Rivian’s autonomy gamble faces its first real test

Rivian's CEO RJ Scaringe spent a significant portion of the company's earnings call discussing autonomous vehicle ambitions, despite the mass-market R2 SUV still scaling up in production. The company is set to roll out its point-to-point hands-free driving feature to employees in 2026 and to customers in 2027, with the goal of launching robotaxi vehicles in partnership with Uber in 2028. Rivian is taking on Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology with custom chips and pricey lidar, a significant financial gamble. The success of Rivian's autonomy ambitions will be determined in the next two years, with Tesla's FSD already deployed in over 1.7 million active customer cars.