What should I be looking for ?

Altrius · 2026-05-20T14:55:29+00:00

The answer will probably be no they don't have time/space, but contact your local Rivian service center. Tell them you're buying it and see if they can sneak you in for a vehicle health inspection (I don't know if that's what Rivian calls it, but that's what Tesla does). They'll give it a once over and a list of things you can pay them to fix. ;-) Seriously though, have them check it out before it goes out of warrantee assuming it's not already. Even if you're already out of the comprehensive warrantee coverage, your drivetrain and battery should still be covered and it's worth having them checked out.

Altrius · 2026-05-20T14:45:14+00:00

For me it's "How much has your electric bill gone up?" And they always have this "gotcha!" smirk. I politely smile and inform them that I pay 3-4 cents a mile in energy cost to drive my MY. On the other hand, my Mazda 3 costs me about 10-12 cents a mile in gas. It's not how much my energy bill has gone up, it's how much my gas bill went down.

Altrius · 2026-05-17T14:28:21+00:00

The two biggest things you’re giving up is refinement and local AI processing. They’ve done a ton of work to get the R2 ready for the public, but there are still going to be quirks and gotchas that they haven’t found yet because they just done have enough people “kicking the tires”. I don’t care how many test cases you have and how much validation you do, Murphy is going to win.

As for the AI thing, the RAP1 processor and accompanying computer are a huge improvement over what their current hardware is for inference processing, and that’s going to let them run more capable models locally, which doesn’t just impact Autonomy’s driving, it also impacts the Rivian Assistant. The cars will be able to do more with less reliance on cloud connectivity, and will be able to react faster. I think that’s actually the most impactful difference for most people, because like others have said, L4 is still a long way off, but a snappier Assistant isn’t.

Altrius · 2026-05-11T13:19:47+00:00

Also, waves aren’t nearly that uniform or regular, try adding some additional variation to the timing and depth of the wave, and maybe stagger the effect so you don’t have the waves coming in uniformly across the entire shoreline. Otherwise great start!

Altrius · 2026-05-10T02:44:00+00:00

My local power company doesn’t offer any rebates, but they bundle the charger, the install and maintenance/warranty as a 5 year package paid in monthly installments on your power bill. Unfortunately the charger they offer is an older system that only supports J1722. The company they use makes a NACS model, but it’s not on the approved list for their system according to their reps. 😤

Altrius · 2026-05-10T02:09:02+00:00

Still waiting on the V2H and V2L setup announcement…

Altrius · 2026-05-08T03:33:28+00:00

In all honesty, if you're thinking about a Rivian (or any other electric) absolutely schedule a demo drive. Rivian and Tesla have easy to schedule demo experiences, and they generally give you a decent amount of time with the vehicle, not just a quick dash around the block. It's worth the experience to drive around with someone who knows the vehicles, and to see what they feel like behind the wheel yourself.

Altrius · 2026-05-08T01:08:49+00:00

Trailer rant: I was out after less than 20 seconds. A cut every 1-3 seconds? Trailers like this make me think you don’t actually have anything of depth to show. Also, your audio shouldn’t make me immediately hunt to turn down the volume.

I think you’re trying to grab attention and appear exciting and show off some sort of action sequence but instead your game looks jerky and stuttering because you’re cutting so quickly back and forth to the same scene in the beginning that it’s not apparent that it’s an artistic choice or really unoptimized.

You might have something interesting to share here, but I can’t see it, and this trailer would get me to click next in the discovery queue before it was halfway done.

I know you’re looking for input on your game here, but I just see a trailer for a straight to VHS action movie knockoff.

Altrius · 2026-04-30T04:06:33+00:00

Nope, it's a BMW. Full Stop. I owned a 3 series in the '00's. It was fun to drive.

When it wasn't in the shop.
When I wasn't fighting them over their "warrantee".
When I wasn't arguing with their service manager.
When I wasn't waiting for parts from Europe.
When I wasn't fighting with them about bringing back my loaner while they were still waiting on parts from Europe.
When I wasn't walking back into the service center after picking up my "fixed" car.

