Rivian announced on Thursday its intentions to introduce a hands-off version of its driver assistance system for highway driving in the coming weeks, with an “eyes-off” version planned for release in 2026.
The hands-off feature will position Rivian to compete with companies like Ford and General Motors, both of which have released similar systems in recent years. Ford’s system is known as BlueCruise, while GM’s is called SuperCruise. Meanwhile, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (supervised) system, despite its name, still requires users to keep their hands on the steering wheel.
This announcement comes as Rivian projects another challenging year, largely due to uncertainties about potential regulatory changes by the administration. The company reported its first positive gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2024, supported by a company-wide cost-cutting initiative and an increase in software and services revenue.
Rivian’s initial emphasis on autonomy was evident when the company emerged from stealth mode in 2018. Back then, CEO RJ Scaringe envisioned scenarios where Rivian vehicles could autonomously meet their owners at the end of a hike. However, the focus on autonomy seemed to diminish publicly as Rivian concentrated on completing its IPO and launching and scaling three different vehicle lines.
Having now achieved two consecutive years of building and delivering approximately 50,000 vehicles, Rivian can afford to concentrate on developing features like its hands-off system, supported by a significant deal with Volkswagen finalized late last year.
Rivian is utilizing an “end-to-end” training approach for its driver assistance platform, which involves using data from cameras and radar sensors to train the models, rather than hard-coded rules. This approach is similar to Tesla’s method for its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software.
Similar to Ford and GM, Rivian is initially allowing the hands-off feature to be used only on highways. Scaringe stated on Thursday that as the eyes-off version is rolled out in 2026, the company will gradually extend the driver assistance system’s capabilities to other types of roads.
Scaringe remarked, “Ultimately, the end state, we think hands-free, eyes-off needs to be available essentially everywhere.”
To achieve this goal, Rivian is exploring various creative strategies to access a substantial amount of GPUs without incurring significant capital expenditures, a departure from Tesla’s approach of investing billions of dollars in GPUs.
