Rivian software stability is a real issue we don't talk about

[Zoidz]

Yes, there are sometimes bugs that could be have been avoided by more thourough regression testing. But I don't think logging back in to subscription services is necessarily a bug, it may be a "feature" for security reasons.

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[Donald Stanfield]

This must be your first day on this forum if you think no one complains about the software stack in here.

 

[AaronTV]

Do share what the results are!

Working normally again today. I had done a soft and full reset Sunday night. Maybe that helped. But I'm suspecting maybe it was a network/technical issue Rivian or its provider was experiencing.

 

[mikehmb]

Situation: My wife took my son to a doctor's appointment this morning in our 2025 R1S, all good. Some time during the drive the infotainment display just showed a Rivian logo - nav, climate control, etc. were all gone and unlike a Tesla you can not do a soft reset while driving. Luckily the drivers display was still on and she knew where she was going so proceeded to the appointment. Coming out of the appointment the vehicle was dead. Both screens were just black. Get out, lock, unlock, no change. My son Googled the reset procedure and the soft reset did nothing. He then found the hard reset and was able to get the vehicle restarted. WTF?!

I've owned a number of EV's from Polestar and Tesla over the last few years. Total number of times I've had an unresponsive vehicle: zero.

But this isn't it. Every time there is a software "update" something gets knocked out. One time it was Spotify (soft reset and log back in), another time it was TuneIn (hard reset and log back in twice), another it was my blind spot cameras - just AWOL as was the turn signal cancelling on highways despite both being set to 'on' in settings and nothing changing on my end.

It's one thing if I had a five or six year old vehicle and software updates were buggering things, I'd still be peeved but would understand a bit better. This is a Feb 2025 delivered 2025 model year Gen 2 - theoretically this is the first thing Rivian is engineering and testing against. As a dual motor, it's probably the largest part of the fleet being delivered in 2025. There is nothing newer available, this is as good as it gets in terms of the computing and networking stack. Where is the QA?

Somehow we're supposed to believe Rivian is ready for autonomous driving? Even regular driving seems to be hard to keep going. This isn't some $40K ID.4, MachE or Ioniq 5. This rig costs twice as much as all of those. Heck, I purchased a used Tesla Model Y last September for the kids and that has had fewer issues by far than this Rivian.

Be better Rivian, be better. Not at advertising and brand marketing but you can't tout "software defined vehicles" while not being so good at software. And yes, VW will figure this out as well.

I have not personally experienced that degree of instability in the UI. The only real issue I've had was artwork not showing up on Tidal, which was admittedly super irritating but not a showstopper.

Otherwise, very stable. Others have certainly had more issues than me, though.

Anecdotally, a good friend had to lemon his M3 for serious instability issues that Tesla fought him over for like 2 years.

We do have an i3 (whose interface is designed by Remedial Demons with no experience in UX) and a GV60 (which is the opposite - it's pretty great), and both are super stable.

 

[CrazyOne]

Almost 3 years and never had an unresponsive vehicle. Worst that happened was a restart at highway speed and the speedo still worked during restart. The ADAS was disabled a few times, but that's mostly it.

 

[PaythePiper]

I think this is a fantastic idea. Stop shipping random features and spend six months getting things working all the time on every vehicle. If they need to force them to auto-reboot every night for a while, that's fine too.

BTW, I've noticed in my mobile app that I turn on seat heaters even when the app doesn't have a connection to the vehicle. It's just a false indication. Turning on climate can take 5-10 mins and who knows how many attempts. Meanwhile the charging level slider is hyper sensitive and laggy as all hell (I'm on an iPhone 16 Pro, it shouldn't lag) so it's very difficult to set anything other than a preset charging level.

I have a biased opinion on the Rivian software because I get to compare it to Tesla every single day (own both). Little things like walk in the garage and open charge door- Tesla is instant every single time. Rivian? Lags. My Apple Music seems to like to reboot a lot lately too. It will get there, but still painful sometimes

 

[IPTV65]

Not everyone has the chops to be an adopter of new tech. It’s never easy no matter that application.

 

[Bcross]

I'm not trying to minimize the frustration - we all have it when something doesn't work as expected. I have it on a weekly basis with my Sonos. Less frequently but still too often with various home automation devices. And I get that the frustration is amplified when it's a vehicle that leaves you stranded. But, these two statements are NOT compatible:

1) I want to drive a cutting edge vehicle from a company that is building revolutionary software.

2) I paid for this and everything must work perfectly every time.

 

[RoJo]

Working normally again today. I had done a soft and full reset Sunday night. Maybe that helped. But I'm suspecting maybe it was a network/technical issue Rivian or its provider was experiencing.

Still working for you today? Mine reverted to this issue again this morning.

 

[carsly]

Not that this excuses it at all, but the fact that you have had zero issues with your Polestar is honestly more surprising to me than the issues with the Rivian. The Geely/Volvo/Google software stack has been nothing but trouble for us, including similar "locked out and/or vehicle won't start" sort of things. Our Rivian has been vastly more trouble-free than the last two Volvos we've had (one was so bad they bought it back, hence the second).

I did have a couple issues with the Polestar 2 - GPS disappears so no navigation, sometimes it thinks the key was not in the vehicle (PaaK), infotainment reboots. Then they added Carplay and I used that most of the time. It was a 2022, the CPU seemed overtaxed and the software was getting slow and overcomplicated. Wasn't a recipe for long-term reliability so I sold the vehicle before issues started multiplying and bought a used Model X.

