20 ms·

Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

395 points by doctoboggan 10mo ago

bjord 10mo ago
is everyone designing their own silicon getting so much additional them-specific utility out of it that it's actually worth it?
- darth_avocado 10mo ago
  Rivian has a huge interest in being the outsourcer for legacy automakers. They’re not able to sell $100k cars enough and even with the promised R2, they probably will only be a small-ish player in the EV market. Their CEO recognizes how crazy good Chinese EVs are and currently they’re not even a competitor for Tesla. But, VW is willing to pay $5B for their software platform. I think they want to extend that to being able to sell custom chips and “AI” capabilities, whatever that means.
  - igor47 10mo ago
    Which honestly is crazy to me. I have a Rivian, and to say the software is disappointing would be an understatement. There are heisenbugs galore; some examples: * Doors refuse to open * Lose the ability to control media playback using any controls * Any button in the UI just opens and closes the windows Granted, I'm a server side/backend engineer mostly, and I don't know much about writing software/firmware for a very hostile emf environment. But if any project I worked on had bugs like this, fixed at the rate they're fixed on Rivian, I would assume a badly flawed architecture or non existent technical leadership Yet VW paid billions for this very software. I can't imagine how bad it must've been on their own stack that they gave up and bought this other seemingly broken stack
    - WaxProlix 10mo ago
      This sounds nothing like my experience, you should get that vehicle serviced.
      - Hovertruck 10mo ago
        Same, I've had mine for a couple of years now with no notable software issues at all.
      - amluto 10mo ago
        Service can’t do anything about the state machine being wrong. The Rivian app does not permit you to send a command to the car while the app thinks the car is processing a command. Trunk opening? You can’t unlock the door. On top of this, if you try to open the trunk while outside Bluetooth range and then Bluetooth connects, you are still stuck waiting for the pending command to complete. Oh, and the ridiculous “hey let’s always remind you that you own a Rivian” Live Activity seems to synchronize on a schedule that involves being hours and hours out of date. The Rivian app sucks.
        WaxProlix 10mo ago
        I agree that the app leaves something to be desired - my personal pet peeve is that it shows stale or cached data while waiting to do some async update, leading to just outright fabricated charge or lock state. Never had those kinds of problems with the truck's software proper though
        cryptoegorophy 10mo ago
        Why can’t they just copy Tesla? Chinese manufacturers do just that and skip the hard steps
      - Robdel12 10mo ago
        This comment is pretty funny to me, as a car guy. What’s there to service? It’s a software issue.
        zamadatix 10mo ago
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - mbesto 10mo ago
      I own a Rivian too, and previously owned a Tesla. While I too have my gripes about the UX on the Rivian, it still beats the cr*p out of a Tesla.
      - Rover222 10mo ago
        Just curious in what ways, since you've actually owned both. I've only had Teslas, but I like the looks of Rivians.
        mbesto 10mo ago
        Tesla UX gripes (may be specific to Model S 2020): - Yolk steering is terrible - Lack of physical knobs. Haptics are nice but haptics don't work well for cars. - Tesla menus are getting stuffed more and more with options, making affordance and UI crowding much worse - The horn is a button press...no one in a emergency situation is looking for a button press.. - Native apps (for example Spotify) are inferior to just using my phone via bluetooth - Calendar integration / notification is too chatty
    - m463 10mo ago
      stuff like that happens with tesla. one funny one is that periodically you can trigger the "more cowbell" rainbow road easter egg. You can cancel the road animation, but you can't cancel the easter egg music or control the volume.
- bickfordb 10mo ago
  I have the same question. It makes sense that they might need bespoke software, but how could they possibly be more efficient at creating chips than an AMD/Nvidia?
  - slashdave 10mo ago
    Well, if AMD and/or Nvidia were to invest on a chip for an auto, maybe you might have a point.
    - riotnrrd 10mo ago
      NVIDIA has been selling automotive-specific silicon for a decade.
    - AlotOfReading 10mo ago
      Both AMD and Nvidia have strong automotive offerings.
- potatolicious 10mo ago
  I share your skepticism. This feels like an attempt to tap the trainloads of money piling into "AI", for a company that is in pretty desperate need of more cash to stay alive. In a vacuum there are potentially some advantages to doing your own silicon, especially if your goal is to sell the platform to other automakers as an OEM. But custom silicon is pricey as hell (if you're doing anything non-trivial, at least), and the payoffs have a long lead time. For a company that's bleeding cash aggressively, with a short runway, to engage in this seems iffy. This sort of move makes a lot more sense if Rivian was an established maker that's cash-flow positive and is looking to cement their long-term lead with free cash flow. Buuuuut they aren't that.
- thomasjb 10mo ago
  Possibly. Realistically this is replacing the expensive category of FPGA (Zynqs or similar with strong hardware CPU cores), this means they get all the peripherals they desire in hardware, and they can pick the core variant in order to optimise for their workloads (all the different vector extensions for example). There's an interesting market for that kind of thing, either full FPGA to ASIC replacement, or drop in replacement FPGAs of lower cost (The Rigol MHO98 replaced the Xilinx FPGA of the previous generation with a substitute from Fudan). If you're shipping a lot of hardware, that sort of thing becomes worthwhile.
  - wmf 10mo ago
    Nope, it's replacing Orin.
- ShakataGaNai 10mo ago
  I would wager that's because there isn't a lot of existing silicon that fits the bill. What COTS equipment is there that has all the CPU/Tensor horsepower these systems need... AND is reasonably power efficient AND is rated for a vehicle (wild temp extremes like -20F to 150F+, constant vibration, slams and impacts... and will keep working for 15 years). Yea, Tesla has some. But they aren't sharing their secret sauce. You can't just throw a desktop computer in a car and expect it to survive for the duration. Ford et all aren't anywhere close to having "premium silicon". So you're only option right now is to build your own. And hope maybe that you can sell/license your designs to others later and make bucks.
  - typewithrhythm 10mo ago
    NVIDIA orin series is the big one for tensor horsepower. Horizon robotics and Qualcomm also have competitive automotive packages. They are all expensive, but less than the risk adjusted cost of developing a chip.
    - pstuart 10mo ago
      Isn't that risk balanced by a healthy reward of controlling their verticals and possible secret sauce? And their chips give "1600 sparse INT8 TOPS" vs the Orin's "more than 1,000 INT8 TOPS" -- so comparable enough? And going forward they can tailor it to exactly what they want?
      - typewithrhythm 10mo ago
        Mostly it costs hundreds of millions to develop a chip; it relies on volume to recover the cost. NVIDIA also tailor their chips to customers. It's a more scalable platform than their marketing hints at... Not to mention that they also iterate fairly quickly. So far anyway, being on a specialised architecture is a disadvantage; it's much easier to use the advances that come from research and competitors. Unless you really think that you are ahead of the completion, and can sell some fairly inflexible solution for a while.
      - AlotOfReading 10mo ago
- ChuckMcM 10mo ago
  I was just in a discussion on this very topic. It's the build vs buy equation applied to silicon. Early in the tech boom the entire silicon stack was proprietary and required a lot of time and investment to train up people who could design the circuitry, we got our first "ASICS" which was basically a bunch of circuitry on a die and you then added your own metal layer so it was like having a bunch of components glued to a board and you could "customize" it by putting wires between the parts. Then we had fabs that needed more wafer starts so they started doing other peoples designs which required they standardize their cells and provide integration services (you brought a design and they mapped it to their standard cells and process). And as the density kept going up they kept having loots of free space they needed to fill up. The 'fabless' chip companies continued to invest in making new parts until the pipeline was pretty smooth. And at that point the level of training you needed a the origin to get it into silicon dropped to nearly zero, you just needed the designs. And into that space people who were neither 'chip' companies, nor were they 'fabless' OEMs, realized they could get their integration needs met by asking a company to make them a chip that did exactly what they wanted. One the business side, the economics are fabulous, your competitors can't "clone" your product if they don't have your special sauce components. So in many ways it becomes a strategic advantage to maintaining your market position. But all of that because the all up cost to go from specification to parts meeting the specification dropped into the range where you could build special parts and still price at the market for your finished product. A really interesting illustration is to look at disk drive controller boards from the Shugart Associates ST-506 (5MB) drive, to Seagate's current offerings. It is illustrative because disk drives are a product that has been ruthlessly economized because of low margins. The ST-506 is all TTL logic and standard analog parts, and yet current products have semiconductor parts that are made exactly to Seagate's design specs and aren't sold to anyone else. So to answer your question; apparently the economics work out. The costs associated with designing, testing, and packaging your own silicon appears to be cost effective even on products with exceptionally tight margins, it is likely a clear winner on a product that enjoys the margins that electric vehicles offer.
