Rivian voice AI is on the roadmap, says CEO RJ ScaringeRivianIn an effort to rival Tesla, vast AI integration is underway at Rivian with the development of its next generation EV platform, funded in part by a $5 billion partnership with Volkswagen.At a press event in San Francisco last Thursday, CEO RJ Scaringe and Chief Software Officer, and Co-CEO of the Rivian Volkswagen Technology Joint Venture, Wassym Bensaid, shared details of the electric carmakers AI roadmap.Scaringe announced the company is planning to go hands free in 2025, with eyes off the road in 2026 for Level 3 autonomy, as he described it. Level 2 being hands on the wheel, eyes on the road with driver assist, like that currently available in the Rivian Autonomy Platform with lane-changing, park assist, cruise control and collision warning. Level 3 being hands off the wheel, eyes on the road, where drivers can text or read a book, but are in the drivers seat ready to take control of the car, if needed. And Level 4 being hands off the wheel, eyes off the road, in robotaxi mode, with no one in the drivers seat or even in the car.We think theres an enormous value to customers to having a robust, first Level 2, but importantly Level 3 in very specific domains, Scaringe said. Imagine a world where you leave your house, youre still in the vehicle, but you get on the highway and you have all of your time back. You can be on your phone, writing emails. You dont have to be looking at the road. You dont have to be grabbing the wheel to say, Im still here. The vehicle is capable of doing that, and thats going to be for us. Thats absolutely on the roadmap. Something were hyper focused on.A Rivian you can chat withAI will be pervasive throughout the entire vehicle, and will unlock lots of new capabilities, whether it's for self driving and autonomy with our end-to-end training approach or the in-cabin experience within the vehicle, Bensaid explained.MORE FOR YOUAs to when drivers will be able to ask their Rivian what a blinking red light on the dashboard meansa capability Amazon built into AWS Bedrock over a year ago, and is currently being rolled out to Volkswagens with ChatGPT integrationBensaid responded that Rivians will soon be able to tell the driver what is happening as well as book service appointments in anticipation of problems.Imagine everything that you're doing today where you're touching the UI. In the future, you will be able to do that through voice. And when you think about it, when you're driving, it's really actually way safer to interact through the voice, he said.Rivian CEO RJ ScaringeMartine ParisA cheaper RivianOf course, many nifty features are possible with software defined vehicles, its just a matter of resource allocation, Scaringe said, explaining AI-controlled massage seats are not at the top of the list, nor are extended batteries.If we were to say yes to all the countless great ideas, we would have a car that costs $300,000, so the magic of the product development process is to make thousands and thousands of trade offs.He explained that even if they got battery costs down to $60 per kilowatt-houra significant drop from the industry average of $115 per kilowatt-hour achieved last year, according to BloombergNEFthe cost to add range in an electric vehicle is still really high. Of Rivians three battery pack choices, the most popular has been their mid-sized battery pack which gets 300 plus miles of range, Scaringe said. Customers would much rather see price come down.Although the company has sold little more than 51,000 Rivians, its ambition is to sell millions, which a cheaper, more compact vehicle might help them achieve.To that end, Rivian is planning for growth and recently finalized a loan with the U.S. Department of Energy for up to $6.6 billion to build its Georgia plant. It also has been stepping up its pace of opening showrooms and service centers across the US.