Rivian will add alternative routes, spoken Waze and Google Maps alerts and a configurable arrival charge to the navigation in its R1 and R2 vehicles with its next over-the-air software update, 2026.41, Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid wrote on X this Monday.
“Big Navigation upgrades coming to Rivian R1 and R2 with the 2026.41 OTA,” Bensaid wrote on X.
“And negative SoC at arrival for @itskyleconner 😉,” he added in a reply to his own post, referring to state of charge, the battery level shown as a percentage. The tag points to Kyle Conner, who filmed several range tests on the Out of Spec YouTube channel for all Rivian passenger vehicles.
Bensaid listed five changes: alternative routes, audio for Waze and Google Maps alerts, more alerts covering road incidents, lane closures and objects on the road, traffic signs and stop signs shown on the map, and a configurable arrival charge at charging stops and at the destination.
Bensaid did not say when the update would begin rolling out, or whether every feature would reach first-generation R1s. Rivian had not published release notes for 2026.41 as of Monday.
What the Video Shows
A 10-second video attached to the post shows a route along the Pacific Coast Highway to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in California, on a map credited to Google. Stop-sign and traffic-light icons sit on the highlighted route, and a red marker flags a delay of eight minutes ahead.
A card on the left of the screen reads “Lane closed ahead,” with “3 reports, 12 min ago” beneath it, while a second route drawn in blue is labeled “5 min faster.”
The clip ends on a Trip Preferences panel with a section called “Arrival range preferences,” which sets separate minimum charge levels for the destination and for charging stops. In the demonstration, the destination is set at 20%, shown as 70 miles, and chargers at 10%, or 35 miles.
The panel also shows options to avoid highways, ferries and tolls, and a toggle for “Adapter needed sites,” with the advice “Recommend toggling on if you have an adapter.” The video does not show which of these settings, if any, are already available in current software.
Building on Waze Alerts
The alerts extend a feature Rivian introduced with update 2026.31, which began reaching vehicles on September 4. Its release notes listed “Google Maps and Waze user reports on police presence and speed cameras along your route,” shown as cards inside Rivian’s own navigation. Those notes did not mention audio alerts.
“Real-time alerts from Waze are coming to R1 and R2 in-vehicle navigation, starting with speed cameras and police reports in the 2026.31 OTA update,” Bensaid wrote in August. “More data and alerts to follow.”
The 2026.41 additions cover road incidents, lane closures and objects on the road, and add audio to the alerts. Bensaid did not say whether drivers would be able to submit their own reports.
Rivian integrated Google Maps routing, live traffic, incident data and satellite imagery through its 2025.22 update in July 2025. Waze has been owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent, since 2013.
Camera Data Near Saved Places
The update is also expected to change how Rivian collects images from its exterior cameras. Rivian told owners in an email in October that 2026.41 would bring the change, according to Jose Castillo, who runs the RivianTrackr site and shared the email’s contents on X.
Currently, “camera data is buffered and discarded in the vehicle memory for the first and last 3 minutes of drives” associated with saved locations such as Home and Work, Rivian’s support page says.
Under a section headed “Upcoming Changes,” the page says Rivian “will use geofencing (automated location-based filtering) to prevent your vehicle from capturing exterior-camera images” for product development. “This exclusion lasts as long as your vehicle stays within that area, including while you idle or take longer to park,” it says.
Images are not captured for this purpose from first-generation vehicles, and the exclusion does not affect Gear Guard, Rivian’s camera-based security system, according to the page. Owners can turn off sharing under Settings, Data and Privacy, Exterior Cameras Data Sharing.
Where the Fleet Stands
Rivian’s entire passenger fleet now runs the same software platform. The company began pushing Rivian OS 2 to every R1, including first-generation models built from 2021, with update 2026.31 in September, after the operating system debuted on the R2 in June.
Rivian’s current update, 2026.36, began reaching vehicles in early October.
It brought the Rivian Assistant, the company’s AI-powered voice assistant, to the R2, added Gmail and secondary Google Calendar support for the R1 assistant, and introduced named and reorderable saved locations and charger search filters, according to its release notes as recorded by Rivian Roamer, a site that tracks the company’s software rollouts.
The same release added Electric Era as a fast-charging network across 16 states, gave lower charging scores to R1 sites that may need several plug-in attempts and brought a Ghostbusters-themed Halloween mode to both vehicles.
Rivian delivered 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter, the R2’s first full quarter on sale, and said the R2 was already its best-selling vehicle by volume. It produced 19,751 vehicles in the quarter, according to its quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Autonomy Push
Rivian will host its Autonomy & AI Day in Palo Alto on December 9. Its event page lists four speakers, including Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe and Bensaid.
Rivian has said a limited rollout of its Point to Point assisted-driving feature is expected to begin later this year through an invitation-only Autonomy Early Access Program, with a general release to Autonomy+ subscribers expected in 2027. It began inviting Autonomy+ subscribers to apply on October 19.
Bensaid also said in late October that the next version of the Rivian mobile app, 3.18, would support Apple’s iPhone Duo. Rivian has agreed to license parts of its AI voice assistant through its software joint venture with Volkswagen, where Bensaid is co-chief executive.
