Hands Free Highway Driving Upgrade For Gen 1

[mizuno]

Rivian have effectively abandoned Gen 1 owners and will not be doing anything significant to improve driver+.
Here's a simple method to upgrade your highway driving experience.

Step 1: buy something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C36X1JY
(Note: I've done some experimenting and the 2lb option works best).

Step 2: drape item over lower left or right quadrant of steering wheel

Step 3: enjoy hands free driving

No more overbearing "hold the wheel" interrupts every 10 seconds

I would stress that I only use this in two situations:

1) Relatively uncongested highways
2) Stop/go traffic jams

It is not for use in:

1) high speed / dense traffic situations
2) narrow / curved highway sections

I understand I may take some heat for this post but for me this is a huge plus on road trips and is simply enabling the car's capabilities.

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[zefram47]

Do not turn Rivian folks into the Teslarati that drove around with oranges on their steering wheels. This is stupid and dangerous.

 

[mpshizzle]

@mizuno
You should look into comma.ai

 

[CrazyOne]

How can I get notified if you end up in hospital/morgue/prison? Because. There is no way you should drive hands free with G1 system and Rivian clearly thinks so too.

 

[DayTripping]

As mentioned, spend the money and go with Comma.Ai. Absolute best purchase I made for my truck.

 

[JM.]

I've run a wheel weight in the Rivian for around 30k miles. Excellent upgrade that really had no downsides at all. But those things look intrusive.

 

[mizuno]

I've run a wheel weight in the Rivian for around 30k miles. Excellent upgrade that really had no downsides at all. But those things look intrusive.

Hi Jon

The weights are not as bad as they might appear and I wanted something that was easy to put on / remove. I'm sure there may be a more elegant solution. Let me know what you are using/used if you could.

I'm also considering the comma 3x as other contributors have recommended.

Mike

 

[SactownD]

The system is just not safe enough to go hands free. It still tries to kill me at least 5x/ride in I80 between Sacramento and Truckee and a similar amount of times to S.F.

 

[JM.]

Let me know what you are using/used if you could.

What I use on the Tesla would never fit on a Rivian.

 

[mizuno]

The system is just not safe enough to go hands free. It still tries to kill me at least 5x/ride in I80 between Sacramento and Truckee and a similar amount of times to S.F.

Sorry to hear that! What is triggering the murder attempts or is it just random?
I've not experienced this on my road trips so far but I am using my "upgrade" judiciously.

 

[RWerksman]

The system is just not safe enough to go hands free. It still tries to kill me at least 5x/ride in I80 between Sacramento and Truckee and a similar amount of times to S.F.

This x 1000%

In it's current state, the system is so flakey that I would never ever trust it without hands on the wheel. Doing so is basically a deathwish.

To be fair, it's A-OK 95% of the time. Even so, it's still not as good as AP1 Autopilot.

 

[JM.]

What is triggering the murder attempts or is it just random?

On one of the tech calls, Wassym said he really doesn't like Daniel and is "gonna clean the gene pool." Not sure what that meant.

 

[SactownD]

Sorry to hear that! What is triggering the murder attempts or is it just random?
I've not experienced this on my road trips so far but I am using my "upgrade" judiciously.

It struggles in areas with shadows and poor lane markings. There is no respect for Jersey barriers, especially in construction zones. There’s a corner where a bridge is being rebuilt that crosses the American river that it consistently tries to slam me into the barriers. Corners in general seem to cause problems. When passing trucks it’ll sometimes drift perilously close, so I’ll have to take control pretty frequently in those situations. If the road is straight and the lane markings good, it can do pretty well. Unfortunately California is a very mountainous place if you’re not driving strictly in the central valley.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Stuff like this is why I don't like all the ADAS features. People shortcut all the safety warnings because they don't want to deal with it, and we have 8K lb missiles going 75MPH with ankle weights on the steering wheel since someone doesn't care about their safety or the safety of others.

Spend the money on a Gen2, or get a Comma if you want to go hands-free. Doing this is a death wish.

 

[Hoski]

I just completed a round trip between Denver and Truckee in my Gen 2 R1T. While I like the hands free capability I too believe it still needs work. Specifically I find it takes too much pressure on the wheel to take over especially in an emergency. There were a few times when over taking another vehicle they started to swerve into my lane. One case in particular was a vehicle pulling a camper that started to swerve into my lane as I was passing them at 80MPH in Utah. I reacted quickly which almost created an oversteer and scared the heck out of my wife.

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