Rivian Assistant Makes Siri Look Overqualified

[DuoRivian]

I thought RAP 1 was one chip on a motherboard that does it all? And that is Gen 3. Not just the RAP chip.

RAP is the autonomy chip - the A in RAP. It is distinct from the updated infotainment chip coming with R2 that handles the info side of things.

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[Zathras]

RAP is the autonomy chip - the A in RAP. It is distinct from the updated infotainment chip coming with R2 that handles the info side of things.

Yes, and that infotainment hardware is being upgraded to gen 3 around the end of the year, leaving the early 2026 R2s with half the processing power.

 

[racekarl]

Yes, and that infotainment hardware is being upgraded to gen 3 around the end of the year, leaving the early 2026 R2s with half the processing power.

Where are you getting that? As was already pointed out, the RAP 1 chip coming later this year is for autonomy, not infotainment. The "Gen 3 autonomy compute module" contains the RAP 1 processor, and is for image processing and self-driving models.

So far Rivian has not communicated anything about a "Gen 3 infotainment" as far as I can tell.

https://rivian.com/newsroom/article...ext-gen-autonomy-platform-deep-ai-integration

 

[DuoRivian]

Yes, and that infotainment hardware is being upgraded to gen 3 around the end of the year, leaving the early 2026 R2s with half the processing power.

Incorrect, the new infotainment chip is included in R2 now - an upgrade from the Gen2R1. No evidence the infotainment chip will change again within a year. Only change for next year is autonomy capability for L4.

 

[Zathras]

Where are you getting that? As was already pointed out, the RAP 1 chip coming later this year is for autonomy, not infotainment. The "Gen 3 autonomy compute module" contains the RAP 1 processor, and is for image processing and self-driving models.

So far Rivian has not communicated anything about a "Gen 3 infotainment" as far as I can tell.

https://rivian.com/newsroom/article...ext-gen-autonomy-platform-deep-ai-integration

Okay, I stand corrected. The interview with the CEO I saw a while back I misunderstood what he was saying.

 

[pastreit]

Obviously, there are some limitations, and I'm looking forward to Rivian improving things over time. One thing we do all the time is send a destination to the nav screen. With RA, I tried something I was sure would be beyond its ability. We had six stops to make yesterday afternoon in another city, and I had all of them in my calendar with location information - something I've always done to make it easy to click and send each time.

I asked RA to create a route, in order, for the six appointments in my calendar starting with the one at 2:30. It shocked me by creating the correct route and starting navigation to the first one. Expanding the route on the nav screen, it showed each one with the estimated battery level on arrival, but arrival time did not match my calendar times. I'm impressed enough I'll be subscribing to Connect+ from now on.

 

[Virtio]

"It's getting smarter everyday"

 

[Ingo B]

I genuinely appreciate Rivian trying to bring AI into the vehicle experience. That’s ambitious. That’s forward-looking. That’s the kind of thing that makes you feel like you’re living in the future.

Unfortunately, after using Rivian Assistant for several days, I can confidently say the future apparently runs on a 2017 Bluetooth speaker and mild confusion.

I’m honestly baffled by how far behind this feels compared to literally every modern LLM on the market. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini — all of them can hold context, remember what you just said, and generally behave like they’re awake.

Rivian Assistant, meanwhile, has the memory retention of a golden retriever in a laser tag arena.

Example:
Me: “Find that song I like.”
Rivian Assistant: finds it
Me: “Great, play it.”
Rivian Assistant: “Absolutely. Here’s a completely different song from three playlists ago that nobody asked for.”

It’s like talking to a very enthusiastic intern who got hit in the head with a Roomba.

And this isn’t some obscure edge case. This is basically the entire experience. Every interaction feels like the assistant is waking up from a nap, hearing one random noun, and making a panic decision.

At this point I’ve gone back to Alexa, which feels like admitting defeat in a futuristic society. That’s like buying a spaceship and then commuting via horse because the autopilot keeps driving into lakes.

What confuses me most is: why reinvent the wheel here?

Why not integrate Claude or another mature LLM provider? Because right now this feels less “AI-native EV experience” and more “two Raspberry Pis zip-tied together behind the dashboard running Ask Jeeves.”

Surely the token costs can’t be THAT bad. I refuse to believe we’re rationing GPU cycles like wartime butter.

And the frustrating part is that the vision is actually great. An intelligent in-car assistant should be a killer feature for Rivian. This SHOULD be the perfect environment for contextual AI.

