Driver+ / Highway Assist vs. Tesla Autopilot: An Extensive Owner's Review

[stynes]

Rivians 'Driver+' is their full ADAS suite, which is made up of HA and ACC right now.
They will add more functionality with time as part of the Driver+ suite.

HA is ACC with Active Steering/Lane Centering.
And all Rivian is doing is enabling Active Steering/Lane Centering on mapped highways for HA and limiting to ACC for all other roads.

I would guess they will modify how hey name Driver+ as they add functionality, similar to what Tesla has done or doing right now, AP/EAP/FSD.

The naming is confusing. That's why I tried to start this writeup by defining the terms. I agree it'll likely continue to evolve.

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[rraj2k81]

The naming is confusing. That's why I tried to start this writeup by defining the terms. I agree it'll likely continue to evolve.

Yeah I agree. Their current Driver+ and HA naming convention is confusing to people who are not familiar with the system.

Rivian should just stick with HA and ACC and be clear when HA activates and when ACC works.
But they are trying to do what Tesla is doing, but without all the functionality.

 

[kylealden]

I have a Model Y with FSD and an R1T. I generally agree with your points and overal conclusions.

I do think Rivian has a couple other minor wins worth calling out as someone who uses these systems a lot for highway driving, but has given up on FSD:

1. Rivian's following distance and speed adjustments seem less random and chaotic than Tesla's. There's a lot of traffic rubber-banding and sudden jerky braking in AP, and the following distance adjustment doesn't seem to change much in practice, especially at lower speeds. Tesla also takes forever to get back up to speed when the car in front of you accelerates. I haven' t had any of these problems with Rivian.
2. I see a lot less phantom braking in my Rivian. Not none, but a lot less than Tesla. Tesla has consistently gotten worse over the five years I've been driving one and often makes my wife carsick or puts us in dangerous situations (sudden braking with a semi following you right after merging onto a highway... fun stuff).
3. You mentioned these, but it's worth reiterating: Rivian's attention monitoring is way better and less obtrusive in my experience; and Rivian's blind spot and cross traffic monitoring is categorically better than Tesla's in every way, including audio cues and mirror lights plus much more prominent display cues.

A few things Tesla does well that I'd love to see Rivian steal (and which feel totally plausible):

1. Traffic light chimes - Tesla will optionally chime when the light you're at turns green. Great feature, would love to see Rivian copy this.
2. Highway lane changes - Tesla's (user-initiated) AP lane changes on the highway are pretty bulletproof at this point and far less of a hassle than the disengage/change/reengage dance (which means ruining your music twice for every lane change ). I don't really care about the lane changes being automatic, but a way to pause & resume HA during a lane change (e.g. by holding down the talk) without a jerky/noisy disengage/reengage would be nice.
3. Unnecessary disengagements - I'm mostly fine with HA being highway-only (although the current "mapped highways only" approach feels unnecessary given the sensor suite), but it is too aggressive in disengaging for things like toll booths, tunnels, etc. On my commute it insists on disengaging when a neighboring HOV lane passes under the E-Z pass scanner because it's a "toll booth." Huh? (That said, this has already improved a lot - it used to disengage for every overpass on I-90...). Needless to say Tesla is great here.

Things nobody seems to do right which I'd love to see a more elegant solution to:

1. A more elegant way to fall back from AP/HA to TACC (radar cruise control). Right now this requires either a jerky steering override (feels awful and is potentially unsafe but keeps your speed setting) or a flip up/down on the stalk (disengage HA, engage TACC, probably losing your speed setting in the process and playing lots of chimes that mess with any other audio playback). Seems needlessly clumsy.
2. A way to fall back from HA to "dumb" cruise control when sensors are occluded or otherwise not working. I understand the reluctance here (you don't want someone plowing into the car in front of them because they thought they had radar following on) but I feel like there has to be a design solution.
3. Can't remember how Tesla works here but Rivian turns way too much off when you're in Towing Mode (including all HA features), and when anything is connected to the hitch power. This means if I want an auxiliary brake light on my bike rack, I can't have TACC or blind spot warnings. Dumb.

Things Tesla wastes colossal time and energy on which I couldn't care less about, and hope Rivian actively avoids:

1. "Full self driving" and "robotaxi" flights of fantasy
2. City AP including traffic light and stop sign recognition (with the asterix that I love the stop light chimes), navigate on autopilot, etc.
3. On/off ramps and auto lane change (e.g. non-user-initiated lane changes)

 

[mabowden]

Great write ups on this thread. Agreed on almost all fronts.

