Big one this week, straight from the R2 First Drive event in Park City. Ordering opened, I drove the R2 on road and off road, RivianOS 2.0 got its first real look, the autonomy roadmap filled in with Universal Hands-Free 2.0 and Point-to-Point, and a lot more.
RJ Scaringe went on Masters of Scale and put fresh dates on Rivian's autonomy rollout, with supervised Point-to-Point arriving this year and eyes off driving next year. Here is what he confirmed on the VW deal, Uber robotaxis, and Mind Robotics, plus where I land on whether the timeline actually holds.
The R2 does not come with a traditional FM tuner. It leans on iHeartRadio instead, streaming your local stations over the internet for free. For most owners that is a non issue, since FM usage on the R1 was already sitting in the single digits. The real catch is what happens once you drive past the last bar of signal.
I talked R2 autonomy with Rivian's James Philbin at the media event, from UHF 2.0 and automatic parking to point to point, and walked away thinking the buy now versus wait question has a clearer answer than it used to.
Rivian has pushed the first over-the-air update to R2, the introductory release that brings the vehicle's software up to its launch feature set. The update headlines RivianOS 2.0, a reimagined operating system that unifies Navigation, Media, Energy, and quick controls, along with the Haptic Halo Wheels, Universal Hands-Free across 3.5 million miles of roads, Lane Change on Command, and Google Maps-powered navigation with built-in charging. Rivian Assistant, the Gear Guard suite, vehicle hotspot, and garage door opener are not in this release and are expected in a later OTA.
