Rivian is adding real time Waze alerts to in-vehicle navigation on both R1 and R2, starting with speed cameras and police reports in the 2026.31 OTA. Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid shared the news on X this morning, along with a screenshot of the feature running in a vehicle, and said more data and alerts are on the way after this first batch.
No release date for 2026.31 yet, which is the usual pattern. Rivian tends to confirm what is in an update well before it says when the update is actually going out.
What makes this one worth paying attention to is that 2026.31 is the same OTA that brings RivianOS 2.0 to R1 Gen 1 and Gen 2, which we confirmed earlier this week. So this is shaping up to be the biggest R1 software release in a long time, with a full interface rewrite and a meaningful navigation upgrade landing at the same time.
There has also been a lot of worry in the community that moving R1 over to RivianOS 2.0 would mean losing things along the way. Rivian Assistant, Camp Mode, and Google Cast come up the most in those conversations, mostly because R2 shipped without a few of them and people assumed the new OS simply did not have them yet. Look closely at the screenshot Wassym shared and you can spot the Rivian Assistant icon sitting in the left side rail, which is a good sign that R1 owners are not going to lose it in the transition. The other detail worth noting is that the shot appears to be from an R2, so this may also be our first look at Rivian Assistant finally arriving on R2 in the same update. Nothing official on that yet, so treat it as a strong hint rather than a confirmation.
The Waze piece itself is the bigger story for daily driving. Rivian moved its navigation to Google Maps in the 2025.22 update last July, and this is the clearest sign yet that the partnership is not a one time integration. Waze is owned by Google, and its whole value is crowd sourced reporting, so pulling speed camera and police alerts into native Rivian nav means you get the practical stuff people actually open Waze for without leaving the Rivian interface or reaching for your phone. Hazard and slowdown reports feel like the obvious next additions given how Wassym worded it.
And yes, the comments are going to fill up with people pointing out that CarPlay could have done this years ago. We are not doing that today.
I will have a full video walkthrough ready when 2026.31 starts rolling out. In the meantime, R1 is still on 2026.23 and you can keep an eye on the software updates page for the first sightings.
