Mobile Tech Podcast with tnkgrl Myriam Joire · WorldPodcasts.com / Gorilla Voice Media

Rivian Autonomy & AI Day in depth, OnePlus 15R battery and first look, Nothing Phone (3a) Community Edition, new Jolla Phone, and more with Max Weinbach of Creative Strategies

·1 hr 11 min·4 clips

Max says lidar is a good idea and calls Rivian's rollout timing disappointing.

1. Mobile Tech Podcast with Myriam Joir centers this episode on Rivian's Autonomy & AI Day and later phone topics. 2. Myriam Joir hosts, and Max Weinbach joins as the guest analyst who compares Rivian hardware with Tesla and smartphone chips. 3. The episode asks what Rivian's autonomy stack means for EVs, vertical integration, and customer timing. 4. Myriam says she attended the Rivian event in person while Max watched remotely and reacted to the presentation. 5. Max describes two parts of the event: Rivian Assistant for agentic AI and the autonomy stack. 6. The conversation breaks down Rivlink as a low-latency interconnect between two chips on a board. 7. Max says Rivian's board-level compute is advertised at 1,600 sparse TOPS and 800 dense TOPS. 8. He compares Rivian's numbers with Tesla's roughly 500 TOPS and says Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is about 80 times smartphone baseline performance. 9. The pair discuss why Rivian used TSMC's 5-nanometer automotive node instead of chasing a newer process. 10. They note Rivian worked with Arm on the SoC, Marvell on the backside design, and TSMC on manufacturing. 11. Max says Rivian's software was already running about a year before the dies were cut. 12. Myriam and Max argue that hardware and software velocity matter as much as ownership of IP. 13. The lidar discussion turns on training data, ground truth, and the difference between Rivian and Tesla's approaches. 14. Max says Rivian's lidar can catch things vision sees later and helps train the fleet. 15. They compare Rivian's strategy with Waymo, Hyundai's Gen 6 platform, and Zeekr-style sensor layouts. 16. Max says the R2 rollout timing is the part that bothers him most, because buyers may wait for the later lidar-equipped version. 17. The discussion also covers Tesla FSD take rates, with Max citing roughly 13%, 16%, and maybe 20%. 18. Myriam and Max spend time on steering wheel buttons, scroll wheels, brake behavior, and one-pedal driving. 19. Listeners who follow EV autonomy, Rivian, and Tesla hardware choices will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners who want only short phone-news highlights may skip the autonomy-heavy first half.

As heard by us

A practical look at Rivian's autonomy pitch and the everyday tradeoffs behind modern EVs.

Rivian's event gives the episode its frame, but the stronger thread is the question it keeps returning to: what buyers actually want from a car while software keeps selling the idea of driving without driving.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the Rivian autonomy debate before the phone talk.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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