Rivian’s New Autonomy Tech Arrives: Is This the Breakthrough It Needs?

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Rivian is still a new and tiny company.

It gets a lot of press around our parts—much of it positive, because we generally like its electric vehicles—but Rivian is nowhere near the EV power-hitter that Tesla is. Not yet, anyway, and getting there could take a decade or more. And as impressive as its technology is, Rivian is still dwarfed by global players from China and even traditional automakers catching up fast with their EVs. All of this is to say: it’s not going to be enough for Rivian to just make cool electric SUVs forever.

But RJ Scaringe is the kind of CEO who’s playing the long game when it comes to mobility technology of all sorts, as we saw this year when Rivian branched out into e-bikes and even robotics. Plus, its tech is impressive enough to ink a major joint-venture deal with the Volkswagen Group.

Now, arguably Rivian’s biggest move has arrived: the goal of fully autonomous driving, well ahead of competitors who have been pouring R&D into that for far longer than the R1S has been on sale. But with lidar on the R2, in-house chips and a big leap into AI, it may just pull it off. 

On this week’s Plugged-In Podcast, my co-host Tim Levin and I are digging into Rivian’s big news. There’s a lot of it and we get technical, so if that’s your jam, strap yourselves in and get ready to learn a lot about AI.

Thankfully, we’re joined by someone who knows what he’s talking about. This week’s guest is James Philbin, the VP of Autonomy and AI at Rivian. He’s a longtime machine learning expert and the brains behind much of Rivian’s recent tech breakthroughs. 

On this episode, we talk about why lidar is important; where Rivian is going (literally, I suppose) with its self-driving dreams; and why making in-house chips is such a game-changer for the company. 

Check out the show wherever you listen to podcasts. We’re on YouTube, Spotify, Apple and other platforms. Thanks for subscribing if you like what you hear.

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com.