Image: Rivian
Rivian is gearing up to take on Tesla, Waymo, and the rest of the self-driving pack with a major update to its autonomy roadmap. The company has officially announced Autonomy+, a new paid driver-assist and self-driving subscription arriving in early 2026 — and it’s clearly positioned as a direct competitor to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Autonomy+ will cost $2,500 upfront or $50 per month, undercutting Tesla’s FSD pricing by a wide margin. For comparison, Tesla currently charges $8,000 outright or $99 per month for FSD (Supervised), which continues to advance rapidly. Tesla’s latest release, version 14.2.1, even enables on-road texting when conditions allow, as the company edges closer to what it calls “unsupervised” FSD.
Rivian’s approach hinges on new hardware. The company revealed its Gen 3 autonomy platform, which includes 11 cameras, five radars, and — notably — a front-facing LiDAR sensor. Powering it all is RAP1, Rivian’s in-house silicon designed specifically for autonomy workloads. Built on TSMC’s 5nm process, the chip uses a Rivian-designed neural engine capable of more than 800 TOPS, and forms the backbone of the company’s new Autonomy Compute Module 3. Rivian says ACM3 can process five billion pixels per second and supports multi-chip scaling through RivLink, its low-latency interconnect.
Rivian confirmed that future R2 vehicles will integrate LiDAR alongside ACM3, adding detailed 3D spatial mapping and redundancy for tougher real-world edge cases. The company said its Gen 3 Autonomy hardware is currently in validation and expected to ship with R2 models starting at the end of 2026.
In the near term, Rivian’s existing R1 lineup will gain new software capabilities, including Universal Hands-Free — a hands-free assisted driving mode available on more than 3.5 million miles of mapped roads across the U.S. and Canada. The feature can even operate off-highway when lane markings are clear. Rivian said these features “have the potential to make the roads safer, address customer demand and become veritable drivers for the business,” adding that both R1 and future R2 vehicles will see a continuous progression toward point-to-point navigation, eyes-off driving, and eventually personal Level 4 autonomy.
Between Tesla’s high-velocity FSD updates and upcoming, significantly more performant AI5 and AI6 chips, Waymo’s growing robotaxi footprint, and now Rivian’s push into custom silicon and LiDAR-powered autonomy, the self-driving wars are heating up — and 2026 is already shaping up to be a pivotal year.
