Whoa, Nellie: With three electric motors and 625 kilowatts (850 horsepower), the 2025 Rivian R1S that I’m driving storms to 100 kilometers per hour in about 2.9 seconds. The Illinois-built SUV handles more like a sport sedan than the 3,100 kilogram (6,800-pound) brute that it is. Move off-road, and an adaptive air suspension can hoist the R1S to a Hummer-esque 37.8 centimeters of ground clearance, enough for leisurely dips in 1.1-meter-deep water; its 149-kWh battery snugged in carbon fiber, aluminum and high-strength steel.
You’ll need to dig even deeper to understand why Volkswagen is investing US $5.7 billion in Rivian, through a joint partnership that gives VW a 50-percent stake in the California-based builder of adventure trucks. VW may be the world’s second-largest automaker, behind Toyota. But like many legacy makers, it has struggled mightily with software. That’s a problem in the era of the so-called “Software Defined Vehicle”: cars are fast becoming smartphones on wheels, ideally less obsolescent, with centralized software replacing balkanized hardware and controls that can’t play nicely together or be updated over-the-air.
Serial missteps at VW’s in-house Cariad software unit hastened CEO Herbert Diess’ ouster in 2022, with key models such as the Porsche Macan EV and Audi Q6 E-Tron delayed for a year or more. Glitchy software and vexing screen interfaces led to a poor critical and sales reception for the ID.4, an electric SUV that VW touted as a revolution on par with the original Beetle.
The new joint venture is called Rivian and VW Group Technology. Its goal is to meld Rivian’s software expertise with VW’s global scale, speeding development of EVs with innovative features and functions. Those include the VW’s relaunch of the long-defunct Scout off-road brand, with a charmingly retro Traveler SUV and Terra pickup scheduled to arrive in 2027 from a South Carolina factory. Models from VW, Audi and Porsche will be underpinned by Rivian’s “zonal architecture” and software stack in the 2025 R1S and R1T pickup; as will a downsized R2 model that Rivian intends to build in Illinois in 2026. The money-shedding Rivian gains a financial lifeline from VW, after pressing pause on construction of a second Georgia factory, now scheduled for 2028 — and backed by a $6.5 billion Department of Energy loan approved in January.
Rivian Thinks Outside the Boxes
So what exactly is VW getting? For one, a company that literally thinks outside the box, eliminating the proliferating control boxes that are a key flaw in typical domain architectures. In the domain approach, which is commonly used by traditional automakers, every functional element of the vehicle—whether powertrains, safety systems or infotainment—is managed by its own domain controller.
In modern cars that handle increasingly complex tasks, those domains have led to redundant connections from power sources to electronic control units (ECUs), and an unwieldy octopus of wiring that stretches to all four corners of the vehicle. Whether they’re powered by electricity or gasoline, cars from legacy brands may carry as many as 150 separate ECUs.
“The old model for legacy manufacturers would be, you want an active suspension system, you add a box,” says Kyle Lobo, Rivian’s director of electrical systems. “You want fancier headlights? Another box for that.”
“Our approach is, no, let’s create these zonal controllers instead, and let’s scale them to the feature set,” Lobo says.
Rivian’s three-zone architecture—east, west, and south—links nodes that are in physical proximity, but independent of functions they provide. Zones link to each other and a central computing node via fast Ethernet, reducing latency. Lobo cites the Rivian’s adaptive suspension as an example: The south zone interfaces with rear actuation components, with the west zone linked to a proximate front suspension. The suspension is then networked over a bus.
“That’s a break from what a legacy OEM would have done, where they’d have a single suspension controller with everything connected to it,” Lobo says.
The Rivian R1S’s touchscreen dashboard comes with plenty of bells and whistles.Rivian
A New Manufacturing Model to Handle Higher Complexity
The approach delivers reductions in cost, mass, and manufacturing complexity, and could make for easier, less-costly repairs. Compared with first-generation Rivians, the zonal architecture reduces the number of electronic control units (ECUs) from 17 to seven more-powerful units, including controllers for infotainment, autonomy, motor drive units, and battery management. The architecture saves 1.6 miles of internal wiring and 44 pounds of weight, with a claimed 20-percent material cost reduction and 15-percent lower carbon emissions.
Company engineers say the approach demands the vertical integration Rivian specializes in: Elegant software and hardware, developed in-house from the start of a new design, rather than contracted from hundreds of separate suppliers. It’s the strategy favored by Tesla and now Chinese makers such as BYD, as they unlock design and manufacturing efficiencies—and attendant profits—that have stymied legacy automakers. That poses another massive challenge to companies such as VW, Toyota or GM, whose empires are built on relationships with global suppliers large and small, and the components they develop: Electronics from Bosch, say, or transmissions from ZF.
Just as importantly, Rivian’s scalable system allows comprehensive over-the-air updates—not just for infotainment or creature comforts, but performance, safety, advanced driver assistance systems( ADAS), or subscription services. For Rivian’s R1S and R1T pickup, an upgraded hardware set includes 11 cameras and five radars that can perform over 250 trillion operations per second, which Rivian claims as industry-leading computing power. Last week, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe announced the company would roll out a hands-free driving assist system later this year, akin to GM’s SuperCruise, and update that with Level 3, eyes-off-the-road capability in 2026.
On a more-whimsical note, Rivian can offer feature updates like their recent “Halloween costumes.” Using the Rivian mobile app, owners can turn interior displays into uncanny simulations of K.I.T.T. from the old Knight Rider TV series—Hasselhoff!—or Doc Brown’s DeLorean from Back to the Future, along with added exterior lighting effects. Pedestrians captured by safety cameras can be rendered as zombies onscreen, with cyclists and motorcycles appearing as headless horsemen. My personal favorite? The selectable “Owl” chirp that hooted when I locked the R1S’s doors, one of several “chirp” options for these outdoorsy trucks. Frivolous? Perhaps. But many owners love these add-ons, whether they’re video games or new apps.
Vivek Surya, director of product management, says “One of the things we have always heard from customers is that every month, they feel like they’re getting a new vehicle, and that is what we are striving for,” including ongoing development of AI functions and voice controls.
And there’s nothing frivolous about the Rivian’s design or breathtaking performance, with the R1S and R1T among the global benchmarks for electric SUVs and pickups, including up to 676 kilometers (420 miles) of driving range. Now, if Rivian would only ditch those annoying, digital vent controls that require poking a touchscreen menu to adjust….
Lobo says that “Software Defined Vehicle” may be the new industry watchword, but ultimately falls short as a descriptor.
“Internally, we call it the ‘software updatable vehicle’ rather than the software-defined vehicle. Because that’s really where the magic comes in.”
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