Enlarge (credit: Rivian)

Volkswagen is committing $5 billion to upstart EV company Rivian, with $1 billion in cash upfront and $4 billion over time. The companies aim to use this joint venture to deliver new vehicles "in the second half of the decade," according to the announcement, and the cash will likely help push along Rivian's next generation of vehicles, including more affordable models.

Oliver Blume, left, CEO of Volkswagen Group, and RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Rivian. (credit: Rivian)

Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the partnership "brings Rivian’s software and zonal electronics platform to a broader market through Volkswagen Group’s global reach and scale." VW Group, which also controls Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi, and Ducati, among others, has a lot to gain from working with Rivian, particularly when it comes to software and ride control. Ars and most other reviewers have been impressed by Rivian's drive engineering and display software on the R1T truck, R1S SUV, and the second generations of them both, which majorly reworked the underpinnings and offerings, largely through design and software choices.

Volkswagen's recent software moves have been on an opposing trajectory. The Group's 2019 moves to align all its brands' software under one division, Cariad, with three platforms developed at once, has led to massive leadership shake-ups and restarts. We were not impressed with the ID.4's infotainment system in 2021, and further bugs in both system and screen software plagued the car, undermining what was otherwise regarded as a good wheels-on-road experience.

Enlarge / The R1S and R1T don't look much different from the electric trucks we drove in 2022, but under the skin, there have been a lot of changes. (credit: Rivian)

In rainy Seattle this week, Rivian unveiled what it's calling the "Second Generation" of its R1 line with a suite of mostly under-the-hood software and hardware updates that increase range, power, and efficiency while simultaneously lowering the cost of production for the company. While it's common for automotive manufacturers to do some light refreshes after about four model years, Rivian has almost completely retooled the underpinnings of its popular R1S SUV and R1T pickup just two years after the vehicles made their debut.

"Overdelivering on the product is one of our core values," Wassym Bensaid, the chief software officer at Rivian, told a select group of journalists at the event on Monday night, "and customer feedback has been one of the key inspirations for us."

For these updates, Rivian changed more than half the hardware components in the R1 platform, retooled its drive units to offer new tri- and quad-motor options (with more horsepower), updated the suspension tuning, deleted 1.6 miles (2.6 km) of wiring, reduced the number of ECUs, increased the number of cameras and sensors around the vehicle, changed the battery packs, and added some visual options that better aligned with customizations that owners were making to their vehicles, among other things. Rivian is also leaning harder into AI and ML tools with the aim of bringing limited hands-free driver-assistance systems to their owners toward the end of the year.