  - bjord 10mo ago
    very interesting. thanks for sharing!
7e 10mo ago
No, Waymo is just going to license their tech to normal automakers, like Toyota, and those licensees will win. Rivian is run by a Musk-wannabe but even this stock pump isn’t going to help with his sociopath, multibillion dollar compensation package.
- darth_avocado 10mo ago
  What stock pump, its cratered on the news.
  - SonOfKyuss 10mo ago
    That is curious. The market must not have faith in their ability to execute on their plans
    - darth_avocado 10mo ago
      The market wants them to sell the $40k cars asap. All the other side quests are distractions. When they spun off their electric bike side project, the stock went up.
      - dmix 10mo ago
        Adding LIDAR would probably turn a $40k car a $70k car as well.
- TulliusCicero 10mo ago
  Incendiary language aside, this does seem pretty likely to me. Waymo has already talked about wanting to license their driver for personally owned cars eventually; it just doesn't make sense for them to do so until they can cover more of the country (or countries). The more areas they cover, and especially when they can cover various popular freeways connecting different metro areas, the more it'll make sense for them to start partnering with automakers to sell the technology to consumers.
- georgeburdell 10mo ago
cyberax 10mo ago
Yet no AndoidAuto. Pass.
suprnurd 10mo ago
Where I live I am often surrounded by Waymo vehicles... is Lidar 100% safe for people to be around? I ask because I read an article about how Lidar on one of the new Volvos could destroy your phone camera if you pointed it at it? If Lidar can do that to a phone camera, can it hurt your eyes?
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 10mo ago
  Depends on the type of LIDAR. LIDAR rated for vehicle use is at a wavelength opaque to the eyes so it hits the surface and fluid of your eye and reflects back rather than going through to your cones and rods. It isn't however opaque for optical glass (since the LIDAR has to shine through optical glass in the first place) so it hits your camera lens, goes straight through, and slams the sensor.
  - kappi 10mo ago
    During the presentation, Rivian speaker specifically said it is safe for your camera sensors. Check the youtube video of their presentation
    - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 10mo ago
      Ah. Theirs may be then. In which case they are probably using a different wavelength and a different glass. I was just speaking in terms of the commonplace LIDAR solutions for road use.
  - dllu 10mo ago
    You seem to be implying that all automotive lidar are 1550 nm but that's not true. While there are lots of 1550 nm automotive lidars (Luminar on Volvo, Seyond on NIO) there are also plenty of 850 nm to 940 nm lidars are used in cars (Hesai, Robosense, etc). Those can pass through water and get focused to your retina, but they are also a lot lower power so they do not damage cameras.
    - culi 10mo ago
idontwantthis 10mo ago
Can anyone explain why RIVN is down 8% after this announcement? Were investors expecting hands free handjobs or something?
- nrjames 10mo ago
  “Buy the rumors and sell the news.” Just typical market stuff.
  - idontwantthis 10mo ago
    Now it almost reached $20 lol.
- doctoboggan 10mo ago
  Maybe they think custom silicon is biting off more than they can chew, coming at a time when they need to focus on R2 production and scale-up.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- spankalee 10mo ago
  I hold some RIVN and I'm wondering why they're spending resources on custom silicon instead of using something off-the-shelf. What is their advantage here? Can they hire the right people? Can they ship enough units to pay for it? Those are my bearish questions. On the bullish side, the VW deal shows that they're willing and able to license part of their platform, so possibly have a big chance to recoup costs and maybe turn a profit just on that side, which justifies a big software + autonomy investment.
  - ssl-3 10mo ago
    If their idea is both novel and useful, and if it actually works, and they can actually produce it, then: They can sell it to other automakers. (GM has made a lot of cars with their own transmissions. And at various times, they've supplied -lots- of them to other automakers all over the world. They've made a lot of money doing this. Someone's gotta build the machine vision/control systems for all of these self-driving cars; that someone may well be Rivian. It's not as sexy as something like a new convertible might be, or a $40k self-driving electric car, and a consumer might not even know that the new car in their driveway has expensive Rivian parts buried inside, but that future can be very profitable for them.)
nicksergeant 10mo ago
Meanwhile, the only thing people really want from Rivian is CarPlay / Android Auto support, lol.
- airstrike 10mo ago
  Not investors, though
- cyode 10mo ago
  CarPlay and affordability. I was totally smitten last year with the R1S during a test drive. I'm not a car person but felt that spark people must feel when they obsess over their vehicles. But it wasn't pushing-six-figures smitten, which is where you're at when you get a new one with customizations.
  - nicksergeant 10mo ago
    Yep. I certainly wanted an R1S, but ended up in an EV9 due to CarPlay plus huge lease incentives. No regrets, and will probably get another after this lease is up.
  - ActorNightly 10mo ago
    >afforadbility This 1000%. Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker. Instead, we are getting these boutique, expensive vehicles packed full of tech, but in the end, they still fundamentally suck as cars compared to gas alternatives, especially hybrid. I got a Prius Prime for my wife last year, the car is way better than any EV on the market in terms of usability. Driving to work and back can all be done in EV mode easily, and then when you wanna go somewhere, you can keep the car above 80 mph easily and get there faster without worrying about where to charge.
    - reanimus 10mo ago
      > Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker. I think this is more or less the pitch behind Slate (https://www.slate.auto/en https://www.slate.auto/en), though it's more of a truck/SUV form factor.
TulliusCicero 10mo ago
Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway). Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.
- margalabargala 10mo ago
  > the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That's one alternative. Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. "Continuous development" isn't always a selling point when it's something with your life in its hands. A great example is Tesla. There are plenty of people who are thrilled with the continuous updates and changes to everything, and there are plenty of people that mock Tesla for it. Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.
  - nradov 10mo ago
    The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
    - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
      Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle. Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers. What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming. Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted. You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
frankfrank13 10mo ago
Is there some tight coupling on autonomy + electric cars? Seems the only 2 viable hands-free car companies are Tesla and Rivian. I don't see myself ever getting an electric car, but it doesn't seem like the big car companies are anywhere near this.
- hartator 10mo ago
  I think the shift to EV is inevitable.
  - colordrops 10mo ago
    I agree, but it won't happen until EVs get more range.
    - amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
      Better charging infrastructure and faster charging batteries will mitigate some of that.
    - 5upplied_demand 10mo ago
      That has been happening consistently for almost 15 years. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1323-january-1-2024-top-range-model-year-2023-evs-was-516-miles-single https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1323-janu...
    - ok_dad 10mo ago
      The range is fine today, the problem is charging infrastructure now. There aren't enough high speed chargers, and we can't build more because of the same reasons we can't build more AI datacenters: power. Tesla can build tons of them because they're backed by large grid batteries that suck up the power peaks from fast charging so that they can install their charging stations anywhere that has somewhat reliable power. If you don't have the batteries to act as a peak shaver, then it's really hard to install high speed charging where people need it most in residential and commercial areas that are already oversubscribed.
criddell 10mo ago
Is the paint job supposed to resemble R2-D2?
doctoboggan 10mo ago
I loved to see that they plan on running the Rivian Assistant LLM onboard using their new Gen 3 hardware. Great that they see that as a valuable feature and I hope to see the industry move that way.
asadm 10mo ago
I hear many Rivian customers really love Comma.ai, so much that they are #1 on Comma dash.
- ShakataGaNai 10mo ago
