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 rigorously pushed it out of everybody’s manner, 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 automobiles able to driving themselves. Rivian doesn’t make the cafeteria robotic and isn’t liable for its skills, however there was a well-known message in its foibles: these items is tough.
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 geared up 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 observed a Mannequin S in entrance of us sluggish to show into the rival firm’s lot. The R1S finally observed this, too, braking arduous simply earlier than the Rivian worker almost 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 highway attributable to some tree-trimming. Minor stuff total. Nevertheless it wasn’t precisely uncommon both; I noticed a number of different demo rides that had disengagements too.
The remainder of the drive went nicely sufficient for software program that isn’t 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 method — which is how Tesla developed Full Self-Driving (Supervised). It stopped at stoplights, it dealt with turns, it slowed for pace 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 automobiles, which use Nvidia’s Orin processors.
Scaringe stated it was solely lately that his firm began to see dramatic progress “once the data started really pouring in.”
Rivian is betting it could possibly prepare its Giant Driving Mannequin (LDM) on fleet knowledge so shortly that it’s going to enable the corporate to roll out what it calls “Universal Hands-Free” driving in early 2026. Which means Rivian homeowners will be capable of take their arms off the wheel on 3.5 million miles of roads within the U.S. and Canada (as long as there are seen painted strains). Within the again half of 2026 Rivian will enable “point-to-point” driving, or the buyer model of the demo we obtained 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’ll ditch the Nvidia chips and outfit these automobiles with a brand new customized autonomy laptop unveiled Thursday. That laptop, plus a lidar sensor, will finally enable drivers to take their arms and eyes off the highway. True autonomy — the place a driver doesn’t have to fret about re-taking management of the automobile — lies nicely past that and can largely rely on how briskly Rivian can prepare 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 automobile 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 nicely — particularly within the wake of declining gross sales of its first-generation automobiles.
“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 shall be primarily based on the brand new software program and shall 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 automobiles regarded like, he shared a aim that also rattles round my head. He wished to make Rivian’s automobiles 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 type of pie-in-the-sky promise about self-driving vehicles that was all the fad seven years in the past, nevertheless it caught with me not less than as a result of it was one thing that felt true to Rivian’s complete model of aspirational journey.
Scaringe advised me Thursday he nonetheless thinks it’s doable for Rivian to allow a use case like that within the subsequent few years. It definitely gained’t occur till the corporate assessments and builds its more-capable R2 automobiles, which is not less than a 12 months away in a best-case situation.
“We could [do that]. It’s not been a huge focus,” he stated. That would change as the corporate will get nearer to stage 4 autonomy, although, since by then the corporate may have its LDM skilled on trickier roads with out guiding options like lane strains.
“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.”
