Rivian Recap: 10/02/2026
Hey there,
Here's your weekly Rivian Recap for October 2nd, 2026.
Rivian's biggest software push is coming in hot, spooky updates, autonomy progress, pet features, road trip recap, and thermal improvements.
Let's dive in!
Software
This fall and leading into spring, things are shaping up to be one of the most productive software cycles we've ever seen out of Rivian.
From slated feature catch up on R2 with Rivian OS 2 for things like Camp Mode, Rivian Assistant, and more... to all new features such as an expanded Pet Mode, point-to-point, and new hardware tricks coming in a series of updates.
It's about to be a spooky good time to be in the Rivian ecosystem.
First up, if the pun wasn't obvious to those less familiar, Rivian does a Halloween mode each year and they promised to bring this years update to the fleet sooner so owners have more time to enjoy it.
Given the Gear Shop drop, it seems we're set for a Ghost theme this year compared to prior years where we got KITT and Back to the Future.
Maybe we can call someone to bust out the secret of this years update?
One feature expansion that I'm looking forward to is the Pet Cam for R2, where you can use the interior camera to view your pets remotely.
I expect this feature will be behind the ever expanded features for Connect+, and it will be limited to R2 because of the difference in interior camera hardware.
Gen2 R1S and R1T use an infrared camera for driver monitoring, whereas the R2 camera is a full RGB (red/green/blue) color camera.
When you get light at just the right angle, you see the camera and sensor array of the rearview camera housing, as I caught last weekend when the sun was just right to make it extremely visible.
It also seems like this feature is imminent, since Rivian is planning events at local spaces to show off this specific feature.
Rivian is set to finally introduce a Teen/Valet mode in "early 2027" that will allow you to limit the available power and capabilities of your vehicle.
Wassym Bensaid gave an interview to The Drive detailing what these features should look like and will be a welcome option when handing your keys over or provisioning a digital key to someone who benefits from a few limits.
Probably the most interesting software related notes to me this week came from a talk that James Philbin and Chip Newcom gave to Evercore.
The entire talk is around 34 minutes, but here's what stood out to me:
- Point-to-point is doing a "limited roll out" at the end of this year to select operating domains and early adopters (TBD who that is).
The fact that James highlighted "expert driving data" from the San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami areas tells me those will be the same markets we see Autonomy+ offering this feature to start.
- Some operating domains will be specifically excluded at the start, parking lots in particular were called out as excluded in the initial versions.
- The benchmarks for the Uber deal and delivering true Robotaxis is what's pushing the timeline, and seemingly why were are skipping over the previously targeted "Universal Hands Free 2.0" phase.
- Robotaxis for Uber (and possibly other providers?) will launch well in advance of personally owned level 4 solutions.
While it seems they are probably one to two quarters behind what they are trying to signal to the investment community, they are making good progress overall for what customers are actually waiting on.
Given that Autonomy Day is quickly approaching, I'm excited to learn more about what Rivian has been cooking over the past 12 months from demo last December, which ended up giving us Universal Hands Free.
Hardware
I was finally able to get the remaining two videos out from the road trip that I had planned to do, and they've been generally well received so far.
One huge question I had going into this was understanding how Rivian R2 was going to handle more extreme heat while fast charging and having climate demands it was asked to meet.
Last year in our Gen2 R1S, when the battery got to a higher state of charge and we asked it to do some climate conditioning, things got interesting.
We saw wild amounts of throttling and the HVAC was pulling so hard we actually lost battery while plugged in to a DC fast charger.
Thankfully, we found an even hotter situation to charge in, with even more demanding climate requests (Pet Comfort Mode on for the entire charge).
This gave us a look at just how far thermals have come in R2 vs Gen2 R1S and R1T, and the difference is not subtle.
Seeing places that are as hot as this location in Arizona, makes you wonder why more sites don't have a shade awning like the Joshua Tree Outpost location.
Awnings, pull throughs, trash cans, and squeegees at all locations please!
These are things that many IONNA locations are getting mostly right, so I'm excited to see how charging continues to develop over the next few years.
The final video from the road trip was a recap of the entire drive after it was complete where I had final numbers, impressions, and thoughts that emerged about the R2 after driving 3,496 miles.
Scrolling through the comments since this went live about 2 days ago and it seems like there are a number of people who missed the nuance I intended.
Other than cold weather, this was a "drive it however you feel like it" video. It took us through a very challenging environment, particularly for R2.
Extremely fast speeds (80+ mph, with flow of traffic at 90+ in many cases), cross winds, thunderstorms, and massive elevation gains.
Even with all of that, the main areas I was focused on that could've made a material difference to the road trip may ultimately surprise you.
Yes, a Model Y is far more efficient under similar conditions because this was a route and driving style that was specifically intended to push what the R2 can do at it's weakest points, to see if it still holds up.
But Model Y's notably slower charging paired with a stop schedule that doesn't materially deviate from what we ended up doing in R2, means the end result would be a lot closer than most people think.
Check out the full road trip review here for yourself.
An interesting thing about R2 and what is writing on the wall for what's coming on the R1S and R1T hardware suite, has to do with parking sensors.