  Probably a lot of overlap in the venn diagram of people who would like the two things. Mostly the "Early Adopter" circle. Also a lot of cars have a lot of limitations with comma.ai. Yes, you can install it on all sorts but there are limitations like: above 32mph, cannot resume from stop, cannot take tight corners, cannot do stop light detection, requires additional car upgrades/features, only known to support model year 2021. Etc. Rivian supports everything, it has a customer base who LOVE technology, are willing to try new things, and ... have disposable income for a $1k extra gadget.
  - maherbeg 10mo ago
    a lot of the gen1 users will likely swap over to it though. They basically have dropped improvements for gen1 autonomy which is rug-pullish :(
  - cryptoegorophy 10mo ago
    I’ve seen videos of massive touch screen stuttering, is it still a thing on rivian?
daemonologist 10mo ago
The R2(-D2) livery is a fun touch
orliesaurus 10mo ago
Watching this unfold... I keep thinking about the supply chain... how many rare minerals go into this custom silicon? ALSO what happens when the first generation hits end-of-life... will there be a clear path to recycling? I want to believe these platforms will last more than a subscription cycle... BUT I guess we won't know until we see a teardown...
- spankalee 10mo ago
  Why would more minerals go into custom silicon than off-the-shelf silicon? How would recycling be any different?
  - orliesaurus 10mo ago
    not "more"
- porphyra 10mo ago
  typical automotive 905 nm lidars are just CMOS chips similar to cameras and regular computer chips
porphyra 10mo ago
Rivians have been spotted with giant Velodyne VLS-128 "Alpha Puck"s since several years ago [1]. But from last I checked, Rivian's ADAS is still struggling with ping-ponging in lanes on curved stretches, and it only works on a small set of pre-mapped highways. Highly doubtful that "universal hands free" is coming. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/mqijd2/rivian_r1t_spotted_with_lidar_rig_in_palo_alto_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/mqijd2/riv...
- typewithrhythm 10mo ago
  The big lidars are for ground truth collection. They get used in projects ranging from autonomous development all the way down to budget adaptive cruise control or parking sensor benchmarking.
- Zee2 10mo ago
  The ping-ponging is certainly a Gen1 problem. (My Gen1 does this.) Gen1 was essentially an off-the-shelf Mobileye unit, and the performance was, as expected, not good. Gen2 autonomy stack is completely unrelated to Gen1, and from what I hear is a completely different level of reliability. (also - this presentation covered yet another, unrelated, gen3 autonomy stack, which shares none of the hardware or models with the existing gen2 stack, either.)
thebeardisred 10mo ago
What I'm wondering is that the stack up of licensed processor IP looks like.
mtoner23 10mo ago
how about they try to make their cars profitably first....
- behnamoh 10mo ago
  They'd rather make their board and CEO profitable first...
- jjtheblunt 10mo ago
  looks like they're profitable already if counting cars and software on them. https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-third-quarter-2025-financial-results https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-third-qu...
mrcwinn 10mo ago
This is really poor execution. You're taking a complex, low margin vehicle and introducing even more cost and supply chain complexity. On top of that, you're essentially making a proxy bet that more expensive hardware (LIDAR) will beat Tesla's software bet. It's absolutely fair to criticize Elon for his ridiculous FSD timeline claims, but here we are now evaluating the market: if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet.
- senordevnyc 10mo ago
  Waymo is delivering millions of paid rides per month all over the country with no one in the driver's seat. Tesla still can't manage that in one small city without a backup driver in the front. But yes, just like the dozens of other times I've read this comment for years now, I'm sure "the latest version of FSD" is so groundbreaking, and it's all about to change!
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet I have. It’s wild for anyone to say this. Waymo works. FSD mostly works, and I seriously considered getting a Tesla after borrowing one last week. But it needs to be supervised—this is apparent both in its attention requirement and the one time last week it tried to bolt into a red-lit intersection. The state of the art is Waymo. The jury is still out on whether cameras only can replicate its success. If it can’t, that safety margin could mean game over for FSD on the insurance or regulatory levels. In that case, Rivian could be No. 2 to Waymo (which will be No. 1 if cameras only doesn’t pan out, given they have infinite money from Google). That’s a good bet. And if cameras only works, you’ll still have the ultra premium segment Tesla seems to have abandoned and which may be wary of licensing from Waymo.
  - Rover222 10mo ago
    Waymo operates on guardrails, with a lot more human-in-the-loop (remotely) help than most people seem aware of. Tesla's already have similar capabilities, in a much wider range of roads, in vehicles that cost 80% less to manufacture. They're both achieving impressive results. But if you read beyond headlines, Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years.
esafak 10mo ago
If only they had a good designer. They have the ugliest frames.
- fidotron 10mo ago
  They also like to indulge in massive post purchase UX changes so if you like it now there is a good chance you won't in a year.
plebianRube 10mo ago
In the future, we could use some sort of traffic management system, were cars which conform to a standard are able to 'link-up' and move as one unit like a train, it would relieve alot of the stop and go and improve flow on congested roads, possibly with denser traffic. I'd bet alot of daily commuters woild subscribe to something like that.
- 1970-01-01 10mo ago
  That was planned a very long time ago. It was too early, and we completely squandered it. Now the spectrum allocated for V2V it is gone. https://www.butzel.com/alert-The-Latest-Development-in-the-Saga-of-Spectrum-for-Connected-Cars https://www.butzel.com/alert-The-Latest-Development-in-the-S...
  - teach 10mo ago
    Yeah, I saw a demo of this in a robotics lab at my local university like 20+ years ago and thought full self-driving was right around the corner. It will probably EVENTUALLY show up, but I'm thinking it's more like decades away at this point.
uberman 10mo ago
Why do people what self driving cars at all? I certainly hate the thought of having to pay for any of this. Even if the end product is subscription based, all these feature cost money up front making new cars super expensive.
- bluGill 10mo ago
  It remains to be seen, but there is reason to believe that self driving cars will be enough safer than regular cars that I as a citizen want everyone to have them if you have a car. I have kids who walk, ride bikes, and I do the same. There are a lot of terrible drivers out there - the average driver who thinks they are better than everyone else is still terrible (yes this includes me - I'm one of the few honest enough to admit I'm not good, but I'm about equal to everyone else)
- ricardobeat 10mo ago
  Doing long highway drives is effortless. Think cruise control, but you can let go of the wheel. The hardware necessary for level 2 autonomy is estimated to cost about US$400 in a Tesla. Much higher for companies using Lidar though prices are coming down as well.
  - kjkjadksj 10mo ago
    Driving is already effortless. It’s not like you actively think about steering.
- aclatuts 10mo ago
  My sister plans to just buy the self driving subscription for the month they go on road trips and thats it. Far better than buying it up front.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    I don't think so. My financial situation isn't hers though, and I don't even own one. I borrowed a friend's for a 550 mile road trip this past weekend and then for a few days after. It's there enough to do the usual daily trips with minimal interaction, so while road trips is the obvious situation for it it's also really nice to have the rest of the time. It sucks that it costs so much when it could be free, but we still live under capitalism so that's just how that one goes.
herbturbo 10mo ago
That all sounds great but with CARIAD now being involved at Rivian I won’t hold my breath on that roadmap being executed.
ricardobeat 10mo ago
Those blue stripes look amazing in a retro-future kind of way. About time cars started getting back some personality.
- NickM 10mo ago
  I don’t think that the production model will look like that, I believe it’s a wrap. Also suspect it’s a bit of a joke on the model being called the R2 (the colors and patterns are reminiscent of R2-D2).
nextstep 10mo ago
These companies are only surviving because of US protectionism. This tech is more expensive than then Chinese equivalent from 2-3 years ago (look at what Xiaomi or BYD released as their 2024 models). These cars will not sell well outside of the US.
- ricardobeat 10mo ago
  While the software is indeed behind - e.g. Nio already had all of this in 2022/2023, and a much better UI, I'm sure the upcoming Rivian R2 and R3 would sell very well in Europe.
  - nextstep 10mo ago
    Europe will probably be the largest market where US EVs will try to compete with Chinese cars. BYD is already selling better spec’d models for less than this Rivian, and Xiaomi will enter the market late 2026. I don’t see how Rivian can compete, either on price or features.
viburnum 10mo ago
Quite the qualification for self-driving: "as long as there are clearly painted lane lines."
- pstuart 10mo ago
  +3.5 million miles out of ~4.x million miles of existing roads -- not too shabby. Seems like a good start to me, and I'd rather they approach as cautiously as possible.
- m463 10mo ago
  I notice that tesla seems to choose (highlight in blue) the left and/or right lane lines or the car in front of you. But it still seems to work without lines.
- japhyr 10mo ago