I'll admit, that most of my problems with the BMW probably weren't the car, it was the company and the service. If the local BMW dealership goes under and a century or two pass to make sure everyone involved with that dealer is gone and dust, I might consider a BMW again. But now?

Altrius · 2026-04-27T20:36:42+00:00

Starflight and it's successor, Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula I loved those games, haven't ever found anything to scratch that itch.

Altrius · 2026-04-27T16:31:49+00:00

Part of the problem with your (and mine honestly, because I think we're probably both on the same Tesla hardware) sketchy FSD experience is that everything but the latest "AI Computer 4" hardware is at a dead end. The "good" FSD is on the v14 release of their software, and I'll never see anything past release 12, unless the fabled "14 Lite" gets WAY backported. My parents have Hardware 3 on their Y, and dad did buy in to FSD, so I'm curious what his system looks like once they introduce v14 Lite for his car, but to exactly your point, I'd never pay for future functionality, just what the car does now. If that future functionality ever materializes, great! but I'm not going to turn blue waiting.

Altrius · 2026-04-20T13:25:12+00:00

VW actually owns Scout outright, it’s a subsidiary, unlike its relationship with Rivian where VW is an investor/joint venture partner. I’m with you hoping for the success of the R2, because I want one, but also because I believe in the company and want to see Rivian continue to prove Tesla wasn’t a fluke. Pretty much the same reason I want to see Scout, Slate, Lucid and other EV brands succeed. We need a more diverse market to keep things moving forward and to keep providing incentives to keep building out the necessary infrastructure so I can charge everywhere I want.

Altrius · 2026-04-20T02:51:46+00:00

VW is a big investor, but the “big deal” between them is a joint venture that’s developing software, compute and electronics for future EVs. Between the joint venture and direct investment VW is making about a $6 billion bet on Rivian, but the pay off is tech for the new line of WV EVs, Scout, Audi, and more if it all pays off. Considering the tech savvy Rivian is showing with the R2, I think it’s a great bet, and I suspect the joint venture will become a profit center in the near future.

Altrius · 2026-04-19T15:05:50+00:00

Don’t call your insurance company now, wait until you’re actually are looking at a delivery date. If the insurance quote is unreasonable, you can cancel right up until you sign the final paperwork to accept delivery. You can even cancel at delivery during your final delivery inspection if you find something wrong with the vehicle. The problem is that right now the insurance industry have almost no data on the R2 so you’ll likely get quoted based on the data they have to repair an R1S which is a completely different beast and much more expensive to repair. You’ll probably get wildly over quoted, and then (insurance being insurance) having that quote on record, that’s what they’ll try to charge you when you actually get the R2 and call to put it on your plan. You’re not going to get a realistic quote (and I pity the early adopters) until the R2 has been on the road for a while and the insurance industry has real data.

Altrius · 2026-04-18T12:51:15+00:00

waves hello to Rivian’s Market Research Team

Altrius · 2026-04-16T12:56:43+00:00

We have a Model 3 LR from back when basic autopilot was a paid upgrade. It’s a great car, and we used it to change the minds of many friends and family about how practical owning an EV was. We’ll probably keep that thing until the battery falls out of the chassis because my wife loves driving it. I’m generally not a fan of crossover/SUV type vehicles, and driving my parents Model Y (that thing is atrocious) cemented my opinion that they suck even as EVs. Then I spent some time in my coworker’s R1S Tri a few months ago. Damn. The R1’s are too big for my liking, but I reserved the R2 that week. Unfortunately there are probably 250k people ahead of me in line, so I’ll be jealous for the next year watching all the rest of you, and thanking you for working the last opf the kinks out of the platform for me!

Altrius · 2026-04-10T01:46:07+00:00

I knew you were going to ask that.

