• Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s chief software officer, says the future of cars will be hands-free.
• That’s not to say Rivian is on the right path toward autonomous driving.
• Bensaid told BI that Rivian is focused on implementing incremental AI-driven features.

Rivien don’t prioritize autonomous driving, the company’s chief software officer said in an interview with Business Insider.

As Waymo and Tesla race to develop autonomous driving and usher in an era of autonomous cars and robotaxisRivian, a 15-year-old electric truck and SUV company based in Irvine, California, has different priorities when it comes to artificial intelligence, CSO Wassym Bensaid told Business Insider.

“We’re not necessarily looking for fully autonomous driving, we’re not looking for robo-taxis,” he said. “Our goal is to gradually improve safety and convenience for customers.”

For Bensaid, who joined Rivian in 2019 as senior director of the system architecture and integration team, AI is an opportunity to deliver a safer and more seamless driving experience through improved software .

During a fireside chat at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco on October 30, CSO said: “The car is a fantastic environment for AI” and that the ideal vehicle would be one that could be widely controlled by user’s voice.

“The fact that we touch the screen or the fact that we use buttons today in some cars, I think that’s an anomaly. It’s a bug, it’s not a feature,” said Bensaid. “Ideally, you would want to interact with your car through voice. And the problem today is that most voice assistants are just broken. They don’t work. And that’s where AI can really unlock and enable very different experiences in the car.

“We are making a technological product which happens to be a car”

Unlike its EV counterparts Tesla Or General engines, Rivien‘s primary focus has been the electric pickup and SUV segment, but it has struggled to take a significant share of the U.S. electric vehicle market.

Its first truck, the R1T, was only delivered to customers in 2021, 12 years after Rivian was founded in 2009 by current CEO RJ Scaringe. This year, the company went through two towers layoffs. In October, the company announced it would reduce its production target from 57,000 units to between 47,000 and 49,000 units, citing supply chain issues.

Electric vehicles have approached a inflection point earlier this year, with the pace of sales slowing even as demand for electric cars persists. This has caused traditional automakers like Ford to curb their ambitions. EV goals.

Scaringe said in an interview with The Verge that the slowdown in electric vehicle growth comes from an “extreme lack of choice” of affordable options. Rivian’s least expensive vehicle, the R1T truck, costs around $70,000.

An investment of 5 billion dollars Volkswagen announced in June could help the struggling electric vehicle company offer its cheapest model yet, the R2, priced at $45,000 and scheduled to launch in 2026.

The CEO said on Kleiner Perkins’ September “Grit” podcast that he made an intentional effort to avoid becoming a Tesla2.0.

“Tesla has been absolutely inspiring,” Scaringe said during the podcast. “One of the things that was so important to me with Rivian was making sure we weren’t treading the same ground as Tesla.”

Bensaid’s comments to BI reflected much of the same sentiment.

“We’re not looking for a specific level of autonomy because we believe, philosophically, that it’s really about additional features, whether it’s safety or convenience, that you can gradually add to the car” , he declared. “In some cases, some automakers find themselves in a battle for standards instead of actually delivering better features to customers.”

A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

During TechCrunch’s fireside chat, the software executive said Rivian’s “north star” would eventually become an operating system for other automakers, providing an alternative to Apple CarPlay.

In January, Goldman Sachs analysts said Rivian’s software was “a key part of the value proposition and monetization opportunity” for the company.

“Behind the scenes, software is omnipresent throughout the enterprise,” Bensaid told BI. “And we view Rivian as a technology company. We make a technology product that happens to be a car.”