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Rivian's gambit for full autonomy
- k310 25d agoDear humans at Rivian. If your vehicle didn't look like a cartoon, I might consider one. It's not conformity, or even ego. It's the same reason I don't wear a clown outfit in public. I don't own a lot of things, but they all look nice. Until then, I enjoy the tech story.
- lern_too_spel 24d agoPeople complained about the Prius, but plenty of people drove Mini Coopers, which looked even more ridiculous and were far less functional. You can't please everybody.
- acomjean 24d agoCars can be a form of signalling. I had a coworker who sold his small lexus, because it made dating weird.
- horsawlarway 24d agoI don't even really understand the complaint. I quite like the way Rivians look. It's a fairly generic body shape, but the headlamp and grille shape is distinctively "happy" instead of "aggressive" (this is a real thing, and it's intentionally designed for in lamp/grille shapes on cars) Personally, I don't want "aggressive" near my cars. They kill enough people already, and I'm tired by how common it is for manufacturers to push aggressive body shapes.
- hugeBirb 24d agoLmao what are you talking about? Obviously this is all subjective. They're unique looking, maybe not your taste but clown car?... so dramatic.
- delichon 24d ago> It's not conformity, or even ego. It's the same reason I don't wear a clown outfit in public. Why would someone with no ego care about looking foolish?
- GoToRO 24d agoWhy look foolish if you don't have to?
- GoToRO 24d agoI don't like those headlights also. I think it's a case of when founders bring too much of their personality into the product. Otherwise great product and this self drive system at least has a sound start (track objects across video frames)
- azinman2 23d agoI really like the way they look. Taste is subjective and. It absolute. Some people even like the cybertruck.
- LoganDark 23d agoGoogle Maps, the lack of CarPlay, and the lack of amber turn signals turned me away from Rivian but otherwise I would love them. I particularly like how their brake pedals feel, although I'm not a fan of the accelerator being so far off the floor.
- 7e 23d agoIt’s because the CEO wears glasses and cars are made to look like their CEOs, just like dogs resemble their owners.
- rwz 24d agoSooo, Rivian is a chip maker now. That's cool, I guess.
- SoftTalker 24d ago> Rivian says it will charge $49.99 a month, or $2,500 up front, versus Tesla’s $99 per month for its rival system, which is somewhat misleadingly called Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD. Mercedes, meanwhile, plans to charge $3,950 for a three-year subscription for the forthcoming MB.Drive Assist Pro If and when FSD systems become a reality and are safer than human drivers, I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars, just as they did reversing cameras, airbags, automated emergency braking, and other once-optional safety features.
- chung8123 24d agoIf it gets too embedded into the revenues of the car companies, regulators are going to have a hard time making it required without a subscription. It could be that you just either have a car with a monthly payment or you don't.
- SoftTalker 24d agoOr just make the car more expensive up front? That's what all the other regulations do.
- heaney-555 24d ago>I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars That assumes that suppliers are available to affordably add it. So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car.
- Kirby64 24d ago> So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car. What makes you think it doesn't? All those cameras, the expensive chips and cooling for them, and redundancy for all the systems don't come free.
- foobazgt 24d ago
- redwood 24d agoThe new Waymos (blue ones with sliding doors) are a dream to ride and come with built in voice Gemini.
- dyingkneepad 24d ago[flagged]
- gruez 24d agoSo what does this mean for Timmy (16 years old) learning how to drive? Should that also be banned, lest he runs over some kid? Or does he get a pass because he's a human and not a faceless corporation? Maybe he can repay the favor in 60 years when he gets run over by another teenager learning how to drive?
- creaturemachine 24d agoYeah about that, 16 is indeed far too young but it's somehow what has been agreed upon, no doubt whole-heartedly by the automotive industry.
- burkaman 24d agoYes, he would be banned from driving if he ran over a kid. Self-driving models and the companies that create them have not been banned so far, even after they cause accidents.
- gruez 24d ago>Yes, he would be banned from driving if he ran over a kid. Realistically no, unless he was hilariously reckless. > SMITH: There’s the case that happened with the little boy on the Upper West Side, Cooper Stock. He and his dad were crossing the street. And a driver was making a turn, and he just ran over the little boy, didn’t see him. > SMITH: So right now all that is is a summons to the driver for failing to yield. But it does not rise to the level of any kind of manslaughter or homicide charge. There was a study that showed that between 2008 and 2012 there were something like almost 1,300 fatal crashes in New York, and there were like 66 drivers arrested. >Smith says that New York has some of the narrowest standards for conviction in the country. It’s called the “rule of two” — you need two significant violations of traffic laws in order to bring a charge, including some incredibly reckless or criminally negligent act. Otherwise, it’s just … an accident. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime-2/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime-2/ Maybe it's different in europe, but I doubt that'd be the case either unless there were several aggravating factors.
