Rivian on Thursday detailed how it plans to make its electric vehicles self-driving. CEO RJ Scaringe said it’s an ambitious effort that includes new hardware, including lidar and custom silicon, with the company ultimately looking to enter the self-driving ride-hailing market.
The announcement, made at the company’s first Autonomy & AI Day event in Palo Alto, Calif., shed new light on Rivian’s technology development, much of which has been kept under wraps, as the company aims to begin production of its affordable R2 SUV in the first half of 2026. Rivian’s event is also a very public signal to shareholders that the company is matching or exceeding the self-driving capabilities of industry rivals like Tesla, Ford and General. In addition to motors, there are also car manufacturers from Europe and China.
Rivian said it plans to expand the hands-free version of its driver-assistance software to “more than 3.5 million miles of roads in the U.S. and Canada,” and eventually beyond highways to clearly marked road surfaces. This expanded access will be available on the company’s second generation R1 trucks and SUVs. The company calls the enhancement “Universal Hands-Free” and plans to launch it in early 2026. Rivian says there will be a one-time fee of $2,500 or $49.99 per month.
“What that means is you can get in your car at home, type in the address of your destination, and the car will drive you there completely,” Scaringe said Thursday, explaining the point-to-point navigation feature.
After that, Rivian plans to allow drivers to take their eyes off the road. “This gives you time back. You can make a phone call or read a book without having to be actively involved in operating the vehicle.”
Rivian’s driver assistance software doesn’t end there. The EV maker on Thursday announced plans to enhance its capabilities to a level it calls “Personal L4.” This means cars can be driven in certain areas without human intervention, following the levels set by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Scaringe then hinted that Rivian was considering competing with companies like Waymo. “While we will initially focus on privately owned vehicles, which currently account for the majority of miles driven in the U.S., this will also allow us to pursue opportunities in the ride-sharing space,” he said.
tech crunch event
san francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
To achieve these lofty goals, Rivian has worked to build a “Large-Scale Driving Model” (LLM, but with real-world driving in mind). This is part of a move away from the rules-based framework for self-driving car development that Tesla has led. The company also showed off its own custom 5nm processor, which will be built in collaboration with both Arm and TSMC.
This custom chip powers what Rivian calls its third generation “autonomous computer” (ACM3). The new computer can process 5 billion pixels per second and will be installed in Rivian’s upcoming R2 mass-market SUV in late 2026.
Rivian will pair the ACM3 with a lidar sensor at the top of the windshield (from an undisclosed supplier) to provide “three-dimensional spatial data and redundant sensing,” which the company says will help with “real-time detection of driving edge cases.”
“When it launches in late 2026, we expect this to be the most powerful combination of sensors and inference computing in consumer vehicles in North America,” Vidya Rajagopalan, senior vice president of electrical hardware, said at the event.
The R2 is scheduled to start shipping in the first half of 2026, which means the launch version of the SUV will not be equipped with ACM3 or LiDAR sensors. But the company said in a press release that its second-generation R1 and future R2 vehicles aim to “continually improve the autonomy capabilities” of “vehicles with well-defined trajectories, including point-to-point, eye-off, and personal L4.”
The company believes it can reach advanced self-driving states in many of its current vehicles without new hardware, but Scaringe said Thursday that the new hardware suite “allows for a much higher ceiling than our current fleet.”
“Adding lidar creates the ultimate sensing combination, giving us the most comprehensive 3D model of the space the vehicle is driving in,” James Philbin, vice president of autonomy and AI, said Thursday. “Our goal for our in-vehicle sensing stack is not just human, but superhuman.”
Source link