  Fully autonomous driving in all conditions in all locations is clearly a hard problem that's still not solved. I'm very happy with any company that clearly spells out the situations where their tech works, and the situations where it doesn't yet work.
  - RivieraKid 10mo ago
    I've been saying that it's semi-solved, in the sense that we have a decent idea of how to get there without requiring major breakthroughs. (By "we" I mean Waymo.)
  - red75prime 10mo ago
    I can't find how it will operate. Will it detect a situation where lines are not painted sufficiently clearly, warn you, and disengage? Or will you need to detect where it begins to operate wonky because lines aren't painted sufficiently clearly and to take over? I guess it's the second. It's hands-off, not eyes-off. Also, I would like to see a car company that is further down the road of full autonomy clearly describing all the long tail scenarios. It's just impossible.
    - 10mo ago
deleted 10mo ago
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magguzu 10mo ago
I'm getting real tired of seeing Silicon Valley reinvent trains.
andreybaskov 10mo ago
Out of all things I'm actually surprised they went straight to custom silicon, but gotta respect that decision. It's likely the only way to compete with Tesla right now.
iambateman 10mo ago
it seems like car-makers themselves feel burdened to make their own self-driving tech, as opposed to outsourcing the software to a third party. Dell and HP don’t make operating systems…it seems like having a handful of companies focused on getting the self-driving part right without the need to also specialize in manufacturing would be beneficial. My first inclination was to be bullish on Rivian, and there’s no question that their vehicles are beautiful. But is there anything to suggest they have an advantage over Tesla or other automakers when it comes to self-driving?
- dymk 10mo ago
  They could have a better driving assistance package than 99% of other cars on the road for 1/10 the price by using OpenPilot as the LKAS, or installing a Comma in the car. Real shame nobody has taken that approach, not even a fork
  - AlotOfReading 10mo ago
    Comma had made essentially no efforts to meet the requirements of automotive systems the last time I looked at them. They would be an incredibly risky supplier for systems that could easily come under regulatory scrutiny.
    - RealityVoid 10mo ago
      That's not completely true. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/SAFETY.md https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/SAFETY... It's an... interesting approach, They essentially reduce the surface area as much as possible. I don't buy that it's enough, but, again, interesting to see what they do. Besides, a big OEM could pour an army of developers and turn the Comma approach into an ASIL D, it would be quite a lot of work but within the realm of possibility.
  - rootusrootus 10mo ago
    I recently ordered a Comma Four, which I will install BluePilot on and use with my Lightning. I'm looking forward to seeing how competent it is. Gets good reviews, at least, so I'm hoping. I do wonder if there will be many more iterations, though, with so many manufacturers switching over to an encrypted canbus and locking out the control method comma uses.
gnarlouse 10mo ago
Rivian coming for Teslas crown? I honestly think Rivians are unattractive. Like if a jeep and scion had a drunken tryst. Haven’t seen the interior before though. But I’d be glad if somebody was competitive enough to force Elon to behave again.
diddid 10mo ago
Interesting contrast to all this tech is that my wife liked the Rivian, but when I told her they won’t do car play that interest went to 0. Can CarPlay not play nice with these things or do they want to keep all the tech dollars to themselves?
- cr125rider 10mo ago
  In 6 years I don’t want your laggy legacy system with unsupported apps. I want my new phone to power the experience. Most of my experience in a car is digital, the physical needs to do its best to get out of the way. I hope Rivian fails for missing this obvious point.
  - jonathanlb 10mo ago
    > Most of my experience in a car is digital What do you mean? My experience in a budget car from the early 2010s is entirely the opposite, so I don't understand fully.
    - stackghost 10mo ago
      I drive a 2013 VW diesel and literally every aspect of vehicle ownership today is inferior except for emissions.
- staticshock 10mo ago
  Direct quote from RJ Scaringe, founder/CEO of Rivian: > This is a decision. It's generated, I said there's many millions of decisions, many of them will never get noticed and they're just under the surface. One of those decisions that's been noticed quite a bit is the fact that we've intentionally not included CarPlay in the vehicle. And that's not to say we don't think a close partnership with Apple is important. So we have Apple Music integration, we have a bunch of Apple integrations that are yet to come, we have a great relationship with the team at Apple. But it was more to say, we just felt and continue to feel very strongly about creating a consistent, fully integrated digital experience where you're not jumping between apps, let's say from a CarPlay app back to the vehicle app. And it's quite jarring when you don't have, let's say vehicle level controls when you're in the CarPlay environment. That view we've had since the early, early days. I think that's going to become even more important and more true in a world of integrated AI. https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/14/transcript https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/14/transcript
modeless 10mo ago
I think it makes sense to do an ASIC later, but not now. Chip development is expensive and risky. They ought to at least start selling a product with positive gross margin first.
- pm90 10mo ago
  Its possible that they have tried that and the market isn’t giving them what they need at the price they want. I do mostly agree with you though; its the economics of the car thats gonna supercharge adoption. EDIT: another commenter mentioned that their platform is used by other companies (VW perhaps?). With that information, it might make more sense to do this.
dvrj101 10mo ago
acquiring steradian semiconductors was a quite good move.
Rover222 10mo ago
Any company adding fancy hardware (beyond good cameras and inference chips) to achieve self driving is on the wrong track at this point. Software is what will win this game. Of course, Waymo has achieved good results with A LOT of fancy hardware. But it's hard to see how they stand a chance against Cybercab mass production (probably behind schedule, but eventually). I think Rivian has the best-looking line of EVs out there. Maybe they will be able to come from behind in self-driving tech. But this big reveal is not that promising, IMO.
- horsawlarway 10mo ago
  An alternate take here: The "fancy" hardware is going to get dirt cheap, and in a game where you're asking your customer to trust you with their lives, reliability is going to win. Combine that with time to market, and Tesla feels like a pretty clear "risky bet" at best... Maybe they make it work, but they have to do it before the other companies make lidar cheap, and prices have fallen dramatically over the past 10 years, for much better hardware.
  - Rover222 10mo ago
    Yeah, that is all reasonable. I think the jury is still out on if sensor fusion can really get far enough up the march of nines (will it work in 99.99 percent of scenarios)? Karpathy has given some good interviews about why Tesla ditched the sensor fusion approach and switched to vision-only. Same can be said for vision-only, of course. Maybe it won't every quite get to 99.99.
lunias 10mo ago
As opposed to more tech, I'd prefer (significantly) less mass.
- krosaen 10mo ago
  You probably don't want a long range EV then?
  - lunias 10mo ago
    Less mass will yield longer range. I know you're referring to the battery accounting for a large percentage of the weight, but a smaller vehicle will get the same range with a smaller battery, and the weight savings compound. If the vehicle weighs less, then all the components supporting that weight can weigh less as well. Unsprung mass can be reduced significantly. Acceleration, braking, handling, and top speed all improve as a result. Components will also generally cost less, reducing the price of the vehicle and making it cheaper to maintain.
    - krosaen 10mo ago
      Interesting, yeah, my instinct is that the sensor weight delta would be negligible but perhaps not.
      - lunias 10mo ago
        Fair enough, I guess I'm speaking too generally.
unstatusthequo 10mo ago
Gotta hand it to Rivian. Solid progress. Not having those features is why I didn’t buy one before. These advances make it a bit more attractive.
nathan_compton 10mo ago
I cannot give a shit about hands free driving. If I have to pay attention I may as well just drive the damn car. I will care when they sell the cars without steering wheels.
roguecoder 10mo ago
It is nice to see a car company investing in a sensor platform that could actually safely self-drive. It is unfortunate that the existing market participants seem hell-bent on destroying consumer confidence in self-driving before this will make it to market. We desperately need a safety regimen for self-driving cars that takes it as seriously as airplane safety.
- declan_roberts 10mo ago
  Have you driven in Tesla FSD 14 yet? I've been in both Waymo and the latest version of FSD from Tesla. They are very, very good.
  - flounder3 10mo ago
    How many hours have you spent with the latest Tesla FSD in congested neighborhoods or unprotected left turns at sunset? It may be "good," but it's not even remotely close to the current Waymo experience, especially when it comes to abnormal situations. I am continually blown away by how Waymo behaves (spent 3 hours in them this past week). I'm rooting for Tesla, but it is nowhere near Waymo as of today.
SoftTalker 10mo ago
RIVN doing quite well today.
matty22 10mo ago
Yeah, but does it have CarPlay yet?

