Rivian Recap: 09/11/2026

Hey there,

Here's your weekly Rivian Recap for September 11th, 2026.

The "R2our" road trip kicks off tomorrow, OS 2 lands on R1 vehicles, Borealis R2 is inbound, and Gen3 autonomy hardware will have two different versions?

Let's dive in!

Software

Last week, 2026.31 started rolling out to the fleet of R1 & R2 vehicles.

My R2 has spent most of the week getting paint protection film added to the front end before the road trip (despite already getting 3 rock chips).

However, I did get a chance to play with Rivian OS 2.0 on our Gen2 R1S and there are a few differences compared to the R2 implementation.

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Here are some of my quick thoughts:

1. Both larger displays of R1 don't utilize the new layout as well as the wider aspect ratio of R2 where vertical space as at a premium.

The lack of vertical real estate feels more punitive on R1 since a few items (such as road cam capture) require multiple taps to expose the trigger vs an always visible icon you can easily hit. Or without doing a longer honk to initiate a road cam recording.

Perhaps R1 could expand the "fish stick" left settings bar to include at least one extra element, and/or be customizable the same way the app tray is.

2. Contextual settings and searchable items in settings overall are big improvements for finding the "thing" you truly want to adjust, quickly.

3. The R1 driver display has not been as drastically rethought as it is in R2, so things like weather and time are not displayed on R1 outside of the main display.

4. A few more little bugs, such as the media pane disappearing but not collapsing the mapping nav buttons over to the right where the media pane had been previously.

5. Oddly, multiple times since updating the R1S to 2026.31 it has taken some time and multiple attempts for the vehicle to recognize my digital key in order to actually operate the vehicle, despite correctly unlocking.

6. I continue to like the integrated weather app with forecast, AQI, and wind speed more than I imagined. However, there is a consistency thing I think could improved and one feature split worth noting:

First, there is room for confusion based on the temperature displayed being pulled from the web instead of being the ambient vehicle sensor.

Candidly, I think the temperature displayed at a glance should be the ambient sensor by default.

Second, I would've loved to see the weather app be included without the need for a Connect+ subscription. This feels like the exact kind of light touch feature that could live outside of the subscription paywall, similar to remote key.

I understand that other automakers charge way more than Connect+ for dramatically fewer features, but being so baked into the user experience and something that is similarly answered by widgets on your phone is not ideal.

Hardware

While the Borealis color for R2 is still listed as "Coming September" in the configurator, those who are waiting will be very happy s00n.

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CEO RJ Scaringe posted on Instagram a clip of Borealis and Coastal Cloud Signature interior examples being produced on the line.

I've said before that Borealis is not for me, but I must admit having seen a few in person now it's one of the nicer purples I've seen on a vehicle.

How Rivian continues to knock out colors that over perform in person vs photos and videos is impressive. Almost every color has a dimension to it that changes based on lighting and takes on a very different character in person.

They still need to sort out the color harmony issues they're having with Half Moon Gray and Esker Silver vehicles. Getting different colored parts from time to time is an issue, but they have a really nice foundation for paint options.

While I'm in the camp for having more color variety in the lineup, the reality is that most people buy black/gray/white vehicles. Covering those colors is the most important thing when it comes to driving sales.

Last week there was a spotting of a Gen3 Rivian R2 in the wild, but it turns out that it may not be as binary as we originally expected in terms of capability.

Thanks to a summary from @Rivian_DD on X of a talk that Rivian gave at the Goldman Communacopia conference, we learned a few things about Gen3 hardware.

Here are the most relevant bullets from the summary:

- Point-to-point still on for late this year. Uber's CEO and CFO both got demos recently.

- Asked what the biggest technical challenges left are: "making sure the model is not too conservative, that it's sort of tracking speed as you would expect." Already seeing "very good behavior around relatively complex scenarios like construction or narrow negotiation"

- Gen3 autonomy hardware comes in two performance levels: the lower one costs less than today's Gen2 hardware, the higher one about the same or slightly more

- The autonomy software already runs on the RAP1 chip and is hitting performance targets without fully optimized software. Hardware characterization testing is ongoing and should be largely done in about six weeks

- Asked if they can get enough compute with the market tightening, Philbin pointed to Amazon: GPU supply through AWS is secured for at least the next 6 to 9 months, "past that, we'll need to see"

- Customer driving data alone won't produce the behavior they want, since customers roll stop signs and speed. Expert driver data gets mixed in at roughly 1 part in 10 to fine-tune it

- Rivian is open to selling its autonomy chip outside of vehicles. Vidya: "if anybody out there is interested in using our chip for robots to reach out."

It will be very interesting to see how the strategy of splitting hardware capability of Gen3 autonomy comes into play for the long run.