Instead, my truck currently has the conversational abilities of a haunted GPS unit.

I want this to succeed. I really do. But today, Rivian Assistant feels less like “the future of driving” and more like your uncle discovering ChatGPT after two margaritas and saying “watch this.”

I LOL'd. Great write up.

This falls well within Rivian's modus operandi of "reinvent things that function as if it's 2013, then gradually improve it so we can talk about how we are constantly improving." The first few iterations of the Rivian nav system was just like this. And don't get started on having to use half-assed BT to play anything that isn't a god damn app playlist or terrestrial radio station (HUGE peeve of mine. I can't imagine any significant cost savings coming out of eliminating a USB connector with a data line).

 

[reggie]

I was meeting a friend in Seattle at Some Random Bar (yes that is name of the establishment). I asked RA to navigate to Some Random Bar and it provided 5 different options and asked if I wanted to go to any of those five. I chuckled and said no and just manually dealt with the navigation. Doesn't bug me a bit that RA didn't get it right.

 

[ENVErider]

I genuinely appreciate Rivian trying to bring AI into the vehicle experience. That’s ambitious. That’s forward-looking. That’s the kind of thing that makes you feel like you’re living in the future.

Unfortunately, after using Rivian Assistant for several days, I can confidently say the future apparently runs on a 2017 Bluetooth speaker and mild confusion.

I’m honestly baffled by how far behind this feels compared to literally every modern LLM on the market. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini — all of them can hold context, remember what you just said, and generally behave like they’re awake.

Rivian Assistant, meanwhile, has the memory retention of a golden retriever in a laser tag arena.

Example:
Me: “Find that song I like.”
Rivian Assistant: finds it
Me: “Great, play it.”
Rivian Assistant: “Absolutely. Here’s a completely different song from three playlists ago that nobody asked for.”

It’s like talking to a very enthusiastic intern who got hit in the head with a Roomba.

And this isn’t some obscure edge case. This is basically the entire experience. Every interaction feels like the assistant is waking up from a nap, hearing one random noun, and making a panic decision.

At this point I’ve gone back to Alexa, which feels like admitting defeat in a futuristic society. That’s like buying a spaceship and then commuting via horse because the autopilot keeps driving into lakes.

What confuses me most is: why reinvent the wheel here?

Why not integrate Claude or another mature LLM provider? Because right now this feels less “AI-native EV experience” and more “two Raspberry Pis zip-tied together behind the dashboard running Ask Jeeves.”

Surely the token costs can’t be THAT bad. I refuse to believe we’re rationing GPU cycles like wartime butter.

And the frustrating part is that the vision is actually great. An intelligent in-car assistant should be a killer feature for Rivian. This SHOULD be the perfect environment for contextual AI.

Instead, my truck currently has the conversational abilities of a haunted GPS unit.

I want this to succeed. I really do. But today, Rivian Assistant feels less like “the future of driving” and more like your uncle discovering ChatGPT after two margaritas and saying “watch this.”

I almost didn't post this because most posters seem to share your disappointment with the recent update, and I'm sure that I'm going to get trolled and slammed, but my own reaction to the RA add in this last update is WOW, AMAZING!
From my point of view, my 4+ year old truck just received a free OTA update that added a ton of cool and useful voice commands like opening doors/hatches, changing settings that I used to have to scroll through screens for, and a bunch of voice-enabled features. Yes, she does sometimes take her time answering me and sometimes feels like I'm talking to a middle schooler or high schooler, but I'm thrilled because I see it as a huge improvement over Alexa and it was added for free on a vehicle that I never expected or thought that I'd get an AI assistant and this level of voice control of my truck when I bought it.
I mostly wanted an electric adventure vehicle that can tackle knarly off-road stuff, and I feel I have that. All these monthly OTA-added features just seem like free extras, and I don't care about the gap between what my phone or desktop computer AI features are for RA, in particular. There's nothing wrong with wanting more from Rivian, but if I had a chance to meet any of the leaders, I might thank them for making one of the best products that I've ever purchased in my lifetime.

