Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe wants his EVs to be able to service themselves.
In an interview with Fortune released on Tuesday, the host asked Scaringe what AI should and shouldn’t do in a car. Scaringe, who is also the automobile company’s founder, replied that self-driving capabilities have been talked about for years in the EV industry, but he wants his cars to go beyond that.
Scaringe said he was “very bullish” on his cars being self-driving in the next couple of years, such that “you can own a car, but it can drop you at the airport, it can pick your kids up from school, it can go get things from the store for you.”
But beyond driving, he said the car can help with a lot of things that people don’t want to be doing, like handling service appointments.
“So if the vehicle has an issue, it’s actually not a positive part of the customer experience to have to coordinate a service activity or to coordinate parts, deliver any of those things.”
“We want all that to happen behind the scenes and all that to be powered through AI,” he said.
Scaringe’s comments echo those of Rivian’s software chief, Wassym Bensaid, from last year.
“We are not necessarily chasing full self-driving, we’re not chasing robotaxis,” Bensaid said to Business Insider. “Our goal is incremental improvements to the safety and convenience for customers.”
The carmaker does not currently have fully autonomous cars. But its Gen 2 models come with the Rivian Autonomy Platform features, which can automatically steer, brake, and accelerate on select highways, among other capabilities.
The company is now gearing up to start production on its cheapest EV to date, the R2 model, which will be a $45,000 SUV.
Rivian, which is headquartered in Irvine, California, has seen its stock price rise by 33% since the start of the year. However, the company has endured multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, with the most recent — a 4% cut in its workforce — announced in October.
In November, Rivian doubled Scaringe’s pay package from $1 million to $2 million, along with performance-based stock options that could be worth up to $4.6 billion, per an SEC filing.
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