u/Evening-Pin-1427

Hopefully, there won't be any bugs this year.

A few comments on Autonomy stood out for me during the Q&A session after Rivian’s Q2, 2026, Earnings Call:

Shreyas Patel, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay, thanks. Maybe just on the Autonomy+. You’re going to be launching the point-to-point solution later this year. I’m curious where things stand today with Autonomy+, just if there’s a way you can give us a sense of take rates or kind of adoption trends. How do you see point-to-point driving both demand, but also those take rates, ultimately, the subscription revenue opportunity. Thanks.

RJ Scaringe, CEO and Founder, Rivian: We’ve been really encouraged by the take rates on Autonomy+ to date. I think, in particular, what’s really encouraging is to see the status that we’re at today in terms of customer engagement, customer usage of the feature, then, of course, related to that, the take rate around paying for Autonomy+. We have very clear line of sight and visibility into what’s coming. As encouraged as we are with the take rates today, we’re quite confident that that will expand meaningfully as we add in additional capabilities and features. There’s going to be a whole, you think of it as like a staircase of features that ultimately leads us to very high levels of autonomy. A really important step that’s happening in the very near future is the capability of point to point.

Just to restate what that entails, that means you can get into the car, type the address into the vehicle, and the vehicle will completely drive itself to that address. Initially, that will be a feature in which it’s like level 2 plus plus, where your hands are off the wheel, but your eyes are still primarily on the road, meaning you can look away for short extended moments of time, but you’re not in a position to officially be reading a book or be responding to emails. The step in 2027 is going further where we go not only hands-off, but also eyes-off.

That’s really important because then not only is the vehicle fully driving itself and navigating to the address, but importantly, you’re able to truly get your time back without the vehicle dinging at you, say, to keep your eyes on the road, but actually be able to read a book, be on an iPad. That’s really into the true, as per the definition, level 3 capability. Of course, into 2028, that’s when we bring on level 4, and that’s where the vehicle’s capable of operating as a robotaxi, meaning there’s no one even needed to be in the driver’s seat for any operation of the vehicle. You can put occupants in the back. You can use that capability for robotaxi applications.

You can also have that, which is one of the things we’ve been very excited about, have that as a really nice feature on an owned vehicle. We think of this as personal Level 4, where your own personal vehicle can drop you at the airport, it can pick your kids up from school, it can go to the grocery store and grab things for you. That roadmap is something we’re not only very excited about, but we think will fundamentally drive increasing levels of adoption on Autonomy+ and its future variants as we’ve just described. With all that said, we also think we’re at an inflection point from a consumer behavior and consumer mindset where historically, autonomous features were not the primary purchase criteria for most customers.

Of course, there’s technology early adopters for which this has been top of mind for them for some time. For the vast majority of customers, this wasn’t the driving purchase criteria. We think this starts to emerge to be much more of a primary purchase criteria, and it’s one of the reasons we’ve made the decision to invest so heavily here. We think ultimately market share is going to be driven by the capability of the vehicle to drive itself and, of course, linked to that, the vehicle being software and AI-defined. Those are two very critical pillars of our technology roadmap and technology strategy.

Joseph Spak, Analyst, UBS: Okay. Then, RJ, appreciate the Autonomy+ commentary earlier. Was wondering if you’d also give us the latest update on just RAP1 and Gen 3 hardware and any progress. Is that still on track for SOP later this year?

RJ Scaringe, CEO and Founder, Rivian: Yeah, our in-house silicon RAP1 is on track. As you know, that underpins what we call our Gen 3 autonomous hardware platform. Yeah, both the RAP1 along with the rest of the upgrades to the system are on track for later this year.

Philippe Houchois, Analyst, Jefferies: Specifically on Uber, do you think there’s a big opportunity for you? Because when you announced the partnership, you were one of several partners that Uber was working with. Is there an opportunity for Rivian to be actually a much bigger partner of Uber in autonomy?

RJ Scaringe, CEO and Founder, Rivian: Well, I’d say the working relationship with Uber has been fantastic. From the top of the organization, through the working levels of the organization. The engagement from Dara in terms of the importance of this relationship, along with the working-level teams, it’s been very positive. We’re working towards our next milestone at the end of this year and deploying in a couple of cities in 2028 and then rapidly growing, following that to a large number of cities. We’re quite encouraged by the relationship and the partnership. Ultimately, I do believe that the focus we have and the focus, I think, appropriately, where we’re placing our energy is making sure that the technology is ready.

The vehicle’s capable of delivering Level 4 performance and doing it in a thoughtful way in terms of really clean execution at the vehicle level and really cost-effective ways of delivering that capability.

Cool video by Tyrone Holland demonstrating the R2 interior light options.

Rivian put together a primer for those about to demo drive an R2. They should have had this on the day demo drives started, but better late than never.

Wassym promises deeper ABRP integration is coming to Rivian. Naturally, he offers no details.

https://preview.redd.it/dotdpdjkeiah1.jpg?width=1249&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=65c7ef35abcbce455fbd2e9ae2488548aac8c2fe

For those who want to camp in their R2.

Rivian knows how to tease us, and I love it.

We are told the guy in the back is 6'4".

“we think we’ll move from level two to three – hands off and eyes off – within the next 18 months. By the end of the decade, it’ll be level four.”

That is an aggressive timeline but given the exponential growth and improvement expected for the LDM, it seems reasonable.

The timeline for level 4 is interesting. That means the fork in the road for non-LiDAR vehicles is about 4 years away.

Curious about how big the R2 is? Rivian has the answers.