IMHO the biggest attractor to Tesla's AP vs. Rivian Driver plus is the amount of time it disengages. So far, in my case if it is raining you basically can't use driver plus whereas my brother's model Y doesn't seem to have nearly as much issue using AP in the rain.

 

[DTown3011]

Thanks for the great review. I love using AP in my Tesla M3 but only use it on the highway. It's pretty clear that Rivian's version is behind, but good to see the comparison and that there are a few features actually better than AP in general. I look forward to Driver+ improving over time!

 

[DTown3011]

I have a Model Y with FSD and an R1T. I generally agree with your points and overal conclusions.

I do think Rivian has a couple other minor wins worth calling out as someone who uses these systems a lot for highway driving, but has given up on FSD:

1. Rivian's following distance and speed adjustments seem less random and chaotic than Tesla's. There's a lot of traffic rubber-banding and sudden jerky braking in AP, and the following distance adjustment doesn't seem to change much in practice, especially at lower speeds. Tesla also takes forever to get back up to speed when the car in front of you accelerates. I haven' t had any of these problems with Rivian.
2. I see a lot less phantom braking in my Rivian. Not none, but a lot less than Tesla. Tesla has consistently gotten worse over the five years I've been driving one and often makes my wife carsick or puts us in dangerous situations (sudden braking with a semi following you right after merging onto a highway... fun stuff).
3. You mentioned these, but it's worth reiterating: Rivian's attention monitoring is way better and less obtrusive in my experience; and Rivian's blind spot and cross traffic monitoring is categorically better than Tesla's in every way, including audio cues and mirror lights plus much more prominent display cues.

A few things Tesla does well that I'd love to see Rivian steal (and which feel totally plausible):

1. Traffic light chimes - Tesla will optionally chime when the light you're at turns green. Great feature, would love to see Rivian copy this.
2. Highway lane changes - Tesla's (user-initiated) AP lane changes on the highway are pretty bulletproof at this point and far less of a hassle than the disengage/change/reengage dance (which means ruining your music twice for every lane change ). I don't really care about the lane changes being automatic, but a way to pause & resume HA during a lane change (e.g. by holding down the talk) without a jerky/noisy disengage/reengage would be nice.
3. Unnecessary disengagements - I'm mostly fine with HA being highway-only (although the current "mapped highways only" approach feels unnecessary given the sensor suite), but it is too aggressive in disengaging for things like toll booths, tunnels, etc. On my commute it insists on disengaging when a neighboring HOV lane passes under the E-Z pass scanner because it's a "toll booth." Huh? (That said, this has already improved a lot - it used to disengage for every overpass on I-90...). Needless to say Tesla is great here.

Things nobody seems to do right which I'd love to see a more elegant solution to:

1. A more elegant way to fall back from AP/HA to TACC (radar cruise control). Right now this requires either a jerky steering override (feels awful and is potentially unsafe but keeps your speed setting) or a flip up/down on the stalk (disengage HA, engage TACC, probably losing your speed setting in the process and playing lots of chimes that mess with any other audio playback). Seems needlessly clumsy.
2. A way to fall back from HA to "dumb" cruise control when sensors are occluded or otherwise not working. I understand the reluctance here (you don't want someone plowing into the car in front of them because they thought they had radar following on) but I feel like there has to be a design solution.
3. Can't remember how Tesla works here but Rivian turns way too much off when you're in Towing Mode (including all HA features), and when anything is connected to the hitch power. This means if I want an auxiliary brake light on my bike rack, I can't have TACC or blind spot warnings. Dumb.

Things Tesla wastes colossal time and energy on which I couldn't care less about, and hope Rivian actively avoids:

1. "Full self driving" and "robotaxi" flights of fantasy
2. City AP including traffic light and stop sign recognition (with the asterix that I love the stop light chimes), navigate on autopilot, etc.
3. On/off ramps and auto lane change (e.g. non-user-initiated lane changes)

Having never used Driver+ at length, I'd agree with ALL of this on the Tesla functionality!

 

[stynes]

I have a Model Y with FSD and an R1T. I generally agree with your points and overal conclusions.

