Rivian May Be Much Closer to FSD Than You Think

[renderpaz]

This month I did about 800 miles with Enhanced Highway Assist and it's impressive, but drives surprisingly poorly in traffic (too quick to accelerate, too late to brake) - signs of an immature product. It's most impressive ability is lane following in tricky situations and seamlessly allowing human assistance - signs of Rivian software talent. However, there simply aren't enough datapoints to extrapolate Rivian's development pace, and they certainly are nowhere close to Tesla currently.

I do however agree that the second-mover advantage is real. Tesla was training early models on clusters 1/100th the power readily available today.

To autonomy doubters: I have a Model Y with FSD 14.1.7. It is shockingly impressive and worth $99/mo to most commuters. Anyone who thinks pursuing autonomy is a fools errand, needs to take a closer look at FSD. In 5 years no one will care if FSD was 10 years late, they'll only care if it works. RJ is completely right. Autonomy is going mainstream and will be a major factor in car purchases by 2030. I'm glad he's taking it seriously. It's possible FSD will hit a wall (as it has in the past), but from what I've seen, the switch will soon flip from "it's a scam" to "yea but it was late" any day now.

Adoption will not occur slowly.

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[DuoRivians]

This month I did about 800 miles with Enhanced Highway Assist and it's impressive, but drives surprisingly poorly in traffic (to quick to accelerate, to late to brake) - signs of an immature product. It's most impressive ability is lane following in tricky situations and seamlessly allowing human assistance - signs of Rivian software talent. However, there simply aren't enough datapoints to extrapolate Rivian's development pace, and they certainly are nowhere close to Tesla currently.

I do however agree that the second-mover advantage is real. Tesla was training early models on clusters 1/100th the power readily available today.

To autonomy doubters: I have a Model Y with FSD 14.1.7. It is shockingly impressive and worth $99/mo to most commuters. Anyone who thinks pursuing autonomy is a fools errand, needs to take a closer look at FSD. In 5 years no one will care if FSD was 10 years late, they'll only care if it works. RJ is completely right. Autonomy is going mainstream and will be a major factor in car purchases by 2030. I'm glad he's taking it seriously. It's possible FSD will hit a wall (as it has in the past), but from what I've seen, the switch will soon flip from "it's a scam" to "yea but it was late" any day now.

Adoption will not occur slowly.

No way I’m paying $99/mo. I have had FSD, and I’ve been in the latest MY with the latest FSD.

 

[captainjp]

Nah you have no idea what you're talking about. It works pretty damn well and for all practical purposes is used as a benchmark in ADAS videos for a reason.

Driving under trailers, running into medians, and driving down trains tracks. You’re right.
Derp

 

[strykerwsu]

No way I’m paying $99/mo. I have had FSD, and I’ve been in the latest MY with the latest FSD.

Its a great option for long trips. Took our Model 3 on a 4,000 mile trip this summer and it drove 99% of time. So much easier and refreshed once we got to our destination. Then cancel when not taking trips.

 

[Supratachophobia]

I go into way more depth in the video if you want to see my beautiful face:

With Rivian’s AI and Autonomy Day coming up on December 11th, they are making some seriously bold claims. RJ is basically betting the farm on autonomy because he thinks that in 5-10 years, a car that *can't* drive itself will be as appealing as a flip phone in 2024.

But are they actually close, or is this just expensive vaporware?

How are they moving so fast?
* Tesla has a massive head start, but Rivian has the glorious "second mover" advantage. Basically, they got to watch Tesla walk into the glass doors first so they didn't have to.
* Brain Power: They are building on Nvidia Orin chips that are specifically designed for AI. These chips simply didn’t exist when Tesla started their journey 84 years ago (or however long it's been). So they had to engineer their own to get the performance they wanted.
* HD Eyes: Rivian is using high-megapixel cameras and premium radar. It turns out that the "Garbage In, Garbage Out" rule applies to cars, too. Teaching a computer to drive is a lot easier and faster when it’s looking through 4K lenses instead of a potato. To be clear... I'm not saying Tesla uses Idaho spuds for cameras, I'm just saying having multiple kinds of high quality sensors can speed up the training process.