395 points by doctoboggan 10mo ago

bjord 10mo ago

is everyone designing their own silicon getting so much additional them-specific utility out of it that it's actually worth it?

darth_avocado 10mo ago
Rivian has a huge interest in being the outsourcer for legacy automakers. They’re not able to sell $100k cars enough and even with the promised R2, they probably will only be a small-ish player in the EV market. Their CEO recognizes how crazy good Chinese EVs are and currently they’re not even a competitor for Tesla. But, VW is willing to pay $5B for their software platform. I think they want to extend that to being able to sell custom chips and “AI” capabilities, whatever that means.
- igor47 10mo ago
  Which honestly is crazy to me. I have a Rivian, and to say the software is disappointing would be an understatement. There are heisenbugs galore; some examples: * Doors refuse to open * Lose the ability to control media playback using any controls * Any button in the UI just opens and closes the windows Granted, I'm a server side/backend engineer mostly, and I don't know much about writing software/firmware for a very hostile emf environment. But if any project I worked on had bugs like this, fixed at the rate they're fixed on Rivian, I would assume a badly flawed architecture or non existent technical leadership Yet VW paid billions for this very software. I can't imagine how bad it must've been on their own stack that they gave up and bought this other seemingly broken stack
  - WaxProlix 10mo ago
    This sounds nothing like my experience, you should get that vehicle serviced.
    - Hovertruck 10mo ago
      Same, I've had mine for a couple of years now with no notable software issues at all.
    - amluto 10mo ago
      Service can’t do anything about the state machine being wrong. The Rivian app does not permit you to send a command to the car while the app thinks the car is processing a command. Trunk opening? You can’t unlock the door. On top of this, if you try to open the trunk while outside Bluetooth range and then Bluetooth connects, you are still stuck waiting for the pending command to complete. Oh, and the ridiculous “hey let’s always remind you that you own a Rivian” Live Activity seems to synchronize on a schedule that involves being hours and hours out of date. The Rivian app sucks.
      - WaxProlix 10mo ago
        I agree that the app leaves something to be desired - my personal pet peeve is that it shows stale or cached data while waiting to do some async update, leading to just outright fabricated charge or lock state. Never had those kinds of problems with the truck's software proper though
      - cryptoegorophy 10mo ago
        Why can’t they just copy Tesla? Chinese manufacturers do just that and skip the hard steps
    - Robdel12 10mo ago
      This comment is pretty funny to me, as a car guy. What’s there to service? It’s a software issue.
      - zamadatix 10mo ago
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mbesto 10mo ago
    I own a Rivian too, and previously owned a Tesla. While I too have my gripes about the UX on the Rivian, it still beats the cr*p out of a Tesla.
    - Rover222 10mo ago
      Just curious in what ways, since you've actually owned both. I've only had Teslas, but I like the looks of Rivians.
      - mbesto 10mo ago
        Tesla UX gripes (may be specific to Model S 2020): - Yolk steering is terrible - Lack of physical knobs. Haptics are nice but haptics don't work well for cars. - Tesla menus are getting stuffed more and more with options, making affordance and UI crowding much worse - The horn is a button press...no one in a emergency situation is looking for a button press.. - Native apps (for example Spotify) are inferior to just using my phone via bluetooth - Calendar integration / notification is too chatty
  - m463 10mo ago
    stuff like that happens with tesla. one funny one is that periodically you can trigger the "more cowbell" rainbow road easter egg. You can cancel the road animation, but you can't cancel the easter egg music or control the volume.
bickfordb 10mo ago
I have the same question. It makes sense that they might need bespoke software, but how could they possibly be more efficient at creating chips than an AMD/Nvidia?
- slashdave 10mo ago
  Well, if AMD and/or Nvidia were to invest on a chip for an auto, maybe you might have a point.
  - riotnrrd 10mo ago
    NVIDIA has been selling automotive-specific silicon for a decade.
  - AlotOfReading 10mo ago
    Both AMD and Nvidia have strong automotive offerings.
potatolicious 10mo ago
I share your skepticism. This feels like an attempt to tap the trainloads of money piling into "AI", for a company that is in pretty desperate need of more cash to stay alive. In a vacuum there are potentially some advantages to doing your own silicon, especially if your goal is to sell the platform to other automakers as an OEM. But custom silicon is pricey as hell (if you're doing anything non-trivial, at least), and the payoffs have a long lead time. For a company that's bleeding cash aggressively, with a short runway, to engage in this seems iffy. This sort of move makes a lot more sense if Rivian was an established maker that's cash-flow positive and is looking to cement their long-term lead with free cash flow. Buuuuut they aren't that.
thomasjb 10mo ago
Possibly. Realistically this is replacing the expensive category of FPGA (Zynqs or similar with strong hardware CPU cores), this means they get all the peripherals they desire in hardware, and they can pick the core variant in order to optimise for their workloads (all the different vector extensions for example). There's an interesting market for that kind of thing, either full FPGA to ASIC replacement, or drop in replacement FPGAs of lower cost (The Rigol MHO98 replaced the Xilinx FPGA of the previous generation with a substitute from Fudan). If you're shipping a lot of hardware, that sort of thing becomes worthwhile.
- wmf 10mo ago
  Nope, it's replacing Orin.
ShakataGaNai 10mo ago
I would wager that's because there isn't a lot of existing silicon that fits the bill. What COTS equipment is there that has all the CPU/Tensor horsepower these systems need... AND is reasonably power efficient AND is rated for a vehicle (wild temp extremes like -20F to 150F+, constant vibration, slams and impacts... and will keep working for 15 years). Yea, Tesla has some. But they aren't sharing their secret sauce. You can't just throw a desktop computer in a car and expect it to survive for the duration. Ford et all aren't anywhere close to having "premium silicon". So you're only option right now is to build your own. And hope maybe that you can sell/license your designs to others later and make bucks.
- typewithrhythm 10mo ago
  NVIDIA orin series is the big one for tensor horsepower. Horizon robotics and Qualcomm also have competitive automotive packages. They are all expensive, but less than the risk adjusted cost of developing a chip.
  - pstuart 10mo ago
    Isn't that risk balanced by a healthy reward of controlling their verticals and possible secret sauce? And their chips give "1600 sparse INT8 TOPS" vs the Orin's "more than 1,000 INT8 TOPS" -- so comparable enough? And going forward they can tailor it to exactly what they want?
    - typewithrhythm 10mo ago
      Mostly it costs hundreds of millions to develop a chip; it relies on volume to recover the cost. NVIDIA also tailor their chips to customers. It's a more scalable platform than their marketing hints at... Not to mention that they also iterate fairly quickly. So far anyway, being on a specialised architecture is a disadvantage; it's much easier to use the advances that come from research and competitors. Unless you really think that you are ahead of the completion, and can sell some fairly inflexible solution for a while.
    - AlotOfReading 10mo ago
ChuckMcM 10mo ago
I was just in a discussion on this very topic. It's the build vs buy equation applied to silicon. Early in the tech boom the entire silicon stack was proprietary and required a lot of time and investment to train up people who could design the circuitry, we got our first "ASICS" which was basically a bunch of circuitry on a die and you then added your own metal layer so it was like having a bunch of components glued to a board and you could "customize" it by putting wires between the parts. Then we had fabs that needed more wafer starts so they started doing other peoples designs which required they standardize their cells and provide integration services (you brought a design and they mapped it to their standard cells and process). And as the density kept going up they kept having loots of free space they needed to fill up. The 'fabless' chip companies continued to invest in making new parts until the pipeline was pretty smooth. And at that point the level of training you needed a the origin to get it into silicon dropped to nearly zero, you just needed the designs. And into that space people who were neither 'chip' companies, nor were they 'fabless' OEMs, realized they could get their integration needs met by asking a company to make them a chip that did exactly what they wanted. One the business side, the economics are fabulous, your competitors can't "clone" your product if they don't have your special sauce components. So in many ways it becomes a strategic advantage to maintaining your market position. But all of that because the all up cost to go from specification to parts meeting the specification dropped into the range where you could build special parts and still price at the market for your finished product. A really interesting illustration is to look at disk drive controller boards from the Shugart Associates ST-506 (5MB) drive, to Seagate's current offerings. It is illustrative because disk drives are a product that has been ruthlessly economized because of low margins. The ST-506 is all TTL logic and standard analog parts, and yet current products have semiconductor parts that are made exactly to Seagate's design specs and aren't sold to anyone else. So to answer your question; apparently the economics work out. The costs associated with designing, testing, and packaging your own silicon appears to be cost effective even on products with exceptionally tight margins, it is likely a clear winner on a product that enjoys the margins that electric vehicles offer.
- bjord 10mo ago
  very interesting. thanks for sharing!

