Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

Post by tonyhart7 » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

setgree wrote: post #181

TulliusCicero wrote: post #18

Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway). Of course, people won't like this…

The other possible future is you rent the car for exactly when you need it and don’t pay a monthly bill— or your monthly bill pays for a certain number of rides/minutes/miles per month. In which case the subscription costs are managed by the provider, who might be the manufacturer and might not. At least in cities, a fully-functioning, on-demand autonomous fleet would probably be superior to car ownership in just abo…

Post by BillinghamJ » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 10:28 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #282

harikb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History suggests it won't be that clean. 1. High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments. 2. Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due…

> Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash. Google, AFAIK the only company with cars that are actually autonomous, has US$98 Billion in cash. It'd have to be a hell of an accident to put a dent in that.

Post by dzhiurgis » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 10:37 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

mrcwinn wrote: post #89

This is really poor execution. You're taking a complex, low margin vehicle and introducing even more cost and supply chain complexity. On top of that, you're essentially making a proxy bet that more expensive hardware (LIDAR) will beat Tesla's software bet. It's absolutely fair to criticize Elon for his ridiculous FSD timeline claims, but here we are now evaluating the market: if you have experienced the latest FSD,…

> if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet I have. It’s wild for anyone to say this. Waymo works. FSD mostly works, and I seriously considered getting a Tesla after borrowing one last week. But it needs to be supervised—this is apparent both in its attention requirement and the one time last week it tried to bolt into a red-lit intersection. The sta…

Post by dzhiurgis » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 10:48 AM UTC

simondotau wrote: post #407

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years Iff cameras only works. With threshold for "works" beig set by Waymo, since a Robotaxi that's would have been acceptable per se may not be if it's statistically less safe compared to an existing solution. Waymo also sets the timeline. If cameras only would work, but Waymo scales before it does, Tesla may be forced by regulators to integrate…

In the increasingly rare instances where Tesla's solution is making mistakes, it's pretty much never to do with a failure of spatial awareness (sensing) but rather a failure of path planning (decision-making). The only thing LIDAR can do sense depth, and if it turns out sensing depth using cameras is a solved problem, adding LIDAR doesn't help. It can't read road signs. It can't read road lines. It can't tell if a tr…

Post by dvrj101 » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 11:01 AM UTC