Rivian describes opening its in-car assistant to outside agents
Rivian ● Covered by 2 sources
Rivian says its in-car assistant will work with outside apps like your calendar. It wants the car to handle messages and meetings, not just navigation.
Based on reporting by Rivian — read the original for the full story.
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Rivian used its first Autonomy & AI Day to make a broader point: the company wants to control more of the car’s brain, not less. That starts with hardware, where it’s pushing a third-generation autonomy computer built around its own Rivian Autonomy Processor, or RAP1, and its in-house neural net engine running directly on the chip. The pitch is straightforward — more performance, lower latency, and a system tuned for Rivian’s own stack rather than bolted together from parts.
The company says the new compute setup delivers 1600 sparse INT8 TOPS and can process 5 billion pixels per second. It also leans on RivLink, which connects multiple chips to spread out the workload. Rivian says the hardware is designed for functional safety and includes multiple layers of protection with ASIL designation. On the sensor side, it’s betting on a multi-modal setup with cameras and radars now, then adding LiDAR to future R2 models.
That sensor mix feeds Rivian’s autonomy pipeline, which the company describes as a self-improving data flywheel. Data from the fleet is sent to Rivian Cloud, organized and labeled, then used to train its Large Driving Model. The model is already improving Gen 2 vehicles, with more gains expected once Gen 3 hardware arrives. Rivian also says an upcoming software update will bring Universal Hands-Free to more than 3.5 million miles of roads in the US and Canada.
The more immediate consumer story, though, is the assistant. Rivian says Rivian Assistant is built on its shared data foundation and uses an in-house agentic framework that lets it work with third-party apps, including a calendar. The company says that means a driver should be able to ask about the day, navigate to the next appointment, or reschedule a meeting while driving. At launch, R2 will have an infotainment computer that lets the assistant run entirely offline.
Rivian is also tying this into service. It says the same shared intelligence will help technicians diagnose problems and eventually improve self-service in the mobile app. And for buyers who want the broader autonomy package, Rivian Autonomy+ is set to launch in early 2026 at $2,500 one-time or $49.99 per month.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right move. A car assistant that stays trapped inside the dashboard is just a fancier button box; one that talks to your calendar and apps starts to feel like an actual product. The catch, as always, is that “AI-defined” sounds heroic right up until it needs to be reliable on a Tuesday commute.
Read more about this at: Rivian