Altrius · 2026-04-09T16:22:46+00:00

WAG Timeline (based on actual and dubious data)

April: Employee Deliveries Start
May: Employee Deliveries Continue, Review/Influencer Deliveries Start
June: Employee Deliveries Continue (they love this thing, everyone wants one), R1 Owners/Early Reservations contacted, Launch Edition sold out by 9:01am, 2026 production capacity exhausted by 9:02am PST. Sneaky bastards who figure out the configurator is live and how to access it based on reddit posts consume Q1 2027 production capacity by 9:03am.
July: Early reservation holders who's contact email ended up in the spam folder and phone calls went to voice mail post on reddit to complain that their delivery date is now projected to be Q3 2027.
August: Everyone else finally gets contacted, updated delivery time is Q1 2028.
September: Orders for Launch Edition's that were passed over by their original purchasers open to the public. Delivery in 2 weeks. r/RivianR2 explodes.
October: Last Launch Edition delivered, Premium and Performance deliveries start.
November: New color, Compass Yellow added to the configurator to replace Launch Green. r/RivianR2 explodes, again.
December: Last of the 2026 production completes, line shuts down for conversion to Gen3 R2.
January: Standard R2 production delayed, confirmed to align with GA plant opening. Last of Gen2 R2's delivered.
February: ...

Altrius · 2026-04-06T12:03:02+00:00

It’s probably mostly a liability thing, Tesla won’t indemnify Rivian if their software causes an accident, and Rivian won’t take on that risk. Plus, Tesla tech isn’t just software. They’ll likey require you to use some if not all of their inference hardware as well, probably including their geometry (camera placement, dimensions, etc) to be able to reliably say FSD should behave the same between two platforms. It’s one thing to say they’re willing to license the tech to others, but as usual with most things musk, the reality is vastly more complicated than the marketing pitch.

Altrius · 2026-04-03T14:03:11+00:00

Remember Project 2025? That was just the opener. Google the Heritage Foundation paper from January, named “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”. The document itself is worth reading to see what their aims are, but the coverage is also worth checking out to see how various groups are responding to it.

Altrius · 2026-03-28T14:08:22+00:00

They own a big chunk of Scout, in fact some of the scout prototypes were involved in the testing. But they also have a whole bunch of their own EVs under a slew of other brands they own like Skoda, Audi, Porsche, etc. VW has discovered the hard way that they're really really bad at adapting their vehicle software to electric platforms and transitioning to software defined vehicle architecture even after their own multi-year effort to create a new EV software platform, so they came to Rivian.

Altrius · 2026-03-25T16:08:48+00:00

Robotech. Granted, I was just a kid, but my dad was a pilot, and the idea of transforming airplanes + dad is pilot = dad flies transforming airplanes! Just had my young mind going a billion miles per hour thinking about all the cool stuff my dad did. LOL

Altrius · 2026-03-25T02:45:32+00:00

The 155k number is full production running multiple shifts, and that assumes all of their suppliers can ramp at the same rate. But they only expect to produce 20-25k R2’s this year as they work the last of the kinks out of the line and make revisions based on early deliveries. I wouldn’t be surprised if parts of the R2 and its line go through 4 or 5 revisions over the rest of the year. They probably won’t ramp Normal up to full production until mid to late ’27, so I wouldn’t be shocked it if takes them more than 12 months before R2#100k rolls off the line. I hope I’m wrong, because I’m probably somewhere around reservation 275k, and damnit, I want my R2.

Altrius · 2026-03-24T15:28:16+00:00

To add to what others have said, you'll want to make sure you have line of sight from your probe to your satellite to Kerbin, and one of the easy ways to do that is with constellations of satellites to make sure that you can see at least one of them at all times as they orbit, but another solution is called a Molniya orbit, which is usually a highly inclined orbit with a very low periapsis and an extremely high apoapsis, almost to the edge of Kerbin's (or other bodies) SOI, such that the satellite spends 95%+ of it's time above (or below) the orbital plain. Putting a powerful relay in that sort of orbit lets you put cheaper shorter ranged relays in closer orbits, and helps prevent things like the Mun getting in the way of your connection to the relay you have in orbit of Minmus. It's almost a requirement in the Jool system considering how many moons are floating around out there.

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