Rivian goes all in on ‘common hands-free’ driving at its first Autonomy and AI day

EV automaker Rivian simply held its which, unsurprisingly, targeted extensively on hands-free driving. An upcoming software program replace guarantees the introduction of “common hands-free” driving. The corporate says its automobiles will have the ability to autonomously navigate greater than 3.5 million miles of roads in North America, “masking the overwhelming majority of marked roads within the US.”

That is coming to the , but in addition Gen 2 R1 automobiles just like the . The service might be locked behind a subscription for one thing known as Autonomy+ that features self-driving, but in addition affords entry to forthcoming and unannounced autonomous options. Rivian clients pays $2,500 for lifetime entry to the platform or $50 monthly.

The R2 is getting LiDAR sensors, which can presumably assist allow a few of these upcoming autonomous options, along with a brand new chip known as the Rivian Autonomy Processor. The processor has been designed for multimodal functions and runs the corporate’s proprietary neural web engine. Each of those options are anticipated “to ship on R2 fashions beginning on the finish of 2026.”

Right this moment’s occasion wasn’t nearly hands-free driving. Lots of the firm’s automobiles will quickly be given entry to the AI-powered Rivian Assistant, which makes use of LLMs and like Google Calendar. This assistant might be model-agnostic, as it is going to “orchestrate totally different fashions and select the very best one for the duty.”

Along with the upcoming R2, the corporate is prepping the R3 and R3X. A Rivian offshoot simply launched an especially costly, however modular, .