 

[carsly]

I'm not trying to minimize the frustration - we all have it when something doesn't work as expected. I have it on a weekly basis with my Sonos. Less frequently but still too often with various home automation devices. And I get that the frustration is amplified when it's a vehicle that leaves you stranded. But, these two statements are NOT compatible:

1) I want to drive a cutting edge vehicle from a company that is building revolutionary software.

2) I paid for this and everything must work perfectly every time.

How quickly we forget.

I bought an original iPhone in July 2007. Part of the hardware-software integration was keeping it simple - no app store, only one phone carrier in the US (AT&T), had to update via tethering to a laptop running iTunes (no OTA). Simplicity led to high function, high reliability experiences - it just worked - and the rest is history. If you preferred Blackberry, that was much the same in the early years - clean, simple and directed.

Having a cutting edge vehicle doesn't mean putting up with bad software. I believe Rivian's path would be clearer if they tried to fewer things better - maybe go with coil springs and shocks for the suspension for a while, stick with the Meridian or Bose audio systems (yes, their sound engineers are superior to Rivian's right now), just get basic adaptive cruise control with highway lane centering working reliably, don't re-architect the entire CPU, wiring and networking stack to save a few bucks which only adds to software complexity leading to more customer service issues and expenses due to forking the code for Gen1 and Gen2.

If you want to accept recurring software failures leading to dead apps or entire vehicles as part of your purchasing consideration set on a $100K vehicle that's on you. Heck, people bought Land Rovers when they were owned by Ford which was anything but a paragon of reliability. I don't care about brand image or posing for neighbors, I want what I paid (a lot of money) for to work - the first time and every time. I did not buy a 2021 or 2022 R1 for these reasons, I was willing to wait for the bugs to get worked out.

The problem is Gen 2 software/hardware seems less stable than Gen 1. That shouldn't happen. And I'm not going to accept it laying down, you do you.

 

[carsly]

Guess you never ran a windows update or one with Apple ever right? Are there problems yes, are they discussed, all the time. Software and QA are an industry wide problem that will never get better. Having done updates on my Rivian's over the last 29 months I can say less problems than with my apple devices and probably less than 4 or 5 issues.

This is precisely why I abandoned Windows 20+ years ago and never looked back. All my Apple devices are far more stable and easier to use than any Windows machine I ever used. I became accustomed to the Windows issues and found the Apple world to be a tough adjustment initially but everything just works. I haven't thought of an autoexec.bat or config.sys in a long time. Damn, I just did!

 

[Zoidz]

don't re-architect the entire CPU, wiring and networking stack to save a few bucks which only adds to software complexity leading to more customer service issues and expenses due to forking the code for Gen1 and Gen2.

That's not an option, and there is a lot more to it than saving a few bucks. The entire automotive industry has been planning the transition to zonal architecture since 2018. The OEMs of the hardware, such as NXP, are forcing the change as much as RIvian choosing to change. If Rivian did not transistion to Zonal Architecture, the masses would be complaining that Rivian tech is old and outdated ... Exactly like they do about the Gen1 camera system today.

Image below is from an NXP presentation in 2021

 

[malditofman]

Situation: My wife took my son to a doctor's appointment this morning in our 2025 R1S, all good. Some time during the drive the infotainment display just showed a Rivian logo - nav, climate control, etc. were all gone and unlike a Tesla you can not do a soft reset while driving. Luckily the drivers display was still on and she knew where she was going so proceeded to the appointment. Coming out of the appointment the vehicle was dead. Both screens were just black. Get out, lock, unlock, no change. My son Googled the reset procedure and the soft reset did nothing. He then found the hard reset and was able to get the vehicle restarted. WTF?!

I've owned a number of EV's from Polestar and Tesla over the last few years. Total number of times I've had an unresponsive vehicle: zero.

But this isn't it. Every time there is a software "update" something gets knocked out. One time it was Spotify (soft reset and log back in), another time it was TuneIn (hard reset and log back in twice), another it was my blind spot cameras - just AWOL as was the turn signal cancelling on highways despite both being set to 'on' in settings and nothing changing on my end.

It's one thing if I had a five or six year old vehicle and software updates were buggering things, I'd still be peeved but would understand a bit better. This is a Feb 2025 delivered 2025 model year Gen 2 - theoretically this is the first thing Rivian is engineering and testing against. As a dual motor, it's probably the largest part of the fleet being delivered in 2025. There is nothing newer available, this is as good as it gets in terms of the computing and networking stack. Where is the QA?

Somehow we're supposed to believe Rivian is ready for autonomous driving? Even regular driving seems to be hard to keep going. This isn't some $40K ID.4, MachE or Ioniq 5. This rig costs twice as much as all of those. Heck, I purchased a used Tesla Model Y last September for the kids and that has had fewer issues by far than this Rivian.

Be better Rivian, be better. Not at advertising and brand marketing but you can't tout "software defined vehicles" while not being so good at software. And yes, VW will figure this out as well.

Yawn.

 

[carsly]

That's not an option, and there is a lot more to it than saving a few bucks. The entire automotive industry has been planning the transition to zonal architecture since 2018. The OEMs of the hardware, such as NXP, are forcing the change as much as RIvian choosing to change. If Rivian did not transistion to Zonal Architecture, the masses would be complaining that Rivian tech is old and outdated ... Exactly like they do about the Gen1 camera system today.

Image below is from an NXP presentation in 2021

I don't disagree with a zonal approach, it's really just about stability first and timing second. I would have held off and put this in R2 or R3. Or launched R1 with a zonal architecture.

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