Back for round two of The Sunday Drive. Lighter on hard news than last week but heavier on the stuff that matters long term, with a bigger VW stake, an R2X tease, a chip story worth paying attention to, and Rivian Assistant on the way.
The upcoming 2026.15 software update brings Rivian Assistant, the new AI voice assistant, as the headline feature, alongside Profile PIN authentication and a handful of Gen 2 refinements. Here's what to expect when it lands.
Rivian's new Stories post on Adventure Network scaling mostly recaps things R1 owners already know, with one exception. The underground work at most existing RAN sites is already done, so adding new stalls becomes a hardware drop instead of a months-long construction project.
Rivian is exploring a way to manufacture its own lidar sensors in the United States, possibly through a joint venture using Chinese technology. If the plan lands, the R2 would become the first mass-market American EV fitted with a domestically built lidar unit, and it would mark another step in Rivian's push to bring more of its critical tech stack in-house.
Rivian's RAP1 chip and Gen 3 Autonomy Computer aren't just spec bumps. They're the moment Rivian stops renting compute from someone else and starts owning the whole stack, the same way Apple did when it walked away from Intel and built its own silicon.
