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

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.

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?

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?

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The R2(-D2) livery is a fun touch

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

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

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

Is the paint job supposed to resemble R2-D2?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Yet no AndoidAuto. Pass.

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...

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/riv...

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.