December 11, 2025 - Rivian Goes With Lidar and Custom Chips

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for December 11, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

At its first-ever AI and Autonomy day in Palo Alto, Rivian announced that it will be launching major updates beginning with its upcoming R2 midsize electric SUV that aim to bring automated driving to the platform. Rivian launched a major update to its existing R1 models just over 18 months ago that adopted a new zonal electronic architecture with a compute module for advanced driver assist systems powered by dual Nvidia Orin processors. These chips have been widely used by Chinese automakers for several years and are now in models from Volvo, Polestar, Mercedes-Benz, and Lucid. But just as Tesla moved from Nvidia chips to its own custom silicon for its AutoPilot system in 2019, Chinese manufacturers like Nio and Xpeng announced plans to deploy their own custom chips earlier this year. 

Now Rivian is doing the same thing with its Rivian Autonomy Processor. The Rivian R2 is expected to launch by mid-2026, and by the end of the year, it is expected to be upgraded with the Autonomy Compute Module 3 using two of the new processors. The RAP1 chips are expected to deliver 800 TOPS performance for AI tasks compared to 254 TOPS for the Orin chips. 

At the same time, Rivian will also add a lidar sensor to the R2. Combined with the existing high-resolution cameras and radar sensors, the lidar is expected to eventually enable hands-off, eyes-off driving capability and possibly Level 4 automated driving. The multi-modal sensing will provide a more complete and robust view of what is happening around the vehicle under a wider range of conditions than cameras alone can deliver. 

In early 2026, Rivian will also launch an Autonomy+ package on the R1 with a one-time $2,500 cost or $49.95 monthly subscription that will enable what it calls universal hands-free driving. This will enable supervised hands-free operation on 3.5 million miles of North American roads, virtually all roads that have painted lane markings. Eventually, Rivian hopes to extend this to full point-to-point operation. While validating this capability won't be an easy task, the fact that Rivian is choosing to use multi-modal sensing is a good sign that the company is focused on safety. 

Thanks for listening.