Is it actually working? Sure, the specs look good on paper, but can Rivian actually deliver? There are no guarantees, but I feel that it's looking pretty promising.
* The Gen 2 Glow-Up: If you’ve driven a Gen 2 recently, the switch from the old MobileEye system to Rivian’s internal stack is night and day.
* Hallucinations (The helpful kind): the driver's screen visualizations have started "hallucinating" lane lines on unmarked roads. Usually, hallucinations are bad, but here it seems the AI is actively inventing a safe path to drive on unmarked roads. This is a huge step toward universal Hands-Free.
* On the highway, the system seems to be reading the "body language" of other drivers—especially when making lane changes. It does an excellent job of predicting the movement of other drivers on neighboring lanes. This kind of predicitve behavior is HUGE when it comes to full autonomy

The Elephant in the Room: Subscriptions
We know a subscription is coming. Deep breaths.

While I hate monthly fees as much as anyone, I think this is different from BMW charging a subscription to warm your butt (*insert MASSIVE eye roll here*). This is an ongoing development cost. We aren't just unlocking hardware that's already there; we are funding the army of engineers teaching cars to drive over the next decade(s) of development.

I’m expecting them to drop the pricing details on December 11th.

What do you think? Does Rivian have a shot at the competing? Rivian is betting all their chips on this... Pun very much intended.

I'm torn on the cost discussion. I already pay for connect+, shouldn't I get autonomy included in that?

 

[Davethadog]

Just fix the fucking radio

 

[Supratachophobia]

This month I did about 800 miles with Enhanced Highway Assist and it's impressive, but drives surprisingly poorly in traffic (to quick to accelerate, to late to brake) - signs of an immature product. It's most impressive ability is lane following in tricky situations and seamlessly allowing human assistance - signs of Rivian software talent. However, there simply aren't enough datapoints to extrapolate Rivian's development pace, and they certainly are nowhere close to Tesla currently.

I do however agree that the second-mover advantage is real. Tesla was training early models on clusters 1/100th the power readily available today.

To autonomy doubters: I have a Model Y with FSD 14.1.7. It is shockingly impressive and worth $99/mo to most commuters. Anyone who thinks pursuing autonomy is a fools errand, needs to take a closer look at FSD. In 5 years no one will care if FSD was 10 years late, they'll only care if it works. RJ is completely right. Autonomy is going mainstream and will be a major factor in car purchases by 2030. I'm glad he's taking it seriously. It's possible FSD will hit a wall (as it has in the past), but from what I've seen, the switch will soon flip from "it's a scam" to "yea but it was late" any day now.

Adoption will not occur slowly.

I think it's all a moot point until the manufacturer allows driver abdication. GM, Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, behind the scenes MobileEye, whatever; until they are confident enough their systems can allow for liability to be on them, what's the point really? I'd rather not be the learning curve until then because no matter how good it is, it's not good enough for me not to pay attention.

 

[NC-Rivian]

No way I’m paying $99/mo. I have had FSD, and I’ve been in the latest MY with the latest FSD.

Tesla allows you to ”purchase” FSD one month at a time. When I drove my MY, I would “purchase” FSD for the months I knew I would be driving a road trip. I sure hope FSD v14.1.7 is better than when i used FSD. The nag prompt was terribly annoying and defeated the purpose.

 

[mkhuffman]

For years I thought I would rarely use autonomy features such hands free driving. But now I turn it on whenever it is available. There are situations when I take over, especially in heavy traffic and construction zones, but generally I really like it, and it does reduce the stress of driving.

IMO it is less stressful to watch and be prepared to take over, than to actually execute all the maneuvers. I am not an airline pilot, but I suspect this is how they feel about planes that fly themselves.

And I love to drive. So this is a weird outcome for me.

I expect if my R1 can drive itself everywhere, I will use that feature also. But will I pay $99/mo? I don't know the answer, actually. Maybe? I would definitely pay $99/year. I think it would be smart to slightly increase the price of Connect+ and just include it with that.

@mpshizzle - you may be correct about how close Rivian is to releasing their version of FSD. They pretty much matched the Mobileeye capabilities with their first independent release, which is pretty fast. However, they have a lot of ground to cover if they really plan to release it to us before the end of the year. Arey they still saying it will be released in 2025, or have they changed their tune on that?