I do think Rivian has a couple other minor wins worth calling out as someone who uses these systems a lot for highway driving, but has given up on FSD:

1. Rivian's following distance and speed adjustments seem less random and chaotic than Tesla's. There's a lot of traffic rubber-banding and sudden jerky braking in AP, and the following distance adjustment doesn't seem to change much in practice, especially at lower speeds. Tesla also takes forever to get back up to speed when the car in front of you accelerates. I haven' t had any of these problems with Rivian.
2. I see a lot less phantom braking in my Rivian. Not none, but a lot less than Tesla. Tesla has consistently gotten worse over the five years I've been driving one and often makes my wife carsick or puts us in dangerous situations (sudden braking with a semi following you right after merging onto a highway... fun stuff).
3. You mentioned these, but it's worth reiterating: Rivian's attention monitoring is way better and less obtrusive in my experience; and Rivian's blind spot and cross traffic monitoring is categorically better than Tesla's in every way, including audio cues and mirror lights plus much more prominent display cues.

A few things Tesla does well that I'd love to see Rivian steal (and which feel totally plausible):

1. Traffic light chimes - Tesla will optionally chime when the light you're at turns green. Great feature, would love to see Rivian copy this.
2. Highway lane changes - Tesla's (user-initiated) AP lane changes on the highway are pretty bulletproof at this point and far less of a hassle than the disengage/change/reengage dance (which means ruining your music twice for every lane change ). I don't really care about the lane changes being automatic, but a way to pause & resume HA during a lane change (e.g. by holding down the talk) without a jerky/noisy disengage/reengage would be nice.
3. Unnecessary disengagements - I'm mostly fine with HA being highway-only (although the current "mapped highways only" approach feels unnecessary given the sensor suite), but it is too aggressive in disengaging for things like toll booths, tunnels, etc. On my commute it insists on disengaging when a neighboring HOV lane passes under the E-Z pass scanner because it's a "toll booth." Huh? (That said, this has already improved a lot - it used to disengage for every overpass on I-90...). Needless to say Tesla is great here.

Things nobody seems to do right which I'd love to see a more elegant solution to:

1. A more elegant way to fall back from AP/HA to TACC (radar cruise control). Right now this requires either a jerky steering override (feels awful and is potentially unsafe but keeps your speed setting) or a flip up/down on the stalk (disengage HA, engage TACC, probably losing your speed setting in the process and playing lots of chimes that mess with any other audio playback). Seems needlessly clumsy.
2. A way to fall back from HA to "dumb" cruise control when sensors are occluded or otherwise not working. I understand the reluctance here (you don't want someone plowing into the car in front of them because they thought they had radar following on) but I feel like there has to be a design solution.
3. Can't remember how Tesla works here but Rivian turns way too much off when you're in Towing Mode (including all HA features), and when anything is connected to the hitch power. This means if I want an auxiliary brake light on my bike rack, I can't have TACC or blind spot warnings. Dumb.

Things Tesla wastes colossal time and energy on which I couldn't care less about, and hope Rivian actively avoids:

1. "Full self driving" and "robotaxi" flights of fantasy
2. City AP including traffic light and stop sign recognition (with the asterix that I love the stop light chimes), navigate on autopilot, etc.
3. On/off ramps and auto lane change (e.g. non-user-initiated lane changes)

Totally agree. The traffic light changes are amazing! You mention a lot of the wishlist items that I had in mind as well. I've thought a lot about how a "pause" or something might work where I can change lanes without the chime chime chime. Where's our Rivian customer engagement group where we can start advocating for these things and helping Rivian prioritize their roadmap?

One other thing your comments reminded me of that I didn't mention earlier... when you override AP by pressing the accelerator, it forces the speed to drop well beyond your set point before AP picks back up. So if I'm set at 77 and hit the accelerator, it goes to 82. When I let off, it'll drop back to 72 or so before taking back over and speeding me back up to 77. It's very annoying. Rivian's HA doesn't do that.

 

[obababoy]

How is my hyundai palisade lane centering and auto cruise vastly superior to rivians when it comes to availability. I can literally use it anywhere on any road even with barely any lines. There is no improving AI or geo based functionality, it just works. This tech has been the same since 2019 and it's great! Anyone have an idea why hyundai and kia are so much better and work on any road if it can see lines?

 

[cjones1130]

How is my hyundai palisade lane centering and auto cruise vastly superior to rivians when it comes to availability. I can literally use it anywhere on any road even with barely any lines. There is no improving AI or geo based functionality, it just works. This tech has been the same since 2019 and it's great! Anyone have an idea why hyundai and kia are so much better and work on any road if it can see lines?

My Kia EV6 (same family as yours) has spectacular driving aids. It is going to suck to go back to pre 2018 technology when It comes to driving assistance.

Rivian should grab a couple of Hyuandais/Kias for comparison purposes and start mimicking them, from what I gather they have the needed hardware in place.

