Rivian will add Pet Cam, a live view of the cabin for owners who leave animals in the car, to its R2 SUV in its next software update, the company said on Tuesday.
“Introducing Pet Cam for R2, coming in the next software update! Now when you use Pet Comfort Mode, you can have a live view right from your app or get snapshots every minute on your lock screen,” Rivian wrote on X.
The camera works only while Pet Comfort Mode, which keeps the cabin at a set temperature, is running.
“Always activate Pet Comfort Mode before stepping away from your vehicle when pets are inside,” Rivian said, adding that the mode “is required to power Pet Cam.”
Rivian did not give a release date or a software version, and the feature is not yet available on the R2 SUVs. It also did not say whether Pet Cam will require a paid Connect+ subscription.
Pets Only
Pet Cam uses a color camera in the R2’s rearview mirror, which also serves as the driver-attention monitor.
The feature is designed to refuse to run when a person is in the car, Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid said in June.
“The feature will only activate if there’s a pet. If there’s a human, the feature will not be on,” Bensaid told The Drive in an interview on the R2’s launch day.
He tied the rule to the risk of abuse.
“It’s really super important for us to protect from cases like domestic violence. So we don’t want, if you’re not on good terms with your spouse, we don’t want to give you a tool to spy on them,” Bensaid said.
The interior camera is off by default and must be switched on by the owner, he said.
Owners who do not want the camera running continuously and draining the battery can switch it on from the app to check on a pet and then off again, The Drive reported.
R2 Only
The R1 is not due to get Pet Cam, because its driver-monitoring camera is infrared and cannot provide the image the feature needs.
Bensaid first mentioned the feature in May. “With R2, we will have Pet Mode but also Pet Cam thanks to the new RGB in-cabin camera!” he wrote in a question-and-answer session on Reddit.
The R2 began deliveries on June 9 with a reduced software package that left out Pet Mode entirely.
Pet Comfort Mode reached the R2 in update 2026.24, released publicly on July 15, without the camera.
Rivian then said Pet Cam would come later in 2026. The following update, 2026.31, brought Rivian’s redesigned software interface to the R1 and R2 on September 4, again without Pet Cam.
Bensaid said on September 14 that Rivian’s annual Halloween software update would come “early” this year.
The features in each of the previous four Halloween updates were unlocked in the second half of October.
Rivian has not said whether Pet Cam will be part of that release.
Catching Up With Tesla
Rivian introduced Pet Comfort on the R1T and R1S in June 2022, letting owners hold the cabin between 68 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit with a message on the center display telling passers-by that the animal is safe.
It required at least 50 miles of range to switch on and sent alerts if range became critically low or the cabin too hot, Rivian said at the time.
Tesla launched a similar Dog Mode in February 2019.
It added remote viewing of the cabin camera in Dog Mode and Sentry Mode in its December 2022 holiday update, software 2022.44.25, for owners with a Premium Connectivity subscription.
Tesla’s holiday update in December 2025 added a Dog Mode Live Activity on iPhone that shows cabin temperature and, for Premium Connectivity subscribers, periodic snapshots of the cabin, close to the lock-screen snapshots Rivian is now promising.
Beyond the Camera
Rivian’s plans for pets may go further.
The US Patent and Trademark Office granted Rivian patent 12,589,762, “Animal interaction-based vehicle configuration,” last March.
It describes a vehicle that detects a digital tag worn by an animal and adjusts its suspension height, zone climate, airbags and seatbelt chimes, and warns the owner if the animal strays beyond a set distance.
Rivian has not said it plans to build those features.
