Rivian Gen1 vs Gen2 Driver+

 I wanted to post about the differences between Gen 1 and Gen 2 Rivian Driver+ or what is know known as the Rivian Autonomy Platform starting with Generation 2 R1 vehicles.  Much of this info is from publicly available info from Rivian and also the AMA with Wassym Bensaid as well.

The 1st generation R1 vehicles: will continue to get updates to Driver+ but the hardware is limited and so it will never be capable of the more advanced stuff that Gen 2 vehicles will be able to achieve.  While they do have 10 cameras, 5 radar, and ultrasonic sensors they are not long enough range or high enough resolution to support the more advanced features.  Rivian also disabled and then removed the driver facing camera on these vehicles because it wasn't oriented correctly according to Rivian.  While Rivian has committed to providing updates to Driver+ for the 1st gen vehicles the hardware limits what they can do in terms of adding new features.

With all that said I still think 1st Gen vehicles do more than enough for most folks.  Its certainly better than the standard auto pilot that comes with Tesla vehicles which only includes lane centering and adaptive cruise.  Though the standard Tesla system is not geofenced and does perform better with lane centering at the time of this writing.

The 2nd Gen Vehicles: Have 11 cameras, updated driver facing camera in rear view mirror, more advanced USS and Radar units.  The new hardware can see 3x further than the previous system and Rivian claims the vehicle can see up to 1000 ft ahead of it with a new HD Imaging Radar unit.  The cameras are 4K HDR cameras which Rivian also claims are the highest megapixel cameras available on any EV currently.  The compute power has also been upgraded which I am sure was necessary to process all the additional data the car can now see.  Rivian claims compute is 10x more powerful than previous gen.

While the 2nd gen vehicles are clearly a much more powerful system keep in mind that Rivian will be moving this to a subscription based system while all the current Gen 1 vehicles will continue to receive their feature set without a subscription.  Also, the 2nd gen system doesn't have any additional features currently vs the Gen 1 system.  The auto lane change feature is not coming until this fall and other additional capabilities will certainly be later than that.

Lastly, per the Reddit AMA Wassym Bensaid has indicated Rivian has no plans to offer a retrofit of Gen 2 hardware for Gen 1 vehicles.

I have seen many folks ask about the differences so I wanted to create this post to hopefully provide some clarity on it.  I also attached the video showing the new system capabilities.