7e 10mo ago

No, Waymo is just going to license their tech to normal automakers, like Toyota, and those licensees will win. Rivian is run by a Musk-wannabe but even this stock pump isn’t going to help with his sociopath, multibillion dollar compensation package.

darth_avocado 10mo ago
What stock pump, its cratered on the news.
- SonOfKyuss 10mo ago
  That is curious. The market must not have faith in their ability to execute on their plans
  - darth_avocado 10mo ago
    The market wants them to sell the $40k cars asap. All the other side quests are distractions. When they spun off their electric bike side project, the stock went up.
    - dmix 10mo ago
      Adding LIDAR would probably turn a $40k car a $70k car as well.
TulliusCicero 10mo ago
Incendiary language aside, this does seem pretty likely to me. Waymo has already talked about wanting to license their driver for personally owned cars eventually; it just doesn't make sense for them to do so until they can cover more of the country (or countries). The more areas they cover, and especially when they can cover various popular freeways connecting different metro areas, the more it'll make sense for them to start partnering with automakers to sell the technology to consumers.
georgeburdell 10mo ago

cyberax 10mo ago

Yet no AndoidAuto. Pass.

suprnurd 10mo ago

Where I live I am often surrounded by Waymo vehicles... is Lidar 100% safe for people to be around? I ask because I read an article about how Lidar on one of the new Volvos could destroy your phone camera if you pointed it at it? If Lidar can do that to a phone camera, can it hurt your eyes?

OneDeuxTriSeiGo 10mo ago
Depends on the type of LIDAR. LIDAR rated for vehicle use is at a wavelength opaque to the eyes so it hits the surface and fluid of your eye and reflects back rather than going through to your cones and rods. It isn't however opaque for optical glass (since the LIDAR has to shine through optical glass in the first place) so it hits your camera lens, goes straight through, and slams the sensor.
- kappi 10mo ago
  During the presentation, Rivian speaker specifically said it is safe for your camera sensors. Check the youtube video of their presentation
  - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 10mo ago
    Ah. Theirs may be then. In which case they are probably using a different wavelength and a different glass. I was just speaking in terms of the commonplace LIDAR solutions for road use.
- dllu 10mo ago
  You seem to be implying that all automotive lidar are 1550 nm but that's not true. While there are lots of 1550 nm automotive lidars (Luminar on Volvo, Seyond on NIO) there are also plenty of 850 nm to 940 nm lidars are used in cars (Hesai, Robosense, etc). Those can pass through water and get focused to your retina, but they are also a lot lower power so they do not damage cameras.
  - culi 10mo ago

idontwantthis 10mo ago

Can anyone explain why RIVN is down 8% after this announcement? Were investors expecting hands free handjobs or something?

nrjames 10mo ago
“Buy the rumors and sell the news.” Just typical market stuff.
- idontwantthis 10mo ago
  Now it almost reached $20 lol.
doctoboggan 10mo ago
Maybe they think custom silicon is biting off more than they can chew, coming at a time when they need to focus on R2 production and scale-up.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
spankalee 10mo ago
I hold some RIVN and I'm wondering why they're spending resources on custom silicon instead of using something off-the-shelf. What is their advantage here? Can they hire the right people? Can they ship enough units to pay for it? Those are my bearish questions. On the bullish side, the VW deal shows that they're willing and able to license part of their platform, so possibly have a big chance to recoup costs and maybe turn a profit just on that side, which justifies a big software + autonomy investment.
- ssl-3 10mo ago
  If their idea is both novel and useful, and if it actually works, and they can actually produce it, then: They can sell it to other automakers. (GM has made a lot of cars with their own transmissions. And at various times, they've supplied -lots- of them to other automakers all over the world. They've made a lot of money doing this. Someone's gotta build the machine vision/control systems for all of these self-driving cars; that someone may well be Rivian. It's not as sexy as something like a new convertible might be, or a $40k self-driving electric car, and a consumer might not even know that the new car in their driveway has expensive Rivian parts buried inside, but that future can be very profitable for them.)

nicksergeant 10mo ago

Meanwhile, the only thing people really want from Rivian is CarPlay / Android Auto support, lol.

airstrike 10mo ago
Not investors, though
cyode 10mo ago
CarPlay and affordability. I was totally smitten last year with the R1S during a test drive. I'm not a car person but felt that spark people must feel when they obsess over their vehicles. But it wasn't pushing-six-figures smitten, which is where you're at when you get a new one with customizations.
- nicksergeant 10mo ago
  Yep. I certainly wanted an R1S, but ended up in an EV9 due to CarPlay plus huge lease incentives. No regrets, and will probably get another after this lease is up.
- ActorNightly 10mo ago
  >afforadbility This 1000%. Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker. Instead, we are getting these boutique, expensive vehicles packed full of tech, but in the end, they still fundamentally suck as cars compared to gas alternatives, especially hybrid. I got a Prius Prime for my wife last year, the car is way better than any EV on the market in terms of usability. Driving to work and back can all be done in EV mode easily, and then when you wanna go somewhere, you can keep the car above 80 mph easily and get there faster without worrying about where to charge.
  - reanimus 10mo ago
    > Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker. I think this is more or less the pitch behind Slate (https://www.slate.auto/en https://www.slate.auto/en), though it's more of a truck/SUV form factor.

TulliusCicero 10mo ago

Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway). Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.

margalabargala 10mo ago
> the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That's one alternative. Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update. "Continuous development" isn't always a selling point when it's something with your life in its hands. A great example is Tesla. There are plenty of people who are thrilled with the continuous updates and changes to everything, and there are plenty of people that mock Tesla for it. Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.
- nradov 10mo ago
  The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
  - hateselfdriving 10mo ago
    Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle. Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers. What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming. Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted. You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.

frankfrank13 10mo ago

Is there some tight coupling on autonomy + electric cars? Seems the only 2 viable hands-free car companies are Tesla and Rivian. I don't see myself ever getting an electric car, but it doesn't seem like the big car companies are anywhere near this.

hartator 10mo ago
I think the shift to EV is inevitable.
- colordrops 10mo ago
  I agree, but it won't happen until EVs get more range.
  - amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
    Better charging infrastructure and faster charging batteries will mitigate some of that.
  - 5upplied_demand 10mo ago
    That has been happening consistently for almost 15 years. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1323-january-1-2024-top-range-model-year-2023-evs-was-516-miles-single https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1323-janu...
  - ok_dad 10mo ago
    The range is fine today, the problem is charging infrastructure now. There aren't enough high speed chargers, and we can't build more because of the same reasons we can't build more AI datacenters: power. Tesla can build tons of them because they're backed by large grid batteries that suck up the power peaks from fast charging so that they can install their charging stations anywhere that has somewhat reliable power. If you don't have the batteries to act as a peak shaver, then it's really hard to install high speed charging where people need it most in residential and commercial areas that are already oversubscribed.

criddell 10mo ago

Is the paint job supposed to resemble R2-D2?

doctoboggan 10mo ago

I loved to see that they plan on running the Rivian Assistant LLM onboard using their new Gen 3 hardware. Great that they see that as a valuable feature and I hope to see the industry move that way.

asadm 10mo ago

I hear many Rivian customers really love Comma.ai, so much that they are #1 on Comma dash.