 

[rraj2k81]

1. Rivian's following distance and speed adjustments seem less random and chaotic than Tesla's. There's a lot of traffic rubber-banding and sudden jerky braking in AP, and the following distance adjustment doesn't seem to change much in practice, especially at lower speeds. Tesla also takes forever to get back up to speed when the car in front of you accelerates. I haven' t had any of these problems with Rivian.
2. I see a lot less phantom braking in my Rivian. Not none, but a lot less than Tesla. Tesla has consistently gotten worse over the five years I've been driving one and often makes my wife carsick or puts us in dangerous situations (sudden braking with a semi following you right after merging onto a highway... fun stuff).
3. You mentioned these, but it's worth reiterating: Rivian's attention monitoring is way better and less obtrusive in my experience; and Rivian's blind spot and cross traffic monitoring is categorically better than Tesla's in every way, including audio cues and mirror lights plus much more prominent display cues.

These are all the things I find very annoying with AP as well too. But there are things I have done to make it a lot more manageable.

I set the cruising speed to the flow of traffic, which prevents AP from doing the whole rubber banding. I wish Tesla would give a 'coasting' option in heavy traffic for AP.

Never understand why Tesla cannot implement a real visual and Audio queue for blind spot monitoring and cross traffic alert.
They did improve it with the side repeater cameras getting activated when you turn the indicators on, but they ruined it with how it was implemented.

Wish the side camera visuals would show up in the driver display like Hyundai and Kias do.

 

[rraj2k81]

My Kia EV6 (same family as yours) has spectacular driving aids. It is going to suck to go back to pre 2018 technology when It comes to driving assistance.

Rivian should grab a couple of Hyuandais/Kias for comparison purposes and start mimicking them, from what I gather they have the needed hardware in place.

Ideally they should be bench marking all the system and trying to bring those functionality onboard without trying to re-invent the wheel.

If they can rip off Tesla's UI I am sure they can rip off other systems' functionality. They can easily porch more engineers from Tesla and Kia/Hyundai to develop Driver+

 

[s4wrxttcs]

I haven't tested the latest Rivian SW update to Driver+ so this comparison is a bit dated

Rivian Wins

• Driver Monitoring is much better as there is no tugging the steering wheel every 30 second, and it has a proper driver monitoring camera
• It doesn't re-center during merge sections
• It doesn't seem to phantom brake as much as my Tesla did (it had Tesla Vision)

Tesla Wins

• Seemed to do better in the rain
• Seemed to center better especially in corners
• Can activate in a lot of places, and even places one shouldn't.
• Less prone to deactivation
• More proven out

I should add that I'm a bigger fan of Adaptive Cruise control versus Lane Steering + Adaptive Cruise control. Sure Lane Steering is nice especially in the rain, but I find that for me personally that extensive use decreases my situational awareness.

Hopefully someone will reach L3 at freeway speeds then I don't have to worry about that whole situational awareness thing. I can sit back and relax while it does the work until I have to take over with ample handover time.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

How is my hyundai palisade lane centering and auto cruise vastly superior to rivians when it comes to availability. I can literally use it anywhere on any road even with barely any lines. There is no improving AI or geo based functionality, it just works. This tech has been the same since 2019 and it's great! Anyone have an idea why hyundai and kia are so much better and work on any road if it can see lines?

I think we need to look into what technology is implement behind the scenes.

Way back in 2015 I had a Model S with AP1 that performed almost as well as AP did on the 2022 I traded in for a Rivian.

The reason it worked so well is it used MobileEye technology. I don't know what Rivian has. I fear it's some in-house designed solution, but hopefully that fear is wrong.

I believe Hyundai uses MobileEye so its no surprise it works well.

 

[cjones1130]

I think we need to look into what technology is implement behind the scenes.

Way back in 2015 I had a Model S with AP1 that performed almost as well as AP did on the 2022 I traded in for a Rivian.

The reason it worked so well is it used MobileEye technology. I don't know what Rivian has. I fear it's some in-house designed solution, but hopefully that fear is wrong.

I believe Hyundai uses MobileEye so its no surprise it works well.

Kia utilizes DRIVE WiSE, Hyundai is SmartSense; they are prob exactly the same thing just with diff branding.

 

[dementor]

I wish there was a way for me to send a destination from my phone to the navigation app in the R1S. It might be existing and I am overlooking it.

This was added in a recent update.

I moved from a Tesla model S with FSD to my R1T. I actually thought the FSD was impressive and quite enjoyed it as a kind of science experiment but I don’t miss it.
What I *do* miss is lane changes on the highway by just pushing the indicator stalk. Hopefully Rivian can add that, it’s my only real complaint about driver plus.

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