Transportation Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Rivian CEO on CarPlay, Lidar, and affordable EVs In our interview, Scaringe clarifies that the R2 will begin production next year without lidar or the Gen 3 autonomy computer, both of which won’t be added until the end of 2026. On Reddit, Rivian fans are upset that the company couldn’t better time the rollout so that early adopters wouldn’t be left to choose between a less powerful R2 right away or a more powerful one later. But Scaringe insists that demand for R2 is already so high that Rivian doesn’t expect a significant sales impact. What could impact sales is a janky, unreliable system. But Scaringe assures me that Gen 3 is anything but. The AI computer will feature a dual-chip setup capable of 1,600 trillion operations a second (TOPS), a figure that he claims would have been unimaginable a few years ago. But what actually matters is how fast the computer processes information, like pixels for camera-based robotics. Rivian says its Gen 3 system will be able to process 5 billion pixels a second, which is not a common specification you hear tossed around in the AI world, but one Scaringe believes should impress people even more than the TOPS measure. Scaringe insists that demand for R2 is already so high that Rivian doesn’t expect a significant sales impact. “Tesla recently talked about theirs,” he says. “I’ll let you Google it, but it’s a lot less.” (It’s 1 million pixels per milisecond.) The next major milestone is “eyes-off” driving, where users no longer need to watch the road and, according to Scaringe, can fully reclaim their time to read, use their phone, or relax. Beyond that lies personal Level 4 capability, where the vehicle operates entirely on its own on certain roads, no human supervision required. Whether Rivian ultimately gets there will depend on whether the company can create trust around its products. And that will require a transparent approach to legal liability that most automakers, Rivian included, have yet to fully embrace. Scaringe notes that as autonomy improves, human driving will shrink from roughly 80–90 percent of miles today to 10–20 percent within a few years, and eventually to zero. At that point, a driver’s personal skill level becomes irrelevant to risk assessment, and insurance must shift accordingly, he says. Rivian has a partnership with Nationwide for its insurance claims, but has yet to work out how it will accept liability for crashes that occur in its autonomous vehicles. “This is like the ticky-tacky of the real work streams to make this all real,” Scaringe says. “Beyond the technology, but actually, like, the business systems that need to be designed.” Rivian’s RAP1 chip, or the first-generation Rivian Autonomy Processor. Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images A necessary shift In Palo Alto, the reactions to Rivian’s announcements are enthusiastic. All the influencers and analysts I talk to are impressed with what they’re being shown. But despite this, the company’s stock falls 6 percent the day of the event to close at $16.43 per share. Tesla, meanwhile, continues to trade at over $460 per share. Rivian’s stock has since bounced back slightly, and while the company has eked out a gross profit in the past, it’s still facing a very tough road ahead with the elimination of the EV tax credit and the enormous capital costs that will be needed to realize its AI dreams. And there’s still the issue of why Rivian is doing this in the first place. While fans may be left scratching their heads over why their favorite outdoor brand is chasing after Tesla with its AI strategy, the company is doing the necessary work to keep itself relevant in a new era, says mobility investor Reilly Brennan. “Having an AI strategy is growing into a necessary component for public auto companies in this era — at least the ones that want public market comps on the high end of the continuum, a la Tesla,” Brennan tells me. “Consider it like those overachieving high school students trying to get into Harvard: It’s not a requirement that they both started a charity and play the contrabassoon, but it sure seems like everyone else who gets in is doing it.” There’s peer pressure, and then there’s the necessity of finding new ways to earn money off your customers. A $50-a-month autonomy subscription could be a lucrative new revenue stream for Rivian, which needs to become profitable to survive. Scaringe sounds like a true convert. He thinks that we’re rapidly approaching a time in which AI will become as accessible as “running water and electricity,” he says during the presentation. No mention is made of how much running water and electricity is consumed by AI, which, for a company that purports to care about the environment, could quickly become a problem. And Rivian is not fully committed to following Musk’s ceaseless, clout-chasing pursuit of robotaxis and humanoid robots — though Scaringe admits that both remain a possibility. The company spun off its own robotics division as Mind Robotics earlier this year, after all. “The part of the problem that’s not solved is the Level 4,” he tells me, standing up because he has several more interviews ahead, and my time is up. “And so that’s our focus, on the tech.” Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Andrew J. Hawkins