Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said the company's Mind Robotics spinoff, set up last year, will start by automating about 20 percent of tasks in the plant and is aiming for 80 percent over time, InsideEVs reported, citing an interview with Kleiner Perkins. "In the beginning, we're going to be able to do 20% of the tasks on the plant, but over time, we want to grow that to 80%," Scaringe said. "And that's what makes software so exciting and why designing the hardware with headroom is so important."
InsideEVs noted that no public date was given for when those robots will arrive on Rivian's factory floors. Most car plants, including Rivian's, already use automation: large robot arms that pick up parts and install them in fixed positions. Those machines are programmed to repeat the same motion and work only if the part is in the same place every time. What Rivian is describing is different: AI-enabled robots that can handle repetitive jobs with some variability, starting with stations where people now pick a part from a bin and set it on a fixture for another robot.
Mind Robotics has been collecting video of a wide range of factory tasks. "In the case of manufacturing, what we've done within Mind, we've taken videos of a whole broad spectrum of tasks. So, thousands of tasks being done, characterized what's in those tasks, what's the degree of difficulty from a dexterity point of view and a reasoning point of view," Scaringe said. With the hardware in place, "the model gets smarter over time."
That software-over-time approach is similar, he said, to what Rivian plans for its Gen2 R1S and R1T. Those vehicles already have the hardware for point-to-point hands-free driving; the software is scheduled to arrive on a small scale through an over-the-air update in late 2026, then more widely in 2027. The 20 percent and 80 percent figures are Scaringe's targets, not a completed installation. They describe a starting set of bin-to-fixture jobs and a long-term goal, not a promise that four-fifths of Rivian's factory work is about to be automated.
Rivian makes the R1S, R1T, and upcoming R2 in the United States, and Scaringe's comments were about work inside those plants, not a retail robot for customers. The first jobs are the ones where a person currently feeds another robot: pick a part from a bin, place it on a fixture. Those tasks have enough variation that a traditional, fully scripted arm often cannot do them without a human. The video library of "thousands of tasks" is how Mind Robotics is trying to judge which jobs are hard in dexterity or in reasoning. Until Rivian gives a start date and a count of robots on the floor, 20 percent and 80 percent remain targets from the CEO, not a completed program.