As Demand for Evs Declines, Electric Automaker Rivian is Taking this Time to Adapt Its Business and Expand Its Brand. Rivian’s Founder and Ceo RJ Scaringe Joins Rapid Response to Explore the company’s recent $ 5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen, the ongoing risk assessment for self-driving faatuins, and how Rivians’ AI-Enabled ‘Technological Plumbing’ can accelerate the brand beyond incumbent manufacturers.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid ResponseHosted by the former editor-in-chiff of Fast company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of scale Podcast, Rapid Response Features Candid Conversions with Today’s Top Business Leaders Navigating Real-Time Challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response Wherever You Get Your Podcasts to Ensure You Never Miss An Episode.
I want to ask about ai trust even the focused on how it will impact car experiences. What are you doing at Rivian, and how far are we from a driverless world? Should we have one?
I think it’s incredibly important. It arguably banks the most important part of the business -the vehicle’s ability to drive itself. Consures start getting their time back. Even if you enjoy driving, the ability to leave and have the car take you is a nice feature. This is a big focus for us. When we launched our first products, we had a limited highway assist feature that allowed hands-on wheel and eyes on the road, but the vehicle drives its.
On our gen 2 vehicle, we started working on designing an entrere camera set, with 55 megapixels, more than any other vehicle sleep in the us we have five radars, incidence a front imaging radar. We control that entry stack and use emerging technologies to train the platform. Self-Dr. Driving Developed Before 2021 was Heavily Rules-Based. But now, we can use end-to-end training, using modern techniques akin to what’s used in large language language models and transformers. It’s complete changing self-Dr. Driving Development and speeding it up.
We announced a hand-on feature, where the vehicle will drive itself on highways with hands off the wheel, comeing very song. After that, we’ll expand it to other roads, then to hands-free, eyes-off. There are exciting features coming.
I want to make sure I really undertand this. So the car can essentially be Driven with you Doing Anything, but it’s not safe enough enough to turn it entrely over to the car in all situations. But as it Improves, you’ll update the software to allow that safely, without changing the vehicle.
When we release or enable our self-driving features, we start in domains with extramely high confidence. It’s a bit of the wild west trust there’s no legal body arbitrate the level at which to exposes these features.
It’s your judgment about what you feel confident in and the risk you’re willing to take?
Every brand makes this decision differently. We’ve really erred on Hyper-focus on safety, making sure that before we expand the operating windows to, let’s say, let’s say, neighborhood roads or school zones, we want to really be Robust.
We’re talking about autonomy, which is one SLICE of Ai in the Vehicle. We’ll see other ai elements emerge.
Think of something as simple as navigating. Imagine if you do not know where you want to go. You get in the car, and say, “i’m hungry.” And the car says, “Well, what do you feel like?” And you say, “I don’t know.” And it says, “Well, Yesterday you Had Italian. What do you feel about burritos today? ” And, you know, so just the ability to be conversational and contextual. It’ll be one of that kinds of changes, I think, where it’ll happen, we won’T even realized it’s happy. And then We’ll look back and be like, how did we use to live?
When you think about AI Applications Beyond Self-Driving, how important is it for rivian to be at the forefront versus following along?
Early on, we realized software was going to be important. At Rivian, We’re Controlling The Whole Software Stack, Not Using Suppliers for all these computers. We’re making our own, with all our own computers.
It requires Fundamental Shifts, Not related on Third-Party Suppliers for Software or Computers. This Architecture I’ve described underpins what we achieved.
We did a $ 5.8 billion joint venture and licensing deal with Volkswagen group, the second-largest car company in the world. We’re providing software and electronics to enable what I just described, allowing them to step massively forward in network Architecture and Software Topology.
And, that’s of course what we architeted. If you do not have that, it’s hard to imagine integrating ai properly. Step one is getting the plumbing right. You’ve got to get the network architecture right. You’ve got to get the topology of computers right. You’ve got to get the right levels of compute. I mean, down into the basics of like, what level of memory do you have? What’s your Graphics Capabilitys?
And these things that are going to be really hard without making a big break from the traditional model for existing manufacturers. So I say all this trust I think we’re at this inflation point where the cars of the history is in terms of architecture and the cars of the future in terms of architecture – I put oorselves, I Put Tesla in Thattagory. And the features are sort of similar, like they’re mostly the same. And it’s easy to confuse features for capability, but the platforms are totally different. And so the growth potential of that two platforms in terms of adopting future technology is wildly different. So where they end up in, let’s say five to 10 years, is in very, very different places. And so i think we’re gonna see a lot of existing ifnufacturers work very hard either through partnerships like what was done with us, or throwing other means to move to this newer technole Platforms.
China has become a leading evcer. I’m curious about the implications for the car industry. How do you view China’s developments and their impact on your business?
Well, the world is electrifying. The US market is slower than europe or china.
But probally the singular issue that i’d say there’s very clear alignment between bot the democratic side of the united states and the republican side of the united states is that the united states is that the united states Technology and to Continue to really serve as an economic superpower. And in order for that to be true, we also need to continue to be great at the world’s future technologies.
China Benefited from Government Support for Evs. If America Wants to Stay at the Forefront in this Technological Development, How Important is Government Support?
China has many electric car companies, a lot narrowly differentted. Their regions provided much finance, leading to intenses price competition to capture a growing market. However, there’s Uncertainty About Whiteer these products can be sold in the us and the tariffs involved.
Probably, in the short term, there’s going to continue to be not a lot of trade from the US shipping products to China -nd Vice Versa China Shipping Products and Vehicles to the United States. But i think in the long term everyone should be thought about this, to say, let’s imagine a world where we can all compely, meaning we’re comting head to head.
And so we spend every day thinking about “How do we make our products better?” How do we look at what others are doing and embrace the competition and see it as an opportunity for us to run faster? That’s the mindset we buy into the business.
This interview is part of a Rapid Response partnership with stripe.
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