Rivian Will Test Point-to-Point Driving With NDA-Bound Owners on Cars Without Its Own Lidar

Rivian will release point-to-point driving first to invited owners who sign a non-disclosure agreement, with the programme starting in late 2026 and wider access not expected until 2027, according to Electrek's reading of Rivian's support page. The test cars are R1 Gen 2 and R2 vehicles already on the road, not the third-generation hardware Rivian has said will carry its own chip and lidar.

Electrek's Fred Lambert reported the Autonomy Early Access Programme on October 15, 2026, citing the page at rivian.com/support. We could not read that page's body text in this session, so every programme term below comes from Electrek's account of it.

Who gets invited, and what they sign

Invitations go to US owners of R1 Gen 2 and R2 vehicles who pay for Autonomy+. Trials do not count, and Rivian looks for heavy use of its autonomy features and a clean recent safety record. First-generation R1 owners and Canadians are excluded.

Testers are unpaid. They must use preview features weekly, log issues when safe to do so, answer monthly surveys and be available for interviews or focus groups. They also enable data collection, including location and camera data sharing, and sign a participation agreement with an NDA. Eligibility is rechecked every 30 days and can be revoked at Rivian's discretion; cancelling Autonomy+ or selling the vehicle ends access.

What Autonomy+ costs

Autonomy+ is $2,500 one time or $49.99 a month, and Rivian began charging for it in April after a free trial period. The same prices appeared in TechCrunch's December 2025 report from Rivian's Autonomy and AI Day, where they attached to Universal Hands-Free. At $49.99 a month the one-time price equals 50 months, about 4.2 years, of subscription (my arithmetic).

That comparison matters for an owner deciding whether to pay for features that, on Electrek's timeline, include a point-to-point mode still in invite-only testing.

The hardware gap

TechCrunch's Sean O'Kane reported that Rivian's third-generation autonomy computer, ACM3, is built on a custom 5nm processor made with Arm and TSMC and can process 5 billion pixels per second. A lidar sensor from an undisclosed supplier sits at the top of the windshield. Both were expected on the R2 SUV in late 2026, and TechCrunch wrote that launch R2s would lack them and would likely plateau at hands-free driving.

On that timeline, the early access cars do not carry ACM3 or lidar. Electrek says the programme runs on vehicles already on the road. Whatever point-to-point driving Rivian ships in late 2026 is being tested on the older sensor and compute set.

Milestone	Date Rivian gave	Source
Universal Hands-Free, 3.5 million miles of lined roads	December 2025	Electrek
Point-to-point, invite only	late 2026	Electrek
ACM3 computer and lidar on R2	late 2026	TechCrunch
Hands-off, eyes-off driving	2027	Electrek, citing CEO RJ Scaringe
Level 4	2028	Electrek, citing Scaringe

How the schedule has moved

Electrek notes that Scaringe said in January 2025 that Rivian would launch an eyes-free system in 2026 on the R2. On the Q2 earnings call in July he put hands-off, eyes-off driving in 2027 and Level 4 in 2028, and called the first version "Level 2++", with hands off the wheel and eyes on the road.

Universal Hands-Free shipped in software update 2025.46 and does not stop or slow for traffic lights or stop signs, per Electrek. Point-to-point is meant to handle full trips. Electrek calls "late 2026" a soft launch at best, with about 11 weeks of the year left on the day it wrote, and predicts most Autonomy+ owners should expect 2027.

Electrek compares the NDA to Tesla's early FSD Beta testers, who also signed NDAs and were selected with a Safety Score before the beta opened to nearly everyone who bought the package.

What to watch

The next verifiable event is the first batch of invitations. Rivian says late 2026; Electrek counts about 11 weeks. Whatever these testers log, the participation agreement covers program details, so little of it is likely to be public.

For how autonomy claims are checked elsewhere, see our report on Tesla's remote operators and five of five robotaxi crashes and the BMW i3 50L range test.