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

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, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet.

Waymo is delivering millions of paid rides per month all over the country with no one in the driver's seat. Tesla still can't manage that in one small city without a backup driver in the front.

But yes, just like the dozens of other times I've read this comment for years now, I'm sure "the latest version of FSD" is so groundbreaking, and it's all about to change!

> 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 state of the art is Waymo. The jury is still out on whether cameras only can replicate its success. If it can’t, that safety margin could mean game over for FSD on the insurance or regulatory levels. In that case, Rivian could be No. 2 to Waymo (which will be No. 1 if cameras only doesn’t pan out, given they have infinite money from Google). That’s a good bet.

And if cameras only works, you’ll still have the ultra premium segment Tesla seems to have abandoned and which may be wary of licensing from Waymo.

Your statement on more expensive hardware likely isn't true if you factor in full costs. Lidar gives you things for free with little extra processing (or power) that optical takes extra work to do poorly with higher latency.

Also LIDAR has just plain dropped in price, well over 10x, while nVidia hardware (even the automotive specific variants) have not.

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/20/lidars-wicked-cost-drop...

> You're taking a complex, low margin vehicle

Taxi services are not low margin. A taxi typically does about 500,000 miles over its lifetime; adding $10,000 to that cost is 2 cents per mile, increasing price by about 1%.

I own FSD, its no where near autonomy.

Waymo operates on guardrails, with a lot more human-in-the-loop (remotely) help than most people seem aware of.

Tesla's already have similar capabilities, in a much wider range of roads, in vehicles that cost 80% less to manufacture.

They're both achieving impressive results. But if you read beyond headlines, Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years.

My first instinct is also that Rivian's strategy doesn't make sense. Self-driving is a monumentally hard problem, to be successful you need a world-class engineering and research team, resources and time.

I suspect that when Rivian has an L3 product, Waymo will be already offering an L4 package to car manufacturers.

Tesla literally has a human in the driver seat for each and every mile. Their robotaxi which operates on geofenced “guardrails” has a human in the driver seat or passenger seat depending on area of its operation, and also has active remote supervision. That’s direct supervision 100% of the time. It is in no way similar in capability to Waymo.

We’ve been hearing Tesla will “surpass Waymo in the next 1-2 years” from the past 8 years, yet they are nowhere close. It’s always future tense with Tesla and never about the current state.

> 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 radars and lidars. This nukes their cost advantage, at least in part, though Tesla maintains its manufacturing lead and vertical integration.)

Tesla has a good hand. But Rivian's play makes sense. If cameras only fails, they win on licensing and a temporary monopoly. If cameras only work, they are a less-threatening partner for other car companies than Waymo.

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 traffic light is red or green. And it certainly doesn't improve predictions of human drivers.

It's not camera vs lidar, it's AI vs AI.

Waymo's AI so far has been narrowly focused few cities. Good start, but remains to be seen who will scale out quicker. IMO both will succeed.

Right now if you want a personal car Tesla's FSD is the only option and will remain so for likely a decade. Waymo doesn't seem to be excited about their mission at all. If it moves to Google's graveyard they'll be like "meh" while it's mission critical for Tesla.

Which begs me the question why Tesla took so long to get here? It's only since v12 it starting to look bearable for supervised use.

The only answer I see is their goal to create global model that works in every part of the world vs single city which is vastly more difficult. After all most drivers really only know how to drive well in their own town and make a lot of mistakes when driving somewhere else.

Sensing depth is pretty important though. Especially in scenarios where vision fails, radar for example works perfectly fine in the thickest of fog.

Path planning (decision-making) is by far the most complicated part of self-driving. Waymo vehicles were making plenty of comically stupid mistakes early on, because having sufficient spatial accuracy was never the truly hard part.

In "scenarios where vision fails" the car should not be driving. Period. End of story. It doesn't matter how good radar is in fog, because radar alone is not enough.