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- xnx 24d agocar company != software company. Building a car gets you approximately 0% closer to knowing how to make a safe software driver. Writing AV software is exceptionally hard. We only have 2 safe functioning drivers presently: humans (debatable) and Waymo. Apple spent $7(?) billion and gave up. Uber and GM have also set billions on fire with nothing to show for it. Tesla might get there, but it could still be 5 years away.
- delichon 24d ago> Tesla might get there As of August Tesla had 80+ unsupervised taxis in operation with more than 380k miles driven total, and they are required to report incidents to the NHTSA. At the rate at which they are adding miles, if they are not now safer than human drivers, we should know soon.
- mikeryan 24d agoRivian has actually split out the software side to a joint venture with Volkswagen Group (the group independent of the car company which the group owns with others like Audi and Porsche). I think the goal is to have a platform other brands can license
- voakbasda 24d agoThis is the move that will win. Once available at that level, it will get adopted into smaller vehicles. There would be a huge market for self-driving golf carts or similar size vehicles in gated and retirement communities.
- syntaxing 24d agoI’m surprised they allow open lid drinks in the lab. One wrong bump and poof 300K easy.
- GoToRO 24d ago"You are right, that was a red light!" At first I was skeptical, but reading the article, they do track object across video frames which for me it's the minimum a system like this should do. All previous FSD systems are just Fake self-driving. "That proprietary AI driver identifies features in images and point clouds, groups them into objects, and tracks them across frames, time-stamped to the millisecond to account for differing frame rates. The AI thus builds confidence over time, acting on object detections that persist across several frames, rather than, say, slamming the brakes due to a camera blip on a single frame."
- SecretDreams 23d ago> slamming the brakes due to a camera blip on a single frame Ironically, I'm sure most humans have done the eyeball equivalent a handful of times, despite our knowledge of object permeance.
- Onavo 23d ago> The AI thus builds confidence over time, acting on object detections that persist across several frames, rather than, say, slamming the brakes due to a camera blip on a single frame. Nice in theory but in practice they still need a ton of training data. The bitter lesson is very bitter. Tesla's end to end FSD uses occupancy networks and brake stabbing still hasn't been fully solved.
- danielbarla 23d ago>they do track object across video frames which for me it's the minimum a system like this should do. All previous FSD systems are just Fake self-driving. I'm pretty sure Waymo does this. It's hard to imagine not using this information, it's basically 50% of what I do when driving (e.g. that kid that was running on the sidewalk suddenly disappeared from view in an unexpected way; I wonder if he's about to cut across the street, etc).
- vasvir 23d agoI wander what it does for different objects. Oups a ball crossed the street 15m ahead. Let's slowdown to a crawl and watch for the kid is what a human would do. I suppose they may have special cased the ball case.
- dilap 24d agoIsn't Tesla already there? I took a fully-autonomyous Cybercab to a coffee shop yesterday; it doesn't even have a steering wheel. It was just a short drive, but it handled various complications (a garbage truck, double-parked cars, construction, unpainted speed bumps) with aplomb. The driving felt extremely smooth and human-like (better, in my experience, than Waymo, which can still be a bit jerky).
- helsinkiandrew 23d ago> Isn't Tesla already there? Those operate in constrained areas of a few cities though - with a control room, that's a long way from telling your car to drive across state unattended.
- dilap 22d agoYeah that's fair, though my understanding (perhaps wrong!) is Tesla unlike Waymo doesn't need super-detailed maps; it could in theory go across the state right now (but it doesn't have legal authorization). (In Austin it covers what looks to me like the whole city but not the surrounding smaller towns.)
- toss1 23d agoDo you know how much of the drive and handling those complications was actually fully autonomous vs how much (or what key points) were handled from the remote control room by a human? I'm not sure how you would tell, but that is a critical question for scaling and true autonomy.
- ghu2 23d agoYup the question is scale - which reflects economics - and diversity of conditions. People underestimate how adaptable and efficient humans are.
- dilap 22d agoYeah that's a good point -- I'm not sure, but it definitely felt like there was no remote control going on, just based on smoothness and speed. But for sure the ability exists, so good pts re true autonmy and scaling.
- tescreal 24d agoI see a lot of Self-driving cars hitting people vs. reckless drivers hitting people. What I want is simple: accountability. If a human hits a human, we throw the book at them in the case of a modality of negligence. If a robot screws up, how do we remedy and discourage?
- margalabargala 23d agoHold the manufacturer equally liable. Easy.
- digitalPhonix 23d agoThe shenanigans AI companies have been up to recently (including boasting about criminal behaviour hacking other companies) without repercussions is pretty good proof that it isn't "easy".
- margalabargala 23d agoWhy? It is easy. Anthropic has paid out an awful lot of money settling piracy suits. An example where no one attemped to hold anyone liable isn't a counterexample to what happens when we do.
- digitalPhonix 22d agoI think you’re deliberately being obtuse. The rights holders that got a settlement out of Anthropic spent two years and probably a fortune fighting in court. If that’s “easy”, then sure, this is a solved problem and there’s no point discussing it. > An example where no one attemped to hold anyone liable isn't a counterexample to what happens when we do. Yes it is (specifically, a counter example to it being easy, not that it’s possible). The whole world saw HuggingFaces get hacked and the collective legal response was crickets. The same world that’s had its legal system throw the DMCA and unauthorised access to computers legal book at researchers, games preservationists and random people trying to access media that they can’t licence in their region.