In our previous 2022 Model Y Performance, we were equipped with ultrasonic sensors (the little "buttons" you see in the bumper), before Tesla ultimately dumped these sensors to go vision only.
Having driven Tesla vehicles that relied exclusively on the vision only parking estimation, quickly proved the limitations of this approach. Particularly in their early versions that did not come equipped with a front bumper camera at all.
Skipping over those models and getting into our R1S and R1T that continued the traditional ultrasonic sensors, coupled with the 360* birds eye camera view, proved to be a continued refinement of this approach.
In Rivian R2, we see them not going quite as extreme as Tesla with their vision only system, and instead using a new dual-mode corner radar system.
Mike Poret (Thundervolt Auto) did a really nice deep dive showing the differences of how this new system works.
The first build of software that supported this implementation at the time of my R2 delivery was a notable regression, as the sensors would yell and freak out when I was still comfortably far away from surrounding objects.
While it has improved, I would still say it's a regression currently in the ways I normally encounter compared to the more mature ultrasonic sensor suite.
I'm quite sure this was a cost cutting measure to drop the additional sensors in front and rear, while continuing to simplify the overall suite without giving up redundancy or multi-sensor fusion.
However, I do hope they can at least ultimately match (it's already close) or far exceed the performance of ultrasonics. Given the wider shape of the array from radars vs the much smaller and easily damaged ultrasonics, there's hope!
Give Mike's video a watch if you want to learn more about these differences.
A quick note about Gen3 Autonomy hardware with LiDAR and the RAP1 processor that many of you are waiting on.
I had previously signaled that where would be no customer deliveries of this hardware set until 2027 at the earliest, but then RJ Scaringe muddied waters during an investor call about these "delivering later this year".
At the time, I hypothesized that this could easily mean employee deliveries only as it seems that volume production is heavily constrained.
Now we finally have more clarity from official statements, and it appears that my hunch was correct: No Gen3 will deliver to customers before 2027.
This is similar to the "point-to-point delivers at the end of 2026". It's very clear now that these things are going to take more time before most of us experience them, but the "goal" will be met in the narrowest way possible.
Hopefully those who are sitting on the fence can plan accordingly to decide how this impacts their order timeline.
Community
We are in the middle of a big community expansion right now, which has never more evident than with the big increase in deliveries that Rivian just announced.
With 19,248 units delivered from July through September, that's a year over year increase of 46% and a whopping 56% increase from Q2.
It's been so great seeing the excitement and enthusiasm of so many either first time electric vehicle buyers, or those coming from other brands.
My goal has never been to "sell people on Rivian", it's been to help those who are interested in making the jump to something so fundamentally new that they get excited about the future.
Rivian as a brand has just spoken to me thanks to the design language, software defined nature, and overall ethos. I'm both a harsh critic and a raving fan, as both can co-exist about something you care deeply about.
Soon, R2 won't be this anomaly that is like finding a diamond in the rough. As Rivian ramps up production to hundreds of thousands of units per year, it will become commonplace, and our little circle will expand.
If you're taking delivery in the near future, just know that others will lean on you to be a source of information and a conduit for their excitement.
Embrace the opportunity for this to be fun, as it will be short lived :-)
To that end... with another quarter comes another quarterly live event!
As is tradition, I will be multi-casting the earnings call on October 29th, 2026 at 5pm Eastern / 2pm Pacific with Q&A to follow.
I'm so glad this has turned into a great excuse for us to get together and hang out at least four times per year.
Since the newsletter has grown a lot in the past few months, here was last quarters live stream so you have an idea of what to expect.
Here's to a fun live event later this month!
Worth Checking Out - R2 Sunshade
While Rivian released their perforated shade for R2, VION also launched the pre-order page for the new R2 shade I've been testing since the R2our.
I've used VION in both our Gen2 R1S & R1T, so I was excited to put it through it's paces during the big road trip I just finished.
Here's a picture of the prototype installed in my R2:
R2 has a much more powerful HVAC system than what we see in R1 products, but all that power comes at a cost of energy draw.
Using a solid sunshade provides maximum thermal load reduction for the cabin to help you eek out more efficiency that otherwise goes to the HVAC.
It's one of the best sub $100 accessories you get for any Rivian in my opinion.
Here's a link for R1S/R1T sunshades as well, the same code saves you 10%.
My thanks to VION for helping make this newsletter possible.
Latest Deals
October deals are here, and most of them are set to extend into securing your offer by November 2nd with a November 30th delivery deadline.
The majority of the offers are still working on incentivizing the remaining 2026 model inventory, but we do have a new 3.99% offer for 2027 vehicles.
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 (3.99% 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]
Quad Max (3.99%) [Lease vs Buy Example]
All R1 referrals also get 3 months of free charging on the Rivian Adventure Network, as well as some shop credits (varies by trim).
I hope enjoyed this week's edition of the Rivian Recap. Let me know what you'd like to see more of in future editions!
Even if you just want to say hi, hit reply – I'd love to get to know you 👋
Stay curious ✌️,
Travis Ketchum
P.S. Thinking about buying a new Rivian R1S or R1T?
Make sure you use a referral code. A friend, a neighbor, or someone who has helped you along the way.
Here's mine: TRAVIS4699411
P.P.S. Here are some tools and resources you may find useful: