Rivian's $1.25 Billion Uber Bet Takes Aim at Tesla and Waymo
Rivian's gambit for full autonomy
Rivian is racing to bring Level 4 autonomy to the masses with its Autonomy+ system, debuting on the R2 SUV by late 2026. Backed by $1.25 billion from Uber and a $5.8 billion Volkswagen joint venture, Rivian plans 50,000 robotaxis starting in 2028. But with only 42,000 vehicles sold last year, can this underdog challenge Tesla's 1.1 million FSD users and Waymo's robotaxi lead?
We want cliché. We want boring. Just safe, repeatable driving.
- ShinyLeftPad
> Compared to, say, a large language model that writes news or fiction... an autonomous-driving AI is less subjective and easier to evaluate, so there’s little room for error.
That's brave. What about all the edge cases?
- SoftTalker
> Rivian says it will charge $49.99 a month, or $2,500 up front, versus Tesla’s $99 per month for its rival system, which is somewhat misleadingly called Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD. Mercedes, meanwhile, plans to charge $3,950 for a three-year subscription for the forthcoming MB.Drive Assist Pro
If and when FSD systems become a reality and are safer than human drivers, I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars, just as they did reversing cameras, airbags, automated emergency braking, and other once-optional safety features.
- skyberrys
That small lidar embedded into the front window glass is very sleek looking. Overall I like their design and what they choose to focus on. Their description of what is important for an LDM is is spot on, I love a boring drive without excitement or flare.
- GoToRO
"You are right, that was a red light!"
At first I was skeptical, but reading the article, they do track object across video frames which for me it's the minimum a system like this should do. All previous FSD systems are just Fake self-driving.
"That proprietary AI driver identifies features in images and point clouds, groups them into objects, and tracks them across frames, time-stamped to the millisecond to account for differing frame rates. The AI thus builds confidence over time, acting on object detections that persist across several frames, rather than, say, slamming the brakes due to a camera blip on a single frame."
- tescreal
I see a lot of Self-driving cars hitting people vs. reckless drivers hitting people.
What I want is simple: accountability. If a human hits a human, we throw the book at them in the case of a modality of negligence. If a robot screws up, how do we remedy and discourage?