Every time I talk to someone who is not familiar with BEVs about my R1T they ask if it can drive itself. It seems Tesla has conditioned people to think all electric vehicles can drive themselves. There is definitely a huge amount of interest in autonomy, and it might be the biggest thing that gets ICEV people to switch to BEVs.

 

[DuoRivians]

Tesla allows you to ”purchase” FSD one month at a time. When I drove my MY, I would “purchase” FSD for the months I knew I would be driving a road trip. I sure hope FSD v14.1.7 is better than when i used FSD. The nag prompt was terribly annoying and defeated the purpose.

Even one month isn’t worth it. I’m totally happy with my Gen 1 driver+. If that is for free on Gen 2, that’s what I’ll keep.

It’s not worth paying $99/mo money for hands free highway or anything non-highway.

If it were $150/yr, that might be worth it.

 

[mkhuffman]

Just fix the fucking radio

What is wrong with your radio?

 

[Engi_Nerd]

FSD used to be a fun gimmick to show off, mostly only marginally useful on long highway road trips. V13 and V14 have brought colossal step change improvements and the latest version, running on HW4 Model Y (particularly Juniper) would blow most people away. I have been a car guy my entire life, always needing more power, more traction, better suspension, etc. I purchased a loaded up M3P last year, but having driven my wife's new MY for a few months now, would now be perfectly fine doing most of my daily driving in a cheapo RWD Model Y on FSD. Things I've been enjoying about FSD that surprised me:

- Immunity to road rage. Not invested in the same way to care about people cutting me off / blowing by / trying to race / etc, so long as I'm getting where I'm going smoothly.
- Can safely supervise what the car is doing, while being able to enjoy your surroundings more (fall foliage, architecture, etc)
- Can be more mentally present with your passengers
- The car is way better at getting into the lane it needs to be in when you're driving in unfamiliar cities. HUGE stress reliever.
- Car is now seeing things at night we can't. Deer in the road. Jogger dressed in all black crossing without looking. Bumper torn off from standing water. Completely crazy.

Autonomy is real and will be a massive shift in the industry and a big opportunity for Rivian, so long as they make it a priority.

 

[Dark-Fx]

How are they moving so fast?
* Tesla has a massive head start,

The same Tesla that's throwing away their entire Dojo supercomputer system? A head start doesn't mean much if you're constantly starting over from scratch. It remains to be seen if Gen2 vehicles have enough hardware to perform safely everywhere.

The autonomy in my Gen2 has been working pretty well when I decide to use it. The lane-change on command thing has been pretty flawless so far.

I'd rather see Rivian work on enabling autonomy features while towing on the freeway vs end-to-end navigation.

 

[mpshizzle]

Even one month isn’t worth it. I’m totally happy with my Gen 1 driver+. If that is for free on Gen 2, that’s what I’ll keep.

It’s not worth paying $99/mo money for hands free highway or anything non-highway.

If it were $150/yr, that might be worth it.

My understanding is that basic, hands on lane centering will be free for life. Anything beyond that is considered RAP+. I'm assuming we'll get more detail on this at the event

The same Tesla that's throwing away their entire Dojo supercomputer system? A head start doesn't mean much if you're constantly starting over from scratch. It remains to be seen if Gen2 vehicles have enough hardware to perform safely everywhere.

The autonomy in my Gen2 has been working pretty well when I decide to use it. The lane-change on command thing has been pretty flawless so far.

I'd rather see Rivian work on enabling autonomy features while towing on the freeway vs end-to-end navigation.

I hope they're adding towing support to. With the amount of noise people make about that I'd bet it's at least on the roadmap somewhere for them. In any case I'd imagine working on towing and working on point to point are not mutually exclusive goals. Just depends how they allocate their resources, I suppose

 

[FraserC]

Unsurprisingly, self driving cars is a very touchy subject which provokes a lot of strong feelings. I prefer to look at things like this as a comparison, so I consider this; how good does FSD need to be? Well, I'd say once it's significantly safer than 75% of 'typical' drivers, we are there.

Add to this, how likely is a human driver with distractions going to be as good as a computer with 16 high resolution 'eyes', that never get distracted? Something to ponder!

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