Rivian will launch hands-off highway driver assist ‘in a few weeks’

Rivian said Thursday it plans to launch a hands-off version of its driver assistance system for highway driving “in a few weeks,” and an “eyes-off” version in 2026.

The hands-off system will let Rivian compete with companies like Ford and General Motors, which have both launched similar systems in the past few years. (Ford has named its system BlueCruise, while GM has SuperCruise.) Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (supervised) system, which is not fully autonomous despite its name, also allows hands-off driving in some of its vehicles and in certain conditions.

The launch comes as Rivian is forecasting another challenging year, driven in large part by uncertainty around what changes the Trump administration might make to regulatory policy. The company did post its first positive gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2024. That was buoyed by a company-wide cost-cutting effort in 2024 but also an increase in software and services revenue.

Rivian’s autonomy ambitions were front-and-center when the company broke stealth in 2018. At that time, CEO RJ Scaringe was talking about dreamy scenarios where Rivian owners could start a hike and have their vehicles drive autonomously to meet them at the finish. But autonomy took a back seat in the years since — at least publicly — as Rivian focused on completing its IPO, and launching and scaling three different vehicles.

Rivian has now posted back-to-back years of building and delivering around 50,000 vehicles, and has some breathing room — thanks to a major deal with Volkswagen finalized late last year — to focus on rolling out features like a hands-off system.

Rivian is training its driver assistance platform using what’s known as “end-to-end” training, a similar approach to what Tesla is doing with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software. Instead of writing out hard-coded rules, Rivian uses data from the cameras and radar sensors to train the models that power its driver-assistance system.

Much like Ford and GM, Rivian is starting out by allowing the hands-off feature to only be used on highways. Scaringe said Thursday that, once the eyes-off version launches in 2026, Rivian will slowly allow the driver assistance system to expand beyond other types of roads.

“Ultimately, the end state, we think hands-free, eyes-off needs to be available essentially everywhere,” Scaringe said.

To reach that point, Scaringe said Rivian is evaluating a “variety of really creative ways we can access a substantial amount of GPUs without having to deploy the capex ourselves” in order to train its self-driving models — a notable break from how Tesla is spending billions of dollars on GPUs.

Correction: Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software allows hands-free driving in newer cars and in certain conditions.