Rivian has added a notice to the support page of its Autonomy Early Access Program, the invite-only and NDA-bound beta for its Point-to-Point hands-free driving feature.
The EV maker is now telling owners who meet the eligibility requirements but cannot see the sign-up tile in their Rivian account to “check back shortly, as the eligible owner pool is updated periodically.”
Rivian owner Chris Hilbert flagged the wording on X on Wednesday, saying the company had limited the pool of owners who can sign up, and that the tile was missing.
The change comes less than two weeks after Rivian opened the program on October 15, and a day before it reports third-quarter results.
Rivian has not commented publicly on the change and has not said how many owners can currently see the tile or how many it plans to admit.
What Changed
Until now, the sign-up tile was the main gate. Rivian began emailing Autonomy+ subscribers on October 19 with the heading “Help shape where Rivian Autonomy is headed,” telling them that “space is limited” and that “we recommend applying soon.”
Hilbert said on Wednesday that the tile had disappeared.
“Rivian has now limited the pool of owners who can sign up for Early Access,” Hilbert wrote. “They just added the below highlighted text to encourage owners to check back periodically for openings,” he added, sharing a screenshot of the new wording.
Other parts of the page were not updated to match. It still says that “regardless of where you live, you can express interest through the Autonomy Early Access tile,” and its answer to “Why don’t I see the tile to apply for this program?” still reads, “Invitations are going out to eligible owners on a rolling basis beginning on October 15, 2026.”
Rivian’s page separates two steps. Invitations to apply go “on a rolling basis to eligible owners with an active Autonomy+ subscription,” and eligibility to apply “is re-verified every 30 days.” A “clean recent safety record” is weighed only later, at the selection stage, “not during initial invite eligibility determination,” the page says.
It is not clear whether the tile has been removed for all owners who had not yet applied or only for some, or whether owners who already registered interest are affected. Rivian says applications already submitted stay on file for later phases and that owners “don’t need to reapply.”
How the Program Works
The program is open to US owners of second-generation R1 vehicles and the R2 with an active, paid Autonomy+ subscription. Trial subscriptions do not qualify, and first-generation R1 vehicles and owners in Canada are excluded.
Selection starts with owners in California and Florida, “with more areas to follow.” Rivian says it picks participants based on factors “including but not limited to safe driving history, autonomy feature usage, vehicle model and driving state,” and balances the group by region and model. The safety record covers “forward collision warnings,” “true collisions events” and “other safety related metrics.”
Applying requires a pre-enrollment consent that lets Rivian review an owner’s prior software and feature usage history, general driving history and participation in earlier Rivian programs. The tile appears only in the primary owner’s account.
Selected owners sign a Participation Agreement and must “maintain strict confidentiality regarding all preview features, program details, and feedback provided, in accordance with the signed NDA.”
They must use the preview features weekly, log issues from the vehicle when it is safe to do so, complete “mandatory program surveys shared monthly” and be available for interviews or focus groups. They must also enable data collection, “including location and Camera Data Sharing.”
“No, participants will not get paid,” Rivian says. The listed benefits are early over-the-air access and a newsletter. Membership “is revocable at Rivian’s discretion at any time.”
Once enrolled, owners can use the features “on supported roads, wherever you drive in the US,” not only in the two launch states.
A Tesla-Style Gate
The structure resembles Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta, which in 2021 required early testers to sign a non-disclosure agreement and used a Safety Score, built partly on forward collision warnings, to decide which paying owners got the software.
Rivian’s version lists the same kind of measure among its selection criteria and adds a filter by state.
Tesla widened that beta in stages, and its early behavior largely reached the public through testers’ own videos. Rivian’s confidentiality clause means independent accounts of how Point-to-Point performs will be scarce until the broader release.
What Point-to-Point Does
Point-to-Point links Rivian’s Universal Hands-Free system to navigation, handling “supervised turns, highway transitions, and city streets,” according to Rivian. It is a supervised Level 2 feature, so the driver must watch the road and be ready to take over.
Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said on July 30 that the first version would be “like Level 2++, where your hands are off the wheel, but your eyes are still primarily on the road.” He said then that the rollout would start “by the end of this year,” and had said in June that the feature would be “very similar to Tesla’s FSD.”
Rivian’s current Universal Hands-Free system covers more than 3.5 million miles of roads in the US and Canada, but does not stop for traffic lights or stop signs.
Rivian’s support page says Point-to-Point will launch through the program “in late 2026 before expanding broadly in 2027” to second-generation R1 and R2 vehicles on Autonomy+.
James Philbin, Senior VP of Autonomy and AI, said on September 29 that Rivian was “very much on track” for an initial rollout toward year-end. Scaringe has described the December 9 Autonomy & AI Day as “an anchor point to then roll out some of these new features.”
The feature runs on current second-generation hardware. Rivian’s in-house RAP1 computer and LiDAR will go into vehicles for employees this year and reach customers in 2027, VP of Investor Relations Chip Newcom said in September.
Pricing and Legal Backdrop
Autonomy+ costs $49.99 a month or $2,500 as a one-time purchase. Rivian kept the $2,500 price for the 2027 model year R1T and R1S, though Scaringe has said the company sees an opportunity to raise it as capabilities expand.
The exclusion of first-generation R1 vehicles comes as Rivian faces a proposed class action filed in June in federal court in California, which alleges it marketed hands-free capabilities that 2022 to 2024 R1T and R1S vehicles lacked the hardware to deliver.
Analysts and the Stock
Analysts tracked by Price Target, EV‘s sister publication, have tied part of the Rivian case to autonomy.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which rates the stock ‘Neutral’ with a $19 target, listed the “Autonomy Point-to-Point Initial Launch” among Rivian’s near-term catalysts and expects it in the second half of 2026, in an October 2 note.
Yorkville Ives, which started coverage at ‘Outperform’ with a $20 target, wrote that “Autonomy is the next extension” of Rivian’s software model, in an October 7 note.
Rivian shares were down 1.3% at $11.67 in late trading on Wednesday, after touching $11.44 during the session, close to their 52-week low of $11.42.
What Comes Next
Rivian reports third-quarter results on Thursday, October 29, after the market closes, with a call at 5:00 p.m. ET. It delivered 19,248 vehicles in the quarter and reaffirmed full-year guidance of 65,000 to 70,000.
Rivian will hold its second Autonomy & AI Day on December 9 at its Fell Street space in San Francisco, with an invitation promising “brand new demos.” Rivian filed on October 14 to block a “RAVAN” trademark sought for autonomous-vehicle software.
On Wednesday, Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid dismissed a report that Volkswagen could drop Rivian’s software for most of its next-generation European cars.
