- Rivian says it plans to have hands-free point-to-point driver assistance available in late 2026.
- This will eventually lead to the brand’s roll-out of an eyes-off, truly autonomous system at a later date.
- CEO RJ Scaringe believes that autonomy will be an unintentional driver of electric cars.
Let’s be honest, half the folks out there with driver-assistance systems out there probably aren’t treating them like they should be anyway. They’re texting or sneaking in some Tiktoks while peeling back the wrapper on a Taco Bell burrito. I know this, you know this and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe certainly knows it too. That’s one of the reasons that the brand is so hell-bent on getting that whole pesky autonomy thing figured out
It turns out that Rivian is on the “precipice” to introducing a more mature hands-free driving system in its trucks, and it’s coming a lot sooner than you think. In a recent interview with InsideEVs, Scaringe shared that the brand is not only on-track to delivering hands-free driving on both city streets and highways, with point-to-point driving available in 2026. But Scaringe believes the company will eventually deliver point-to-point eyes-off autonomy as well.
“We’re at the precipice of starting to see the delivery of capabilities that map to all this infrastructure that we built. First was hands-free. The obvious next step is hands-free everywhere. Then the next step is the vehicle can drive itself point-to-point, you know, address to address,” said RJ during the interview. He acknowledged that the timeline could be a bit dicey, though:
“It’s hard to be overly precise on [a timeline], honestly. You can see why you can you can get the dates wrong on this. But we’ve said is in 2026 we’ll be hands-free point-to-point. We’re going to show some of this at our autonomy day. Then we’ll increasingly start to allow eyes off.”
The point that RJ is trying to make is that self-driving is at this awkward phase in its lifecycle. Automakers see the value in bringing self-driving into the forefront of the modern car, but actually achieving autonomy is a hard task that has equated to a giant cash burn for most brands out there today (as many automakers very well know).
You can’t actually buy a self-driving car today. In industry terms, cars are technically still Level 2, meaning you’re supposed to be paying attention to what’s going on around you because the car isn’t driving—you are. But everyone is treating it like it’s Level 3 anyway and they’re free to sneak a peek away from the road to answer a text.
Photo by: Rivian
Rivian’s pitch here is to cut out the charade. Let the car actually do the driving and stop pretending that the meat sack behind the wheel is paying attention.
“One of the unspoken things about self-driving systems—especially in personally-owned vehicles—most systems are level two, meaning you, as the driver, are supposed to be attentive to the road and paying attention as a redundant layer but not actually driving the vehicle,” said RJ. “The way that this is often measured is your hand on the wheel or your eyes on the road. So what happens is, as we well know, you put your hand on the wheel, but you’re still texting. This is very, very common. And so it’s just a workaround to treat your level two as if it’s a level three.”
It’s not just a convenience thing either. Ask Tesla, GM or any other automaker out there, and they’ll tell you that the industry is trending towards personal autonomy being the next big thing. In fact, a recent study confirmed that hands-free driving is now the most in-demand feature in new cars.
That makes the road to personal autonomy one driven by business and not just another tech bro looking to prove that their company can be the first one to do it.
RJ says that he believes Tesla’s head start in autonomy is one of the reasons that it was able to gain so much traction for its vehicles so quickly. He also credits the tech for driving demand not just for Tesla, but for EVs in general, and believes that the consumer push for the tech will push forward EVs as a whole by the end of the decade.
“I do think that as we get to the end of this decade, like as we get to like 2030-2031, the ability to have hands off, eyes off in most situations is going to become very valuable and will start to drive a lot of purchase decisions,” said RJ. “I think it could help accelerate—by coincidence—electrification because I think this is most likely to be seen on electric vehicles.
Long-term, it’s clear that autonomy is a sales hook for every automaker out there. If you’re not with it, you’re going to get left behind. And, let’s be real, if your neighbor is rocking a new ride that lets them turn their commute into more me-time than traffic, you start looking at your lane-keeping like it’s a pretty dumb feature in comparison.
This all assumes that Rivian can deliver on its promises. Many automakers have tried and failed to deliver on time already, but, hey, somebody’s got the build the future. It might as well be Rivian.
