- Rivian wants to add hands-off Level 2 driver assistance in 2025.
- It plans to convert that to eyes-off, hands-off Level 3 semi-autonomous driving by 2026.
- It says that Level 4 autonomous driving would likely require the use of LiDAR.
Amid an attack on EVs and general confusion by the Trump administration, alongside Elon Musk’s troubling on-stage symbols, it’s been a weird week for electric vehicles. Still, Rivian’s found the time to announce some interesting plans for the future. Watch out Tesla "Full Self-Driving," General Motors Super Cruise and Ford BlueCruise, because Rivian’s dipping its toes into the hands-off driving pool.
“We think there's an enormous amount of value to customers, to having a robust first level two, but importantly, level three in very specific domains,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said at a roundtable on Thursday, referring the the Society of Automotive Engineers levels of driver assistance technology. Level 2 means the car is assisting the driver, but the driver is legally in control and responsible at all times, requiring constant supervision. Level 3 means that the car can take full control in certain conditions, and driver supervision is not required in those circumstances.
The only Level 3 system currently on sale in the U.S. is Mercedes' DrivePilot, and it only works on certain mapped highways in California and Nevada, while in traffic and going under 40 mph. Rivian wants to get there, then expand the envelope.
Scaringe said level 2 and level 3 driving is something Rivian is “hyper-focused on,” with hands-free driving coming sometime in 2025. Rivian wants eyes-off, hands-off level 3 semi-autonomous driving to come in 2026.
“Imagine a world where you leave your house, you're still in the vehicle, but you get to the highway, and you have all of your time back….You don't have to be looking at the road. You don't have to be grabbing the wheel to say, 'I'm still here.' The vehicle [will be] capable of doing that,” said Scaringe. "For us, that's absolutely in the roadmap."
He said new methods of using AI to train self-driving systems has accelerated Rivian's pace of progress. But don't expect all the upgrades to come to first-generation R1s built before 2024. Its second-generation R1S and R1T vehicles, which launched last year, will benefit most from the new approach, he said. The new vehicles have more in-house hardware and much more powerful computers for driver assistance.
"Gen one is going to get slightly better over time. Gen two is going to be wildly better a year from now versus what it is today because of how the system is built," Scaringe said on Thursday.
The specific details are still somewhat fuzzy. Rivian’s driver assistance suite is reliant on cameras, but with assistance from the five radar systems already present on the R1 platform. That's as opposed to Tesla, which has ditched radar in favor of a "vision only" approach to autonomy. Most experts suggest that a truly autonomous platform needs a better sensor suite for full autonomy. Scaringe, for his part, did say that if the brand were to seek full level 4 autonomy, it would likely need LiDAR to make it all happen.
Currently, all Gen 2 Rivian vehicles have what is called the Rivian Autonomy Platform. This includes a suite of 11 cameras, five radar sensors, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a driver-facing camera to monitor fatigue. R1s can already center themselves in the lane and control their speed on highways, but going hands-off would require a level of confidence and capability that the system hasn't yet demonstrated. This would be a significant upgrade to the standard Driver+ system that is already on Rivian vehicles.
The good news is that these features should make it to Rivian's cheaper products. The Rivian R2 is expected to have this system when it launches for the 2026 model year, as is the R3, which will arrive later on. If Rivian can deliver eyes-off autonomy by then, it'll certainly be a good selling point for its mass-market products.
Additional reporting by Tim Levin
