The robotic swerved via the cafeteria of Rivian’s Palo Alto workplace, cabinets adorned with chilled canned coffees — till it didn’t. 5 minutes later, a person fastidiously pushed it out of everybody’s method, the phrases “I’m stuck” flashing yellow on the poor droid’s display.
It was an inauspicious begin to Rivian’s “Autonomy & AI Day,” a showcase for the corporate’s plans to make its autos able to driving themselves. Rivian doesn’t make the cafeteria robotic and isn’t accountable for its skills, however there was a well-known message in its foibles: these things is difficult.
Hours later, as I rode in a 2025 R1S SUV throughout my 15-minute demo of Rivian’s new self-described “Large Driving Model,” I used to be reminded of that message.
The EV outfitted with the automated-driving software program drove myself and two Rivian staff on a switchback route close to the corporate’s campus. As we glided previous Tesla’s engineering workplace, I seen a Mannequin S in entrance of us gradual to show into the rival firm’s lot. The R1S finally seen this, too, braking arduous simply earlier than the Rivian worker practically intervened.
Throughout my demo drive, there was one precise disengagement. The worker within the driver’s seat took over as we handed via a one-lane part of street as a consequence of some tree-trimming. Minor stuff general. However it wasn’t precisely uncommon both; I noticed a number of different demo rides that had disengagements, too.
The remainder of the drive went effectively sufficient for software program that’s not able to be shipped, particularly when you think about that Rivian threw out its previous rules-based driver help system and adopted an end-to-end strategy — which is how Tesla developed Full Self-Driving (Supervised). It stopped at stoplights, it dealt with turns, it slowed for velocity bumps, all with out programmed guidelines telling it to do these items.
A quiet pivot in 2021
Rivian’s previous system “was all very deterministic, and it was all very structured,” CEO RJ Scaringe stated in an interview Thursday. “Everything that the vehicle did was the result of a prescribed control strategy written by humans.”
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Scaringe stated that when Rivian noticed transformer-based synthetic intelligence taking off in 2021, he quietly “reconstituted the team and started with a clean sheet and said, let’s design our self-driving platform for an AI-centric world.”
After spending “a lot of time in the basement,” Rivian launched the brand new ground-up driving software program in 2024 on its second-generation R1 autos, which use Nvidia’s Orin processors.
Scaringe stated it was solely just lately that his firm began to see dramatic progress “once the data started really pouring in.”
Rivian is betting it will probably practice its Massive Driving Mannequin (LDM) on fleet information so shortly that it’ll enable the corporate to roll out what it calls “Universal Hands-Free” later this month. Which means Rivian homeowners will be capable of take their palms off the wheel on 3.5 million miles of roads within the U.S. and Canada (as long as there are seen painted traces). Within the again half of 2026, Rivian will enable “point-to-point” driving, or the buyer model of the demo we acquired Thursday.
The ‘eyes off’ to ‘hands off’ problem
By the tip of 2026, after Rivian has began transport its smaller, extra reasonably priced R2 SUVs, it should ditch the Nvidia chips and outfit these autos with a brand new customized autonomy laptop unveiled Thursday. That laptop, plus a lidar sensor, will finally enable drivers to take their palms and eyes off the street. True autonomy — the place a driver doesn’t have to fret about re-taking management of the car — lies effectively past that and can largely depend upon how briskly Rivian can practice its LDM.
This rollout introduces a near-term problem for Rivian. The brand new autonomy laptop and lidar gained’t be prepared till months after the R2 goes on sale. If prospects need a car that may deal with eyes-off driving (or extra), they’ll have to attend. However the R2 is a vital product for Rivian, and the corporate wants it to promote effectively — particularly within the wake of declining gross sales of its first-generation autos.
“When tech is moving as fast as it is, there’s always going to be some level of obsolescence, and so what we want to do here is to be really direct” about what’s coming, Scaringe stated. The early R2s will nonetheless get Rivian’s promised “point-to-point” driving, which can be primarily based on the brand new software program and can be hands-off however not eyes-off.
“So [if] you’re buying an R2 and you buy it in the first nine months, it’s just going to be more constrained,” he stated. “I think what will happen is some customers will say ‘that matters a lot to me, and I’m going to wait.’ And some will say ‘I want the newest, best things now, and I’m going to get the R2 now, and maybe I’ll trade it in a year or two, and I’ll get the next version later. Fortunately, there’s so much demand backlog for R2 that we think, by being upfront with this, customers can make the decision themselves.”
“In a perfect world, everything times at the same time, but the timeline of the vehicle and the timeline of the autonomy platform are just not perfectly aligned,” he stated.
After I first interviewed Scaringe in 2018, earlier than Rivian even confirmed what its autos regarded like, he shared a objective that also rattles round my head. He wished to make Rivian’s autos so able to driving themselves that: “if you go for a hike, and you start at one point and you finish at another point, you have the vehicle meet you at the end of the trail.”
It was the form of pie-in-the-sky promise about self-driving vehicles that was all the trend seven years in the past, however it caught with me at the least as a result of it was one thing that felt true to Rivian’s entire model of aspirational journey.
Scaringe informed me Thursday he nonetheless thinks it’s attainable for Rivian to allow a use case like that within the subsequent few years. It actually gained’t occur till the corporate checks and builds its more-capable R2 autos, which is at the least a 12 months away in a best-case situation.
“We could [do that]. It’s not been a huge focus,” he stated. That might change as the corporate will get nearer to degree 4 autonomy, although, since by then the corporate can have its LDM skilled on trickier roads with out guiding options like lane traces.
“Then, it becomes a bit of a like, what’s the ODD [operational design domain]? Dirt roads, off road? Easy,” he stated. Simply don’t count on a Rivian driving itself up Hell’s Gate in Moab.
“We’re not putting any resources into rock crawling autonomously,” he stated. “But in terms of getting to the trail head? For sure.”
This story has been up to date to mirror that Rivian’s Common Fingers-Free replace is coming later this month.
