“Somehow, it didn’t leak.”
When I caught up with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe after the company’s “AI & Autonomy Day” keynote on December 11 at its Palo Alto headquarters, he marveled that the company had managed to keep the event’s news under wraps until it was ready for its big reveal.
It did—and there was a lot to discuss. At the keynote, Rivian unveiled its Gen 3 platform, which will turn the maker of EV trucks, SUVs, and vans into an autonomy company, a focus he says will subsume “the whole business” of transportation.
Debuting late next year in a version of the upcoming R2 SUV, the Rivian Autonomy Computer platform is powered by a chip the company designed itself, the RAP1 (Rivian Autonomy Processor). The R2’s self-driving features will also draw on data from a lidar unit that sits inconspicuously at the top of the windshield—a far cry from the spinning lidar towers atop vehicles such as Waymos. (Controversially, Tesla’s cars don’t use lidar sensors.)
Rivian also showed off a new voice-controlled user interface called the Rivian Assistant that will be available as an update for its current vehicles as well as for the R3. A bet on the future of car interfaces shifting toward talking rather than tapping on screens, it features integration with Google Calendar—hinting at the kind of productivity-related features that might become more useful as cars take over more of the work of driving themselves.
I spoke with Scaringe about all these topics and more. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
