Rivian is expanding hands-free driving for its electric vehicles and adding advanced self-driving capability starting late next year.
Rivian
Rivian, the electric vehicle maker created and led by RJ Scaringe, is jumping into the self-driving tech race with plans to add new hardware and software to enable hands-free, eyes-off driving, starting next year with its new R2 model.
The company already offers limited hands-free driver-assist features in its R1 pickups and SUVs, but the functionality will increase significantly with better cameras, radar and a laser lidar sensor from late 2026, Scaringe said at a briefing in Palo Alto, California. A new in-house designed chip and computing system is also being added and future upgrades could allow Rivians to operate as robotaxis, he said.
“Starting in 2026, we’ll begin rolling out point-to-point capabilities in which the vehicle can drive from address to address. What that means is you can get into the vehicle at your house, plug in the address to where you’re going, and the vehicle will completely drive you there,” he said. “While our initial focus will be on personally owned vehicles, which today represent a vast majority of the miles driven in the United States, this also enables us to pursue opportunities in the rideshare space.”
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Rivian remains the most-promising U.S. Tesla rival since entering the market five years ago with the R1 models and its electric delivery vans, though sales have fallen short of initial goals. The new R2, due in early 2026, is to have a base price of about $45,000, tens of thousands of dollars less than the R1S and R1T. Scaringe is counting on it to dramatically increase Rivian’s sales volume, though the loss of federal tax credits is already dampening U.S. EV demand. Adding self-driving capability – paired with far more powerful sensors than Tesla uses – may help improve the brand’s appeal.
Like Tesla, Rivian is training its AI-enabled autonomous software on real-world driving data collected by customer vehicles, and not relying on maps and data from other companies. But a frequent criticism of Tesla’s approach is that it relies on relatively low-resolution cameras as its sole sensor source, and doesn’t also use radar and lidar to detect, monitor and map conditions in high detail. That’s likely a contributor to numerous accidents, some fatal, involving Tesla’s Full-Self Driving system, which is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
By comparison, Rivian’s “Gen 3” autonomy platform includes 65 megapixels of cameras, a main central radar and individual radar units on each corner of the vehicle, and a front-facing, long-range lidar that’s fully integrated into the roofline. The use of multiple sensors, especially lidar, is common on robotaxis operated by Alphabet’s Waymo to help see clearly in all lighting conditions, detect hard objects and accurately map surroundings in 3-D.
Rivian is integrating laser lidar into the roofline of the R2 SUV.
Rivian
“Cameras alone have some shortcomings. They do not perform well under non-ideal lighting conditions,” said Vidya Rajagopalan, senior vice president for electrical hardware, who was a Tesla engineer before joining Rivian. “Camera is the main workhorse of our sensor suite, generating the bulk of the data fed to the models. But the radar and lidar are critical to addressing the edge cases.”
The news didn’t appear to benefit Rivian’s shares, however, which fell about 1.4% to $16.15 in afternoon Nasdaq trading.