Why 2025.26.30 update is a HUGE deal for Rivian Autonomy (Mobileye is dead)

[gerrylum]

Sorry. This will literally never happen.

Sadly, I agree. Rivian doesn't make any money from Gen 1s anymore. It makes NO sense for them to invest resources into development for a platform that, in their own words, is dead in the water. You may see a few things here and there come over to Gen 1 if it's developed for Gen 2 and can be relatively easily ported.

But they're not wasting any more time developing for the Mobileye system in Gen 1. They've moved on to their own AI-based autonomy stack.

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[godfodder0901]

Sadly, I agree. Rivian doesn't make any money from Gen 1s anymore. It makes NO sense for them to invest resources into development for a platform that, in their own words, is dead in the water. You may see a few things here and there come over to Gen 1 if it's developed for Gen 2 and can be relatively easily ported.

But they're not wasting any more time developing for the Mobileye system in Gen 1. They've moved on to their own AI-based autonomy stack.

Yeah, but we aren't even seeing some of the relatively easy stuff come over (launch mode anyone?). I predict that by the end of 2026 Gen 1s will be completely unsupported other than security and core functions.

 

[VandalSibs]

Rivian has been pretty open to Gen 1 users putting Commas into their Rivians, and tacitly supporting the development in the background.

Where has that come from? Or is it conjecture?

I didn't buy my R1T for it's Driver+ abilities (I like to drive my vehicles!), but it's something that I find very interesting if Rivian is in fact taking that stance...

 

[gerrylum]

Where has that come from? Or is it conjecture?

I didn't buy my R1T for it's Driver+ abilities (I like to drive my vehicles!), but it's something that I find very interesting if Rivian is in fact taking that stance...

A. Talking with the techs when bringing in the vehicle for service with the Comma installed.
B. Unofficial support behind the scenes.

And to me it makes sense. They know they're not going to support Gen 1 anymore, but they do still want their Gen 1 customers to be happy.

 

[VandalSibs]

Very interesting!

 

[NeedSumCoffee]

I have a Gen 1. All this update means that I can use Alexa in YouTube… except I’ve never once used YouTube in my Rivian

 

[ahoover]

Disclaimer: While the results of my testing and observations provide a high degree of certainty, none of this is 100% conclusive fact confirmed by Rivian. (But I'm still convinced)

Several months ago I made a post on how Gen 2 R1 is relying on an off-the-shelf Mobileye driver assistance system. (If you're interested in reading that one here's the link: Link Here)

If you look at the windshield on a Gen 2 R1 you can see two separate camera arrays, with different kinds of lenses, different materials, clearly made by different vendors. The single camera unit (The camera marked in red) is likely a mobileye unit. It's similar unit to the one found in Gen 1, though slightly higher end. The cameras in the other housing (marked in green) are presumably then the custom made Rivian cameras they were bragging about at Gen 2 launch.

In my previous testing, I found that ONLY the mobileye camera was used for driver assistance. I found this by using masking tape to cover the cameras. If the mobileye camera was covered, it would immediately pop up a warning on the dash saying that the camera was blocked and driver assistance features were unavailable. So then I tried the opposite. I covered every single camera on the vehicle (mirrors, bumpers... everything), and left ONLY the mobileye unit uncovered. In this scenario there was no warning on the dash, and highway assist worked perfectly, including lane changes. The only thing that was impacted was the driver's screen visualizations. They were pretty inaccurate, with only a bit of mobile eye data and some radar data to go off of.

The conclusion that I drew was that the visualizations were (mostly) being driven by Rivan's system, but the actual driving was done by mobileye. Sometimes I was actually able to see artifacts of the two systems operating simultaneously on the screen.

In this photo there was only 1 motorcycle directly front of me. On occasion a lead vehicle would be duplicated, where one was highlighted in blue (indicating this is data coming from the highway assist system showin the vehicle it's following) and the other was not highlighted (probably coming from the Rivian system)

BUT this is where things get INTERESTING with the most recent update!

After driving a bit with 2025.26.30 I could tell something changed drastically under the hood. The release notes just have a few small improvements around lane line visibility, the visualizations, etc. But the highway assist behavior was different enough I could tell there was more to it. With this update, the system seems to be FAR more aware of its surroundings. It doesn't get caught by surprise as much when another vehicle cuts in. Initiating a lane change is also far smoother. With that said there are also some pretty significant regressions in this version. In lane stability seems to be worse. It wanders around in the lanes more, and even will cross lines at times (I think this may actually be a good sign, but more on that later). It also seems to have a hard time with lane changes over small-dashed lines - it seems to think they're solid lines fairly often. Two steps forward, one step back.

Mobile Eye Camera Covered Up

Rivian Cameras Covered Up (And a REALLLLLY CRAPPY photo of it!)

