Grok on Tesla - it's seriously amazing. Can't wait for Rivian to introduce their AI assistant

[phaduman]

so my wife's Model Y (2022) got the Grok update, and when I drive occasionally, I am fully conversing with this assistant...including using it's Language Assistant feature to learn Spanish - and it feels like a real human on the other side engaging me - including pausing for me to drive the discussion, learning and mistakes, and it keeps going at my pace. It also saves context so when I come back later (week+ later), it starts from where it stopped (on the Spanish learning e.g.).
As people get bored when car's FSDs' start doing a better job, the AI assistant can seriously fill the void/boredom and engage effectively.

I also asked Grok (in Tesla) what it thinks about Rivian and it had good things to say about the company, as well as on Rivian's AI assistant is likely a better/tighter integration with car controls vs general purpose LLMs like Grok is today, but that Tesla is working on a Grok with tighter integration with the car in the coming future.

All this goes to say, Rivian's continued investment into autonomy and AI will set itself apart from majority of (legacy) automakers. Mimicking Tesla and competing with Tesla is not a bad thing at all for Rivian - there is plenty of room for software/tech companies in the automotive world.

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[DKM_R1S]

You forgot to mention the latest feature, Grok’s tight integration with Tesla Navigation. And it works very well.

 

[RandomMcRandomFace]

You forgot to mention the latest feature, Grok’s tight integration with Tesla Navigation. And it works very well.

Could you explain more re: what that means? I have no interest in conversing with a bot, but I’m curious how it is integrated.

 

[TexasBob]

so my wife's Model Y (2022) got the Grok update, and when I drive occasionally, I am fully conversing with this assistant...including using it's Language Assistant feature to learn Spanish - and it feels like a real human on the other side engaging me - including pausing for me to drive the discussion, learning and mistakes, and it keeps going at my pace. It also saves context so when I come back later (week+ later), it starts from where it stopped (on the Spanish learning e.g.).
As people get bored when car's FSDs' start doing a better job, the AI assistant can seriously fill the void/boredom and engage effectively.

I also asked Grok (in Tesla) what it thinks about Rivian and it had good things to say about the company, as well as on Rivian's AI assistant is likely a better/tighter integration with car controls vs general purpose LLMs like Grok is today, but that Tesla is working on a Grok with tighter integration with the car in the coming future.

All this goes to say, Rivian's continued investment into autonomy and AI will set itself apart from majority of (legacy) automakers. Mimicking Tesla and competing with Tesla is not a bad thing at all for Rivian - there is plenty of room for software/tech companies in the automotive world.

I am unimpressed with Grok but I do the same with Gemini on long road trips via my phone. It is incredibly useful in everything from route mapping to being a real time tour guide ("What are those mountains I am seeing on my left?" or "How is the weather for a drive between Houston and Little Rock today?" or "I'm feeling like having chicken tacos for lunch, where is the best place to charge next?") It would be ideal to see Rivian do a native integration of one of the top tier AIs like Gemini or CGPT or even Claude. In fact it would be ideal to have those as voice activated options from which you could choose. I would much prefer to have have access to "my" AI agent in the vehicle at least for most things. Being stuck with a second tier agent like Grok or a Rivian proprietary agent in the car significantly diminishes its usefulness.

 

[Hereforthesnacks]

I am unimpressed with Grok but I do the same with Gemini on long road trips via my phone. It is incredibly useful in everything from route mapping to being a real time tour guide ("What are those mountains I am seeing on my left?" or "How is the weather for a drive between Houston and Little Rock today?" or "I'm feeling like having chicken tacos for lunch, where is the best place to charge next?") It would be ideal to see Rivian do a native integration of one of the top tier AIs like Gemini or CGPT or even Claude. In fact it would be ideal to have those as voice activated options from which you could choose. I would much prefer to have have access to "my" AI agent in the vehicle at least for most things. Being stuck with a second tier agent like Grok or a Rivian proprietary agent in the car significantly diminishes its usefulness.

How does that work with Gemini? Just through Google Maps? Or do you have to open Google Maps and the Gemini app and run both?

 

[TexasBob]

How does that work with Gemini? Just through Google Maps? Or do you have to open Google Maps and the Gemini app and run both?

I just use the gemini app. I gave it permission to know my location and I have loaded up details about me including that I drive a RIvian R1T 2024 DM large pack with new Michelin tires on the 21" wheels. It knows a LOT about how that vehicle behaves. Last trip it said " you are going to be encountering a 20 mph head wind through the first half of your drive with 30 degree temperatures that will significantly reduce your range. You need to plan for additional stops before you try to cross teh OUchita mountains." It was right and warned me not to trust the rivian nav. About 2 hours in I told it my actual consumption was 1.98 miles / kwh which did not surprise it but said we need to adjust the route. Once it gave me guidance, I just added the stop to the RIvian. My experience.

