platform’s new capabilities shall be modest and nicely wanting what Tesla already affords by way of what it markets as Full Self-Driving, in response to Bloomberg Hyperdrive.

Rivian plans to launch an expanded model of what it calls Common Arms Free within the coming weeks to present house owners, permitting for hands-free assisted driving throughout 3.5 million miles of roads, up from roughly 135,000 miles at the moment. It nonetheless can’t deal with navigating or reacting to many visitors conditions routinely encountered in on a regular basis city driving. An up to date point-to-point model of the software program is predicted to be prepared subsequent 12 months, the place the automobile will have the ability to navigate, make turns and alter lanes, whereas nonetheless requiring eyes on the highway.

It’s The Software program, Silly!

Whereas Rivian’s personal vehicles are nonetheless removed from driving themselves, Scaringe says he’s open to licensing the know-how to different automakers, together with Volkswagen. Sharp-eyed readers will be aware that Volkswagen has already invested almost $6 billion in Rivian, not for its manufacturing prowess however due to its ever increasing software program capabilities. Reportedly, it’s hiring gifted pc engineers from Tesla, Apple, and anyplace else it will possibly discover them.

Final month, we reported that Rivian and Volkswagen are already exploring the potential for advertising and marketing their new automobile software program platform to different producers. “What we’re constructing is so nicely architected at a platform degree,” Scaringe mentioned. “It’s not onerous for us to think about within the subsequent a number of years that this turns into a platform we additionally license.”

In California, Scaringe laid out his plans for the longer term, which incorporates Stage 4 methods that let drivers to take their eyes off the highway forward. “This provides you your time again. You will be in your cellphone, or studying a guide, not needing to be actively concerned within the operation of car.” From there, in response to TechCrunch, the corporate intends to supply what it calls “private L4,” which suggests totally autonomous driving in sure circumstances.

After that, Scaringe hinted Rivian shall be taking a look at competing with the likes of Waymo. “Whereas our preliminary focus shall be on personally owned automobiles, which right this moment symbolize a overwhelming majority of the miles pushed in the US, this additionally permits us to pursue alternatives within the ride-share area,” he mentioned.

Manufacturing Hell

All of this, in fact, hinges on the corporate being financially viable. There are studies that it has been shedding manufacturing unit employees on the similar time it has been bringing extra software program engineers on board. A brand new $5 billion manufacturing unit in Georgia is supposedly on the way in which, made attainable by the cash flowing into its company coffers from Volkswagen.

We right here at CleanTechnica usually are not engineers or captains of business, however we all know the upcoming R2 is massively necessary to the success of the corporate. And we ponder whether it’s good enterprise to announce upfront the early variations of that automobile won’t have Lidar however later variations will. Absolutely R.J. Scaringe and his gang of merry pranksters have heard of the Osborne Impact — haven’t they?

For all its claims, the corporate has but to scale to the purpose the place it may be thought of a viable enterprise. A lot of firms are making grandiose claims about autonomous know-how, however as of this second none are fairly there but. It’s a know-how that at all times appears to be simply across the nook however by no means fairly prepared for prime time. Will Rivian be the one to push it over the end line? “We’ll see,” mentioned the Zen grasp.