So I redid the tape test. And this time the results confirmed my suspicion that the underlying highway assist system changed completely under our noses on this update with no mention in the release notes. It was completely opposite behavior from before. Covering the Rivian cameras resulted in an immediate dash warning saying driver assistance was unavailable. Covering the mobileye camera resulted in no warnings. Additionally, highway assist worked perfectly, without complaint.

What does this mean for the future?

Well I think it's a GREAT sign! Even though there is a bit of regression, it's a HUGE step to have things running on Rivian's own AI system. This will unlock the REAL potential of RAP. As far as why I think the in-lane wandering is a good thing: I suspect this is a result of leaning more heavily on perception (what the vehicle is seeing) instead of mapping data. With this shift, I suspect we are not far off from seeing the end of geo-locking to highways. To be sure, the system needs more training and work before then, but I think it's a great sign of things to come.
What are your thoughts?

My 2025 R1S Gen 2 is running 2025.22.30. Why is there no upgrade to 2025.26.30?
Updates show Auto install is "On" "Everywhere" and set to the current time.
I cannot seem to set it to update "Only at home"
My preference would be to have it update "Only at home" when parked in the garage and after 11:00PM PST

 

[windblowlc]

It’s fine, I’m fine. My Gen1 and I will enjoy our quality time together manually lane changing. It’s sort of like a horse, but with Spotify built in.

You're dancing in the dark, Bruce...I mean Jake.

 

[CharonPDX]

I'm assuming this means that Gen 1 vehicles will never get any new ADAS features of any kind, they will be permanently stuck with the functionality they have today, in spite of Wassym saying last year that Gen 1 would still get improvements for some time.

 

[gerrylum]

I'm assuming this means that Gen 1 vehicles will never get any new ADAS features of any kind, they will be permanently stuck with the functionality they have today, in spite of Wassym saying last year that Gen 1 would still get improvements for some time.

I think his statement was more along the lines of Gen 1 Driver+ would get improvements if they could make it work. Not only do I think that they can't make it work but I don't think they're very motivated to try, either.

 

[CharonPDX]

I think his statement was more along the lines of Gen 1 Driver+ would get improvements if they could make it work. Not only do I think that they can't make it work but I don't think they're very motivated to try, either.

Yeah, I think at this point the motivation is done. The fact that Gen 1 hasn't gotten lane change, while OP showed that he could cover every camera *OTHER* than the MobilEye camera in a Gen 2 and lane change still worked, shows that it isn't Gen 2 cameras that are needed for it, and the sensors other than cameras appear to be the same between Gen 1 and Gen 2, so….

Gen 1 really should have gotten lane change. "Trailer Assist" never materialized either.

 

[godfodder0901]

Yeah, I think at this point the motivation is done. The fact that Gen 1 hasn't gotten lane change, while OP showed that he could cover every camera *OTHER* than the MobilEye camera in a Gen 2 and lane change still worked, shows that it isn't Gen 2 cameras that are needed for it, and the sensors other than cameras appear to be the same between Gen 1 and Gen 2, so….

Gen 1 really should have gotten lane change. "Trailer Assist" never materialized either.

The list of "never materialized" is pretty long already, but will continue to grow.

I got an email yesterday from a Rivian salesman the other day wanting me to upgrade to a Gen 2 and thanking me for "being a first-generation supporter". I told him that if Rivian had been a first-generation supporter as well, I might have considered it...

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Man, there's some real sour grapes in here. Products leap to new generations all the time, it's not unheard of. Get over it.

With that said, I used the driver+ last night on the freeway, and it feels like a completely different system. It drives more like it's thinking about what to do instead of acting on preprogrammed instructions. There were times when I asked it to merge into a lane with a car going slower than I was in it. In the past, it would wait for radar to get me close enough to the lead car in the new lane before rapidly applying the brakes. Now, it can reason the car ahead is going slower and almost immediately slows down after the lane changes.

Overall, it seems much more aware of traffic. It does need a bit of work on smoothing out the lane keep, as it does wander the lane a bit. Hopefully, that is a good sign, suggesting we might be able to hug a lane opposite a semi that's crossing the line in a future update. The increased aggression is welcome as using the system now is significantly less likely to get you cut off.

Also, I was playing around in the settings menu last night and noticed a setting for it to exceed the set speed by up to 5 MPH to execute a lane change. I'm not sure this setting was there before, as the truck never did that behavior before but again, it's a welcome addition.

 

[captainjp]

Also, I was playing around in the settings menu last night and noticed a setting for it to exceed the set speed by up to 5 MPH to execute a lane change. I'm not sure this setting was there before, as the truck never did that behavior before but again, it's a welcome addition

Good find. I’ll have to check that out, as it would be helpful to enable.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Good find. I’ll have to check that out, as it would be helpful to enable.

For me it was enabled by default, so it might already be enabled for you as well. But it's in the driver assistance section.

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