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• Rivian’s “Autonomy+” subscription is coming soon.
  
• The automaker pitches it as a service that will eventually offer Level 4-capable autonomy on certain vehicles.
• It will launch at just under $50 per month, or a one-time payment of $2,500.

Rivian just held its long-awaited Autonomy and AI Day, in which it laid out big plans to deploy AI and autonomous capability across its products. While the electric vehicle startup plotted a longer-term trajectory to get to true self-driving capability, it also announced something coming much sooner than that: Autonomy+.

The service offers access what Rivian says will be a growing set of increasingly capable driver-assistance features. The debut offering, Universal Hands-Free, takes hands-off, eyes-on driving to non-highway roads and, on paper at least, surpasses the capability of competitors like Ford BlueCruise and General Motors Super Cruise. That feature should hit Gen 2 Rivian R1T and R1S vehicles via a software update later this month, and it will be available in the R2 when it launches too.

Rivian says that Autonomy+ will eventually square up with, or even exceed, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised). It won’t be free, though. Here’s how much it’ll cost and how it stacks up to the competition.

Photo by: Rivian

Rivian says that Autonomy+ will cost drivers $49.99 per month, or, if they’d like to pre-pay up-front for lifetime access, it will cost $2,500. That capability will stay with the vehicle should it change hands later. The works out to about 50 months up-front, which would be like subscribing to the feature for the duration of the R1’s comprehensive new vehicle limited warranty.

Importantly, all Gen 2 Rivian R1 owners will get Autonomy+ for free for 60 days starting on February 1. And anyone who buys a new R1 subsequently will also get that two-month free trial. Gen 1 Rivians don’t have the sensor or computing firepower to run Universal Hands-Free, and Rivian isn’t suggesting their driver aids will improve beyond what they can do already.

Of course, the immediate comparison that everyone is making is to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, which currently runs $99 per month or a spicy $8,000 lump sum. But before you conclude that Autonomy+ is a straight-up bargain, consider taking a look at what Universal Hands-Free (UHF) actually does—and more importantly, what it doesn’t—compared to FSD.

UHF expands Rivian’s hands-free adaptive-cruise and lane-keeping feature from around 150,000 miles of highways to over 3.5 million miles of marked roads. (It was able to do that, in part, because the new system doesn’t rely on HD maps.) It’ll follow lane lines, speed up and slow down in response to traffic, and even pass through intersections—but with some key limitations.

It’s not going to brake for traffic lights or stop signs. If you want to change lanes, you’ll need to explicitly tell it to do so by signaling, and even then, that’ll only work on divided highways. 

Meanwhile, despite FSD’s foibles, it will at least try to handle traffic control devices, automatic lane changes, stop lights, pedestrians and anything else it encounters along a route. It often does that quite well, too, navigating from start to finish without drama as the driver supervises. Despite the name, it’s not actually autonomous and drivers should be ready for serious mistakes.

Universal Hands-Free is more like an expanded version of BlueCruise or Super Cruise, and it’s priced roughly in line with those systems. BlueCruise costs $50 per month or $2,495 lifetime, while Super Cruise costs $39.99 per month or $399 annually. (We should note that Super Cruise-equipped vehicles offer free functionality for three years. Those subscription fees kick in later.)

By pricing UHF in line with market competitors, Rivian may be able to generate additional revenue while offering a good-value automated driving suite to owners.

Part of the deal is also that Autonomy+ will get better over time. The automaker says that eventually it will offer point-to-point features, with the latter bringing Tesla FSD-like capability to R1s next year. It’s also working toward eyes-off and “personal Level 4” autonomy. Anybody who pays up-front will be locked in to those future features, Rivian Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid told reporters at the event on Thursday. But, he said, Rivian reserves the right to raise the price for new customers down the line. 

For the moment, it feels like Rivian has chosen more of a slow-and-steady approach than Tesla. If that means Rivian can offer a more robust feature with fewer curb-hopping bugs, it could prove to be the approach that wins over consumers in the long run.