 

[Hereforthesnacks]

I just use the gemini app. I gave it permission to know my location and I have loaded up details about me including that I drive a RIvian R1T 2024 DM large pack with new Michelin tires on the 21" wheels. It knows a LOT about how that vehicle behaves. Last trip it said " you are going to be encountering a 20 mph head wind through the first half of your drive with 30 degree temperatures that will significantly reduce your range. You need to plan for additional stops before you try to cross teh OUchita mountains." It was right and warned me not to trust the rivian nav. About 2 hours in I told it my actual consumption was 1.98 miles / kwh which did not surprise it but said we need to adjust the route. Once it gave me guidance, I just added the stop to the RIvian. My experience.

Ok,
I’m going to have to try this. Thanks!

 

[TexasBob]

Ok,
I’m going to have to try this. Thanks!

FWIW if you have an iphone here is a quirk worth noting:

There are two ways to do voice with Gemini on the iphone.

NATIVE GEMINI DICTATION
If you tap the microphone next to the word Pro in the ask gemini section it uses native gemini dictation and - this is the important part - the gemini automatically defaults to reading its response out loud over the Rivian speakers. This works great BUT if you are having a lot of long pauses in what you want to say to it, it has a tendency to think you are done and interrupt which can be annoying. Let's say you are dictating a letter or something, this is not great.

APPLE DICTATION
The alternative is to use Siri dictation which is on the lower right. That will tolerate lengthy pauses. I have used it to dictate book chapters while driving. BUT then you need to hit the send button (nbd). Gemini will respond with Text because it thinks you are typing. To get it to read to you, tap the blue speaker button and it will read the entire reponse over the bluetooth.

It is a terrific travel companion but it has that one quirk that took a frustrating couple of tries to figure out.

 

[Motoarzon]

Cheapskate syndrome?? You do realize Musk has incorporated over $2k of computer and camera hardware into over 5 million vehicles whether they would ever purchase FSD or not right. Other manufacturers will omit a clip if it will save them 5cents....Musk/Tesla includes $2k whether used or not.

 

[phaduman]

FWIW if you have an iphone here is a quirk worth noting:

There are two ways to do voice with Gemini on the iphone.

Great inputs. Perplexity Pro on my iPhone - it has a way to rush in. Grok on the Tesla allows sufficient pause in my voice prompts so I am not rushed when interacting.

BTW, the "unhinged" mode on Grok is really funny! To try, just say - can you answer that in your unhinged way...

 

[phaduman]

Tesla (it's not just Elon - there are brilliant folks there and I speak of them and not Elon) was pioneer in trying to redefine and they are learning - went from 1megapixel camera (in 2017) to now 5megapixel cameras (since 2023 on all cars). My 2018 M3 with 1megapixel camera with HW3 is still more advanced than Rivian Gen2. I am not taking points out of Rivian - they are learning fast from Tesla's experiments, and it's a good thing that both companies are innovating. if I can have a car with $5 x 8 or 10 cameras and an field-replaceable h/w inference module - I am all for it as a consumer. Glad that Lidar costs are coming down and we could have a better sensor-fusion solution from Rivian at some point - which will be awesome. Hopefully soon (2-3 yrs).

 

[TexasBob]

Tesla (it's not just Elon - there are brilliant folks there and I speak of them and not Elon) was pioneer in trying to redefine and they are learning - went from 1megapixel camera (in 2017) to now 5megapixel cameras (since 2023 on all cars). My 2018 M3 with 1megapixel camera with HW3 is still more advanced than Rivian Gen2. I am not taking points out of Rivian - they are learning fast from Tesla's experiments, and it's a good thing that both companies are innovating. if I can have a car with $5 x 8 or 10 cameras and an field-replaceable h/w inference module - I am all for it as a consumer. Glad that Lidar costs are coming down and we could have a better sensor-fusion solution from Rivian at some point - which will be awesome. Hopefully soon (2-3 yrs).

They are learning from the market leaders, not Tesla. The Rivian tech stack looks a lot like the Waymo stack or the NVIDIA Thor system or the Baidu system or the BYD Gods eye system or pony ai. All of these use the same basic sensor suite and AI design concept of multimodal world models. The one that does not is Tesla. That is why it changed lanes and steered into a head-on collision last week on an FSD livestream in China. And because Grok struggles to separate truth from the noisy twitter cesspool, it claimed the incident was fake. Xpeng also uses vision only but its onboard computing capability is 3X the Tesla HW 4. (Just like the rap1.)

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Did you ask Grok where you can score some ketamine?

 

[DKM_R1S]

Could you explain more re: what that means? I have no interest in conversing with a bot, but I’m curious how it is integrated.

I can ask Grok to navigate to Walgreens, Target, then Starbucks in that specific order. It then starts the navigation automatically.

Or the big thing for me is, while following a route, I can ask it to find me a Starbucks along the way within 30 minutes away that has a drive through. I ask ask it how much travel time it would add to my route to drive to it.

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