 

[tate16t]

I almost didn't post this because most posters seem to share your disappointment with the recent update, and I'm sure that I'm going to get trolled and slammed, but my own reaction to the RA add in this last update is WOW, AMAZING!
From my point of view, my 4+ year old truck just received a free OTA update that added a ton of cool and useful voice commands like opening doors/hatches, changing settings that I used to have to scroll through screens for, and a bunch of voice-enabled features. Yes, she does sometimes take her time answering me and sometimes feels like I'm talking to a middle schooler or high schooler, but I'm thrilled because I see it as a huge improvement over Alexa and it was added for free on a vehicle that I never expected or thought that I'd get an AI assistant and this level of voice control of my truck when I bought it.
I mostly wanted an electric adventure vehicle that can tackle knarly off-road stuff, and I feel I have that. All these monthly OTA-added features just seem like free extras, and I don't care about the gap between what my phone or desktop computer AI features are for RA, in particular. There's nothing wrong with wanting more from Rivian, but if I had a chance to meet any of the leaders, I might thank them for making one of the best products that I've ever purchased in my lifetime.

opening doors?

 

[BCondrey]

I don't want a LLM chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude in my truck. I just want a smooth experience to help manage the drive and the environment. The current RA isn't perfect, but I am sure it will improve over time, everything else in the truck has.

 

[Hayseed_MS]

Some of you must be a barrel of fun at other peoples' birthday parties...

It just came out and will get updates and improvements. This was a game changer for me on my R1S. Use it quite a bit. Never used Alexa, Siri, or Google Music so I am not looking at through that lens.

Texting works great. Nav works great. I pull out and say "Hey Rivian shut my garage door" in one sentence and it immediately shuts. Say "Hey Rivian take me to the closest Starbucks and then work" in one sentence - it confirms the nearest Starbucks and then satnavs the trip. "hey Rivian, turn off passenger side vents" and it flawlessly does. I am not seeing the delay. Again, it is not perfect, but what is? Would I like it to control the wipers and such - yes - but it does not do that. No reason for me to yell at the clouds.

 

[RivAW]

I genuinely appreciate Rivian trying to bring AI into the vehicle experience. That’s ambitious. That’s forward-looking. That’s the kind of thing that makes you feel like you’re living in the future.

Unfortunately, after using Rivian Assistant for several days, I can confidently say the future apparently runs on a 2017 Bluetooth speaker and mild confusion.

I’m honestly baffled by how far behind this feels compared to literally every modern LLM on the market. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini — all of them can hold context, remember what you just said, and generally behave like they’re awake.

Rivian Assistant, meanwhile, has the memory retention of a golden retriever in a laser tag arena.

Example:
Me: “Find that song I like.”
Rivian Assistant: finds it
Me: “Great, play it.”
Rivian Assistant: “Absolutely. Here’s a completely different song from three playlists ago that nobody asked for.”

It’s like talking to a very enthusiastic intern who got hit in the head with a Roomba.

And this isn’t some obscure edge case. This is basically the entire experience. Every interaction feels like the assistant is waking up from a nap, hearing one random noun, and making a panic decision.

At this point I’ve gone back to Alexa, which feels like admitting defeat in a futuristic society. That’s like buying a spaceship and then commuting via horse because the autopilot keeps driving into lakes.

What confuses me most is: why reinvent the wheel here?

Why not integrate Claude or another mature LLM provider? Because right now this feels less “AI-native EV experience” and more “two Raspberry Pis zip-tied together behind the dashboard running Ask Jeeves.”

Surely the token costs can’t be THAT bad. I refuse to believe we’re rationing GPU cycles like wartime butter.

And the frustrating part is that the vision is actually great. An intelligent in-car assistant should be a killer feature for Rivian. This SHOULD be the perfect environment for contextual AI.

Instead, my truck currently has the conversational abilities of a haunted GPS unit.

I want this to succeed. I really do. But today, Rivian Assistant feels less like “the future of driving” and more like your uncle discovering ChatGPT after two margaritas and saying “watch this.”

So you are surprised and disappointed (yet hopeful) that Rivian's first iteration of an ai assistant has room for improvement, particularly when compared with Siri, which has been around and constantly updated since 2011?

 

[Ingo B]

So you are surprised and disappointed (yet hopeful) that Rivian's first iteration of an ai assistant has room for improvement, particularly when compared with Siri, which has been around and constantly updated since 2011?

In fairness to the OP, I'm thinking the issue is less about Rivian's shortcomings and more about why they chose to release a homemade, yet subpar feature, when the baseline is already established in the field. This is akin to releasing a new CD player that also reads .mp3s into a world that's already full of established multimedia players. Perhaps there's proprietary barriers to folding mature AI instead of homegrown into the Rivian? Just spitballing.

I'm not interested in fighting about this. Just pointing out my interpretation.

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