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- skyberrys 24d agoThat small lidar embedded into the front window glass is very sleek looking. Overall I like their design and what they choose to focus on. Their description of what is important for an LDM is is spot on, I love a boring drive without excitement or flare.
- ShinyLeftPad 23d ago> Compared to, say, a large language model that writes news or fiction... an autonomous-driving AI is less subjective and easier to evaluate, so there’s little room for error. That's brave. What about all the edge cases?
- jayd16 23d agoThey're talking about verification. Was there a collision or not compared to is this story good.
- ShinyLeftPad 23d agoI can think of scenarios that avoid collision in probably 95% of the cases while being bad choices - Driving through an empty prairie - Driving slowly through a crowded square, giving people enough time to jump out of the way
- MisterKent 23d agoThere's less gray area with driving wss the point. Legal or illegal, efficient or inefficient. And whatever gray area remains is generally "good enough" compared to human drivers on the road.
- ShinyLeftPad 23d agoIt's easy evaluate if there's no victims. Stats say there's more than 6000 injuries per day and more than 16000 deaths per year on the road. If you choose between hitting a pedestrian and swerving potentially injuring the driver and totaling the car, what would you like the car to pick? Or any given trolley problem variation, etc
- GMoromisato 23d agoI think this article is underestimating Tesla and very much underestimating how hard Level 4 autonomy is. The long-tail of edge conditions to handle is really long, and Rivian is only at the beginning. What Rivian is going to release at the end of 2026 is what Tesla had 3 years ago. All that time has gone to dealing with edge conditions: bike lanes, emergency vehicles, construction zones, and all the crazy one-off situations that their fleet has seen. Tesla's fleet is an order of magnitude larger, so events that Rivian has seen only once, Tesla already has ten examples of. And rare events that Tesla has trained on, Rivian has never yet seen. I will say this, though: Rivian is the closest competitor to Tesla (not counting Chinese cars). Waymo FSD is obviously more advanced than Tesla, but they will lose out to both Tesla and Rivian when it comes to manufacturing. And the robotaxi game is going to be all about manufacturing.
- JMiao 23d agoCan you elaborate why robotaxi success will hinge on manufacturing?
- GMoromisato 23d agoBecause once the software gets to an acceptable level, it becomes table-stakes--it's not a differentiator. After that, the only thing that matters is who deploys the most cars, and the unit economics of each car. That depends on manufacturing (e.g., low unit costs, and high throughput).
- moffkalast 23d agoZeekr can surely outbuild and undercut any US firm by a wide margin.
- nujabe 22d agoBut they won’t compete here.
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- venzaspa 23d agoMaybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really want to be just sitting in my car tapping my knees while the car drives for me. I'd rather these guys just focus on building a Euro spec model of the R3 and getting it over here.
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- devolving-dev 23d agoWhen autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. But I agree, this halfway autonomy where you have to watch everything is kind of useless.
- crote 23d ago> When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. Have you ever tried reading a book while being driven around? You get car sick really fast, because your vestibular system does not like constantly getting jostled around with mismatching visual inputs. Eating dinner while being driven around is a similar story: anyone around you does something unexpected, and your dinner ends up being spilled all over the car. Self-driving cars will never have the same smoothness as planes or trains, simply because they have to share the roads with the general public. You might be able to sleep, but your commute isn't going to neatly match up with your sleeping schedule, so that's only really useful for longer road trips. > this halfway autonomy where you have to watch everything is kind of useless No, it is actively dangerous. Humans are extremely bad at staying fully-focused and being ready to act in the blink of an eye, while at the same time having literally nothing to do 99.99% of the time. If you don't let your attention wander, it is significantly less exhaustive to drive yourself. Halfway-autonomous cars exist primarily so that car manufacturers can demand extra money without having to accept any of the reliability.
- nmcfarl 23d agoI don’t know, it might just come down to how good a driver you are. I agree with the proposition that people are horrible at halfway autonomy. But I am horrible at driving, and I kind of think almost everybody is. I have a car that just does lane keeping and distance keeping cruise control. The number of times it is notified me that I’m sliding off the side of the road is large. Similarly it’s let off the gas a vast number of times when I was creeping up on the car in front of me and I didn’t notice. Maybe it’s having just one long, largely empty commute for five years. But I suspect it’s that you can drive any modern car without 100% concentration at which point people are prone to getting distracted. So I’m thinking the comparison should be halfway autonomy vs a modern “dumb” car and I think halfway autonomy is safer overall.
- 7e 23d agoRivian’s mission is to clone Tesla. That’s it. So of course they’re going to do this half baked garbage. Even if they add LIDAR, they will never attract the talent or have the resources to do this right. The CEO’s exorbitant pay package basically makes him out to be a grifter and sociopath, just like Musk.