ShakataGaNai 10mo ago
Probably a lot of overlap in the venn diagram of people who would like the two things. Mostly the "Early Adopter" circle. Also a lot of cars have a lot of limitations with comma.ai. Yes, you can install it on all sorts but there are limitations like: above 32mph, cannot resume from stop, cannot take tight corners, cannot do stop light detection, requires additional car upgrades/features, only known to support model year 2021. Etc. Rivian supports everything, it has a customer base who LOVE technology, are willing to try new things, and ... have disposable income for a $1k extra gadget.
- maherbeg 10mo ago
  a lot of the gen1 users will likely swap over to it though. They basically have dropped improvements for gen1 autonomy which is rug-pullish :(
- cryptoegorophy 10mo ago
  I’ve seen videos of massive touch screen stuttering, is it still a thing on rivian?

daemonologist 10mo ago

The R2(-D2) livery is a fun touch

orliesaurus 10mo ago

Watching this unfold... I keep thinking about the supply chain... how many rare minerals go into this custom silicon? ALSO what happens when the first generation hits end-of-life... will there be a clear path to recycling? I want to believe these platforms will last more than a subscription cycle... BUT I guess we won't know until we see a teardown...

spankalee 10mo ago
Why would more minerals go into custom silicon than off-the-shelf silicon? How would recycling be any different?
- orliesaurus 10mo ago
  not "more"
porphyra 10mo ago
typical automotive 905 nm lidars are just CMOS chips similar to cameras and regular computer chips

porphyra 10mo ago

Rivians have been spotted with giant Velodyne VLS-128 "Alpha Puck"s since several years ago [1]. But from last I checked, Rivian's ADAS is still struggling with ping-ponging in lanes on curved stretches, and it only works on a small set of pre-mapped highways. Highly doubtful that "universal hands free" is coming. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/mqijd2/rivian_r1t_spotted_with_lidar_rig_in_palo_alto_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/mqijd2/riv...

typewithrhythm 10mo ago
The big lidars are for ground truth collection. They get used in projects ranging from autonomous development all the way down to budget adaptive cruise control or parking sensor benchmarking.
Zee2 10mo ago
The ping-ponging is certainly a Gen1 problem. (My Gen1 does this.) Gen1 was essentially an off-the-shelf Mobileye unit, and the performance was, as expected, not good. Gen2 autonomy stack is completely unrelated to Gen1, and from what I hear is a completely different level of reliability. (also - this presentation covered yet another, unrelated, gen3 autonomy stack, which shares none of the hardware or models with the existing gen2 stack, either.)

thebeardisred 10mo ago

What I'm wondering is that the stack up of licensed processor IP looks like.

mtoner23 10mo ago

how about they try to make their cars profitably first....

behnamoh 10mo ago
They'd rather make their board and CEO profitable first...
jjtheblunt 10mo ago
looks like they're profitable already if counting cars and software on them. https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-third-quarter-2025-financial-results https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-third-qu...

mrcwinn 10mo ago

This is really poor execution. You're taking a complex, low margin vehicle and introducing even more cost and supply chain complexity. On top of that, you're essentially making a proxy bet that more expensive hardware (LIDAR) will beat Tesla's software bet. It's absolutely fair to criticize Elon for his ridiculous FSD timeline claims, but here we are now evaluating the market: if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet.

senordevnyc 10mo ago
Waymo is delivering millions of paid rides per month all over the country with no one in the driver's seat. Tesla still can't manage that in one small city without a backup driver in the front. But yes, just like the dozens of other times I've read this comment for years now, I'm sure "the latest version of FSD" is so groundbreaking, and it's all about to change!
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet I have. It’s wild for anyone to say this. Waymo works. FSD mostly works, and I seriously considered getting a Tesla after borrowing one last week. But it needs to be supervised—this is apparent both in its attention requirement and the one time last week it tried to bolt into a red-lit intersection. The state of the art is Waymo. The jury is still out on whether cameras only can replicate its success. If it can’t, that safety margin could mean game over for FSD on the insurance or regulatory levels. In that case, Rivian could be No. 2 to Waymo (which will be No. 1 if cameras only doesn’t pan out, given they have infinite money from Google). That’s a good bet. And if cameras only works, you’ll still have the ultra premium segment Tesla seems to have abandoned and which may be wary of licensing from Waymo.
- Rover222 10mo ago
  Waymo operates on guardrails, with a lot more human-in-the-loop (remotely) help than most people seem aware of. Tesla's already have similar capabilities, in a much wider range of roads, in vehicles that cost 80% less to manufacture. They're both achieving impressive results. But if you read beyond headlines, Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years.

esafak 10mo ago

If only they had a good designer. They have the ugliest frames.

fidotron 10mo ago
They also like to indulge in massive post purchase UX changes so if you like it now there is a good chance you won't in a year.

plebianRube 10mo ago

In the future, we could use some sort of traffic management system, were cars which conform to a standard are able to 'link-up' and move as one unit like a train, it would relieve alot of the stop and go and improve flow on congested roads, possibly with denser traffic. I'd bet alot of daily commuters woild subscribe to something like that.

1970-01-01 10mo ago
That was planned a very long time ago. It was too early, and we completely squandered it. Now the spectrum allocated for V2V it is gone. https://www.butzel.com/alert-The-Latest-Development-in-the-Saga-of-Spectrum-for-Connected-Cars https://www.butzel.com/alert-The-Latest-Development-in-the-S...
- teach 10mo ago
  Yeah, I saw a demo of this in a robotics lab at my local university like 20+ years ago and thought full self-driving was right around the corner. It will probably EVENTUALLY show up, but I'm thinking it's more like decades away at this point.

uberman 10mo ago

Why do people what self driving cars at all? I certainly hate the thought of having to pay for any of this. Even if the end product is subscription based, all these feature cost money up front making new cars super expensive.

bluGill 10mo ago
It remains to be seen, but there is reason to believe that self driving cars will be enough safer than regular cars that I as a citizen want everyone to have them if you have a car. I have kids who walk, ride bikes, and I do the same. There are a lot of terrible drivers out there - the average driver who thinks they are better than everyone else is still terrible (yes this includes me - I'm one of the few honest enough to admit I'm not good, but I'm about equal to everyone else)
ricardobeat 10mo ago
Doing long highway drives is effortless. Think cruise control, but you can let go of the wheel. The hardware necessary for level 2 autonomy is estimated to cost about US$400 in a Tesla. Much higher for companies using Lidar though prices are coming down as well.
- kjkjadksj 10mo ago
  Driving is already effortless. It’s not like you actively think about steering.
aclatuts 10mo ago
My sister plans to just buy the self driving subscription for the month they go on road trips and thats it. Far better than buying it up front.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  I don't think so. My financial situation isn't hers though, and I don't even own one. I borrowed a friend's for a 550 mile road trip this past weekend and then for a few days after. It's there enough to do the usual daily trips with minimal interaction, so while road trips is the obvious situation for it it's also really nice to have the rest of the time. It sucks that it costs so much when it could be free, but we still live under capitalism so that's just how that one goes.

herbturbo 10mo ago

That all sounds great but with CARIAD now being involved at Rivian I won’t hold my breath on that roadmap being executed.

ricardobeat 10mo ago

Those blue stripes look amazing in a retro-future kind of way. About time cars started getting back some personality.

NickM 10mo ago
I don’t think that the production model will look like that, I believe it’s a wrap. Also suspect it’s a bit of a joke on the model being called the R2 (the colors and patterns are reminiscent of R2-D2).

nextstep 10mo ago

These companies are only surviving because of US protectionism. This tech is more expensive than then Chinese equivalent from 2-3 years ago (look at what Xiaomi or BYD released as their 2024 models). These cars will not sell well outside of the US.

ricardobeat 10mo ago
While the software is indeed behind - e.g. Nio already had all of this in 2022/2023, and a much better UI, I'm sure the upcoming Rivian R2 and R3 would sell very well in Europe.
- nextstep 10mo ago
  Europe will probably be the largest market where US EVs will try to compete with Chinese cars. BYD is already selling better spec’d models for less than this Rivian, and Xiaomi will enter the market late 2026. I don’t see how Rivian can compete, either on price or features.

viburnum 10mo ago

Quite the qualification for self-driving: "as long as there are clearly painted lane lines."

