Rivian mentioned Thursday it plans to launch a hands-off model of its driver help system for freeway driving “in just a few weeks,” and an “eyes-off” model in 2026.
The hands-off system will let Rivian compete with corporations like Ford and Common Motors, which have each launched comparable methods prior to now few years. (Ford has named its system BlueCruise, whereas GM has SuperCruise.) Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (supervised) system, which isn’t totally autonomous regardless of its title, requires customers to maintain their fingers on the wheel.
The launch comes as Rivian is forecasting one other difficult yr, pushed largely by uncertainty round what adjustments the Trump Administration may make to regulatory coverage. The corporate did put up its first optimistic gross revenue within the fourth quarter of 2024. That was buoyed by a company-wide price reducing effort in 2024 but additionally a rise in software program and providers income.
Rivian’s autonomy ambitions have been front-and-center when the corporate broke stealth in 2018. At the moment, CEO RJ Scaringe was talking about dreamy scenarios the place Rivian homeowners might begin a hike and have their autos drive autonomously to satisfy them on the end. However autonomy took a again seat within the years since — at the least publicly — as Rivian centered on finishing its IPO, and launching and scaling three completely different autos.
Rivian has now posted back-to-back years of constructing and delivering round 50,000 autos, and has some respiration room — due to a serious cope with Volkswagen finalized late final yr — to give attention to rolling out options like a hands-off system.
Rivian is coaching its driver help platform utilizing what’s generally known as “end-to-end” coaching, an identical method to Tesla is doing with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software program. As a substitute of writing out hard-coded guidelines, Rivian makes use of knowledge from the cameras and radar sensors to coach the fashions that energy its driver-assistance system.
Very like Ford and GM, Rivian is beginning out by permitting the hands-off characteristic to solely be used on highways. CEO RJ Scaringe mentioned Thursday that, as soon as the eyes-off model launches in 2026, Rivian will slowly permit the driving force help system to develop past different forms of roads.
“Finally, the top state, we predict hands-free, eyes-off must be obtainable basically in all places,” Scaringe mentioned.
To succeed in that time, Scaringe mentioned Rivian is evaluating a “number of actually artistic methods we will entry a considerable quantity of GPUs with out having to deploy the capex ourselves” with the intention to practice its self-driving fashions — a notable break from how Tesla is spending billions of {dollars} on GPUs.