Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free (riviantrackr.com)

When it becomes a widespread issue they'll just release Meta Glasses 5/Apple Vision 3 with the appropriate eye protection, and vision will be very affordable.

And real door handles. And real buttons. And better customer service.

Who was this announcement for? I’m at a point where I think Rivian’s real customers are investors.

Agreed, autonomy is a service and not a feature of the car. It has to be. There is inherent cost as you use it and associated liabilities, legal requirements for auditing, technical need for maintenance and dealing with updates in a timely fashion.

You could make the point that owning the car is a lot less important if you don't drive it yourself. If Uber didn't have to pay drivers, they could expand their area of operation to basically everywhere. Drivers need to be paid so having them drive long distance is relatively expensive. That constrains the area of operation. But otherwise, cost per mile is very low. So, orchestrating pickups in the country side becomes possible.

It's going to enable night time travel as well. Nap/sleep while traveling. Wake up at your destination. That's going to revolutionize commutes as well and enable people to live much further away from work. A four hour commute is much less of a problem if you can spend the time working or napping.

That in turn is going to do wonders for real estate prices. Because there are a lot of nice places to live that are currently far away from cities and therefore still relatively affordable. We got a preview of that during the lock downs when people figured out that remote working is a thing.

if we talking about future, its where self driving AI is actually better than 99.9% of the human and human driving manually would void insurance

If that’s the way things go, subscription, there aught to be insurance coverage built into that. It’s required anyway and the extent to which a driver relies on SD, and has to pay a sub, then it’s the SD responsible for accidents, not in full but part, and insurance can reflect that as well. But if the two are inextricable as a requirement anyway, there should be baked in standardized procedures for “things have gone wrong, which was a known inevitability, and this is the framework for handling it.”

> Of course, people won't like this

I love it because I have exactly zero interest in using this and wouldn’t want to pay for it anyways- and I’d rather more of the drivers around me were actually driving as well.

And therefore opens up other features to subscription models as well. We've already seen it in some cars, tested in others, etc.

I agree with you. Subscription revenue has explicitly been part of Tesla's strategy for years. I'm not sure when this statement first appeared in their SEC findings, but this is from their 2021 10-K:

"As our vehicles are capable of being updated remotely over-the-air, our customers may purchase additional paid options and features through the Tesla app or through the in-vehicle user interface. We expect that this functionality will also allow us to offer certain options and features on a subscription basis in the future."

Or isn’t the alternative a local AI that runs autonomously?

We’d may for updates and new models, but no need for a subscription.

Of course the manufacturer makes more money with a subscription and this is the reason they want it.

Because you haven’t tried it. I want to buy Cadilac ev but the biggest downside is the lack of FSD. Once you go FSD you never go back.