pstuart 10mo ago
+3.5 million miles out of ~4.x million miles of existing roads -- not too shabby. Seems like a good start to me, and I'd rather they approach as cautiously as possible.
m463 10mo ago
I notice that tesla seems to choose (highlight in blue) the left and/or right lane lines or the car in front of you. But it still seems to work without lines.
japhyr 10mo ago
Fully autonomous driving in all conditions in all locations is clearly a hard problem that's still not solved. I'm very happy with any company that clearly spells out the situations where their tech works, and the situations where it doesn't yet work.
- RivieraKid 10mo ago
  I've been saying that it's semi-solved, in the sense that we have a decent idea of how to get there without requiring major breakthroughs. (By "we" I mean Waymo.)
- red75prime 10mo ago
  I can't find how it will operate. Will it detect a situation where lines are not painted sufficiently clearly, warn you, and disengage? Or will you need to detect where it begins to operate wonky because lines aren't painted sufficiently clearly and to take over? I guess it's the second. It's hands-off, not eyes-off. Also, I would like to see a car company that is further down the road of full autonomy clearly describing all the long tail scenarios. It's just impossible.
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magguzu 10mo ago

I'm getting real tired of seeing Silicon Valley reinvent trains.

andreybaskov 10mo ago

Out of all things I'm actually surprised they went straight to custom silicon, but gotta respect that decision. It's likely the only way to compete with Tesla right now.

iambateman 10mo ago

it seems like car-makers themselves feel burdened to make their own self-driving tech, as opposed to outsourcing the software to a third party. Dell and HP don’t make operating systems…it seems like having a handful of companies focused on getting the self-driving part right without the need to also specialize in manufacturing would be beneficial. My first inclination was to be bullish on Rivian, and there’s no question that their vehicles are beautiful. But is there anything to suggest they have an advantage over Tesla or other automakers when it comes to self-driving?

dymk 10mo ago
They could have a better driving assistance package than 99% of other cars on the road for 1/10 the price by using OpenPilot as the LKAS, or installing a Comma in the car. Real shame nobody has taken that approach, not even a fork
- AlotOfReading 10mo ago
  Comma had made essentially no efforts to meet the requirements of automotive systems the last time I looked at them. They would be an incredibly risky supplier for systems that could easily come under regulatory scrutiny.
  - RealityVoid 10mo ago
    That's not completely true. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/SAFETY.md https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/SAFETY... It's an... interesting approach, They essentially reduce the surface area as much as possible. I don't buy that it's enough, but, again, interesting to see what they do. Besides, a big OEM could pour an army of developers and turn the Comma approach into an ASIL D, it would be quite a lot of work but within the realm of possibility.
- rootusrootus 10mo ago
  I recently ordered a Comma Four, which I will install BluePilot on and use with my Lightning. I'm looking forward to seeing how competent it is. Gets good reviews, at least, so I'm hoping. I do wonder if there will be many more iterations, though, with so many manufacturers switching over to an encrypted canbus and locking out the control method comma uses.

gnarlouse 10mo ago

Rivian coming for Teslas crown? I honestly think Rivians are unattractive. Like if a jeep and scion had a drunken tryst. Haven’t seen the interior before though. But I’d be glad if somebody was competitive enough to force Elon to behave again.

diddid 10mo ago

Interesting contrast to all this tech is that my wife liked the Rivian, but when I told her they won’t do car play that interest went to 0. Can CarPlay not play nice with these things or do they want to keep all the tech dollars to themselves?

cr125rider 10mo ago
In 6 years I don’t want your laggy legacy system with unsupported apps. I want my new phone to power the experience. Most of my experience in a car is digital, the physical needs to do its best to get out of the way. I hope Rivian fails for missing this obvious point.
- jonathanlb 10mo ago
  > Most of my experience in a car is digital What do you mean? My experience in a budget car from the early 2010s is entirely the opposite, so I don't understand fully.
  - stackghost 10mo ago
    I drive a 2013 VW diesel and literally every aspect of vehicle ownership today is inferior except for emissions.
staticshock 10mo ago
Direct quote from RJ Scaringe, founder/CEO of Rivian: > This is a decision. It's generated, I said there's many millions of decisions, many of them will never get noticed and they're just under the surface. One of those decisions that's been noticed quite a bit is the fact that we've intentionally not included CarPlay in the vehicle. And that's not to say we don't think a close partnership with Apple is important. So we have Apple Music integration, we have a bunch of Apple integrations that are yet to come, we have a great relationship with the team at Apple. But it was more to say, we just felt and continue to feel very strongly about creating a consistent, fully integrated digital experience where you're not jumping between apps, let's say from a CarPlay app back to the vehicle app. And it's quite jarring when you don't have, let's say vehicle level controls when you're in the CarPlay environment. That view we've had since the early, early days. I think that's going to become even more important and more true in a world of integrated AI. https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/14/transcript https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/14/transcript

modeless 10mo ago

I think it makes sense to do an ASIC later, but not now. Chip development is expensive and risky. They ought to at least start selling a product with positive gross margin first.

pm90 10mo ago
Its possible that they have tried that and the market isn’t giving them what they need at the price they want. I do mostly agree with you though; its the economics of the car thats gonna supercharge adoption. EDIT: another commenter mentioned that their platform is used by other companies (VW perhaps?). With that information, it might make more sense to do this.

dvrj101 10mo ago

acquiring steradian semiconductors was a quite good move.

Rover222 10mo ago

Any company adding fancy hardware (beyond good cameras and inference chips) to achieve self driving is on the wrong track at this point. Software is what will win this game. Of course, Waymo has achieved good results with A LOT of fancy hardware. But it's hard to see how they stand a chance against Cybercab mass production (probably behind schedule, but eventually). I think Rivian has the best-looking line of EVs out there. Maybe they will be able to come from behind in self-driving tech. But this big reveal is not that promising, IMO.

horsawlarway 10mo ago
An alternate take here: The "fancy" hardware is going to get dirt cheap, and in a game where you're asking your customer to trust you with their lives, reliability is going to win. Combine that with time to market, and Tesla feels like a pretty clear "risky bet" at best... Maybe they make it work, but they have to do it before the other companies make lidar cheap, and prices have fallen dramatically over the past 10 years, for much better hardware.
- Rover222 10mo ago
  Yeah, that is all reasonable. I think the jury is still out on if sensor fusion can really get far enough up the march of nines (will it work in 99.99 percent of scenarios)? Karpathy has given some good interviews about why Tesla ditched the sensor fusion approach and switched to vision-only. Same can be said for vision-only, of course. Maybe it won't every quite get to 99.99.

lunias 10mo ago

As opposed to more tech, I'd prefer (significantly) less mass.

krosaen 10mo ago
You probably don't want a long range EV then?
- lunias 10mo ago
  Less mass will yield longer range. I know you're referring to the battery accounting for a large percentage of the weight, but a smaller vehicle will get the same range with a smaller battery, and the weight savings compound. If the vehicle weighs less, then all the components supporting that weight can weigh less as well. Unsprung mass can be reduced significantly. Acceleration, braking, handling, and top speed all improve as a result. Components will also generally cost less, reducing the price of the vehicle and making it cheaper to maintain.
  - krosaen 10mo ago
    Interesting, yeah, my instinct is that the sensor weight delta would be negligible but perhaps not.
    - lunias 10mo ago
      Fair enough, I guess I'm speaking too generally.

unstatusthequo 10mo ago

Gotta hand it to Rivian. Solid progress. Not having those features is why I didn’t buy one before. These advances make it a bit more attractive.

nathan_compton 10mo ago

I cannot give a shit about hands free driving. If I have to pay attention I may as well just drive the damn car. I will care when they sell the cars without steering wheels.

roguecoder 10mo ago

It is nice to see a car company investing in a sensor platform that could actually safely self-drive. It is unfortunate that the existing market participants seem hell-bent on destroying consumer confidence in self-driving before this will make it to market. We desperately need a safety regimen for self-driving cars that takes it as seriously as airplane safety.

declan_roberts 10mo ago
Have you driven in Tesla FSD 14 yet? I've been in both Waymo and the latest version of FSD from Tesla. They are very, very good.
- flounder3 10mo ago
  How many hours have you spent with the latest Tesla FSD in congested neighborhoods or unprotected left turns at sunset? It may be "good," but it's not even remotely close to the current Waymo experience, especially when it comes to abnormal situations. I am continually blown away by how Waymo behaves (spent 3 hours in them this past week). I'm rooting for Tesla, but it is nowhere near Waymo as of today.

SoftTalker 10mo ago

RIVN doing quite well today.

matty22 10mo ago

Yeah, but does it have CarPlay yet?