Despite what most hardcore Tesla loyalists say, the fact remains that roughly 85% of Tesla owners decline to pay for "Full Self Driving (Supervised)" at $99 per month. There is not a one time license option from Tesla at the moment.

I've continued to hold the opinion that Rivian autonomy features are going to take big, almost jerky, leaps forward in capability.

This split in hardware and AWS resources tells me a few things:

1. The "low" version of Gen3 likely has a single RAP1 chip vs a "high" version with dual RAP1 chips. I expect both to have LiDAR to more rapidly train the Large Driving Model with as much ground truth data as possible.

2. A "high" version of Gen3 autonomy will be needed (at minimum) for the advanced behavior people who are seeking robotaxi-like features. This will likely be gated to higher trim levels, so the dream of an autonomous heavy standard trim is likely a ways off at best.

3. The performance of Gen2 autonomy and Gen3 "low" will probably be extremely close for the foreseeable future.

4. As someone who has signed meaningful contracts with AWS commitments, I assume that is what James Philbin is referring to with the 6-9 month availability of resources. There's a good chance they can get resources beyond that, but the prices likely went up given the overall market.

Time to hammer those GPU commitments for clip processing and model training!

An interesting thing a local EV enthusiast put together are some charts showing the compounding effects of running hardware changes.

Dave has a whole thread of examples of how fast these changes add up over time. Many of us are familiar with how software changes can impact what our devices can do, similar to how much our smartphones change over time.

Often times these changes are simply to reduce the cost for the automaker by removing parts, but we also see improvements as well.

The squeaky door handles on Gen2 that finally got fixed, and the much improved wireless charging pad come to mind right away.

It will be very interesting to see how an R2 built 24 months from now will differ from these launch versions. For example, even something as consistent looking as the Model S changed parts dramatically from launch to the final run.

Only 3% of the parts in the original Model S were in the final Model S.

How long will it take for R2 to change that much?

Community

Well, it's officially time for the "R2our" to kick off.

I heard many of you loud and clear last week, that you may be interested in meeting up but having that information on X alone isn't going to cut it.

So for convenience, I'll be posting on both X and YouTube social posts.

There are two potential loops I'm looking at, which will depend on how hard the overall road trip ends up being and how urgently I need to get back for knee surgery on our much loved black lab.

Route 1 will be about 3,300 miles to Phoenix and back through the Salt Lake City area on the return to Washington.

Route 2 would be extended to Beaumont, TX bringing the trip to more like 5,500 miles if things are going well.

My plan each day is to post on the two channels with the plan for the day and updates about ETA to charging stops for anyone interested in meeting up along the way.

We plan to be in the Bay Area by Sunday to kick things off!

I'll have free stickers for those who meetup, and a limited run of the Stay Curious hats available for purchase should you fancy one of those.

I hope to see some smiling faces of those who feel motivated to swing by and say hi here very soon.

Worth Checking Out - HEST

One thing that owning a Rivian seems to inspire for people, is more exploring than ever before and actually adventuring to new places.

With R1S and R2 specifically, the comfort of camping in your vehicle is essentially unmatched. While we are still waiting on the official Camp Mode software feature to come to R2, there is a design thing to consider.

The #1 thing holding R2 back from being a great camper is clearing the gap from the folded down 2nd row for support all the way up to the front seats.

To solve this, HEST has partnered with Rivian for a premium solution that uses the seat backs as a support anchor to comfortably fit taller sleepers.

Unlike air mattresses that would require you to use a board or other rigid support system, this dual mattress (left and right sides) can attach together, and anchor to the front seats.

By splitting the mattress in two, you can leave a solo mattress in place on the passenger side for a tall person and still have a usable driving position. (Hello from a 6' 4" guy.)

While bulky when rolled up, the HEST Foamy for R1S and R2 have superior build quality and give the most premium experience possible in R2.

My thanks to HEST for making this newsletter possible.

Latest Deals

September has just a few tweaks to the offers, and they are exclusive to model year 2026. We do see an interest rate improvement for '26 R1 quad models.

There are still some overall price reductions available:

Check out the price reduction on R1S.

Check out the price reduction on R1T.

Here's what's sticking out for deals this week:

Dual Large (2.99% or $1.5k lease bonus) [Lease vs Buy Example]

2026 R1S Dual-Large (Premium Audio)

2026 R1T Dual-Large (Premium Audio, Utility V2 Tonneau)

Tri Max (1.99% or $1.5k lease bonus) [Lease vs Buy Example]

2026 R1S Tri-Motor

2026 R1T Tri-Motor

Quad Max (3.99%) [Lease vs Buy Example]

2026 R1S Quad-Motor