Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe doesn’t want to run a car company anymore. At least, not only a car company. In an interview with TechCrunch, Scaringe sketched a future where Rivian is what TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec called it: a “tech supplier” — a company that designs the brains of electric cars and licenses them to “many different brands.”
The Pitch: Be the Intel of EVs
Rivian is far more vertically integrated than it was a couple of years ago. According to TechCrunch, it has built its own AI models to power its in-vehicle assistant, is developing an end-to-end automated driving stack for passenger vehicles and future robotaxis through a partnership with Uber, and is co-designing a custom 5-nanometer processor with Arm and TSMC.
Then there is the $5.8 billion joint venture with Volkswagen Group, focused on electric architecture and software — a venture Scaringe now wants to expand into AI and autonomy, with licensing that could reach well beyond Wolfsburg. His side quests: a micromobility spinoff called Also, and Mind Robotics — an industrial robotics startup 31% owned by Rivian that just hired ex-Ford, Apple and Tesla executive Doug Field as president.
The Catch: Its Test Drivers Can’t Talk About It
Here is the part the vision deck skips. Rivian’s most advanced driver-assistance feature, point-to-point hands-free driving, is about to arrive as an invite-only beta — and the invited owners have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to get it, Electrek reports.
Per a new Rivian support page, the Autonomy Early Access Program covers US Gen 2 R1 and R2 owners with paid Autonomy+ subscriptions. Paying isn’t enough: invitations go to heavy Autonomy users with clean safety records, balanced by region and model. Testers must use the preview features weekly, log issues, fill out monthly surveys and share location and camera data. They are not paid. Gen 1 R1 owners are out. So is Canada.
The Timeline Keeps Sliding
On Rivian’s Q2 earnings call, Scaringe described point-to-point as “Level 2++”: hands off the wheel, eyes still on the road. Eyes-off comes in 2027; Level 4 in 2028. That’s a slip — in January 2025, Scaringe said an “eyes-free” system would launch in 2026. Now the hands-off feature that was supposed to come first is arriving in “late 2026” as a limited NDA beta.
The hardware isn’t fully there yet, either. Rivian is targeting the end of this year for its third-generation autonomy computer with the in-house RAP1 chip and lidar — reportedly good for 1,600 sparse INT8 TOPS and 5 billion pixels per second. The early access program runs on Gen 2 vehicles already on the road, meaning the beta validates software, not the silicon Rivian wants to license.
Half the Price of Tesla’s FSD
Buried under the tech-supplier talk is a pricing story: Autonomy+ costs $2,500 one-time or $49.99 a month — Rivian started charging in April — versus $8,000 for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving. The hardware case is real too: 11 cameras, radars and even lidar, where Tesla goes vision-only. If Rivian ships point-to-point on schedule, the price comparison alone makes the licensing pitch credible. If it doesn’t, Scaringe is selling software whose timeline keeps arriving late.
Why this matters
The tech-supplier thesis isn’t vapor: own silicon, own AI models, VW’s billions, an Uber robotaxi partnership and a robotics spinoff is a portfolio, not a slide. But credibility in a licensing business comes from shipped product, and right now Rivian’s flagship feature is an NDA-gated beta with a slipping timeline.
Tesla walked the same road — NDAs and safety scores for early testers — before opening up. Rivian’s version is arguably more responsible: heavy-usage drivers with clean records, rechecked every 30 days. The difference is that Rivian wants to sell the road itself to other automakers. Watch the December beta. It will tell you whether the tech-supplier story is a strategy or a slogan.
Meanwhile in Cars & EVs: Rivian is also teaching its cars tricks that need no NDA — its R2’s Pet Cam runs on the Connect+ subscription — while a rearview-camera recall shows the unglamorous side of scaling up.
