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A comment on Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free. Parent comment

Re:Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Univ... by setgree on Thursday December 11, 2025 @05:21PM (#46238071)
The other possible future is you rent the car for exactly when you need it and don’t pay a monthly bill— or your monthly bill pays for a certain number of rides/minutes/miles per month. In which case the subscription costs are managed by the provider, who might be the manufacturer and might not.

At least in cities, a fully-functioning, on-demand autonomous fleet would probably be superior to car ownership in just about every way except as a status symbol.

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Re:Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Univ... by 1shooner on Thursday December 11, 2025 @06:06PM (#46238601)
The monopolist providing this service would be de-incentivized from ever equipping for all the demand, and the last 10% of capacity being bid on by the last 20% of demand would make this a constant stress and struggle.

Meanwhile it's an excuse for another century of more car lanes and less mass transit infrastructure.

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Re:Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Univ... by tadfisher on Friday December 12, 2025 @12:51AM (#46241255)
There used to be a service like this, called Car2Go. Not autonomous, but more like how scooter/bike rentals work. It was fantastic, and in no way profitable.
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Re:Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Univ... by addandsubtract on Friday December 12, 2025 @04:55AM (#46242555)
There are still services like that. Miles, for example, or Bolt I think have cars, too.
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Re:Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Univ... by tonyhart7 on Friday December 12, 2025 @05:24AM (#46242712)
Yeah, its called taxi

we already have those

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