The robot swerved through the cafeteria of Rivian's Palo Alto office, shelves adorned with chilled canned coffees ' until it didn't. Five minutes later, a man carefully pushed it out of everyone's way, the words 'I'm stuck' flashing yellow on the poor droid's screen. It was an inauspicious start to Rivian's 'Autonomy & AI Day,' a showcase for the company's plans to make its vehicles capable of driving themselves. Rivian doesn't make the cafeteria robot and isn't responsible for its abilities, but there was a familiar message in its foibles: this stuff is hard. The EV equipped with the automated-driving software drove myself and two Rivian employees on a switchback route near the company's campus. As we glided past Tesla's engineering office, I noticed a Model S in front of us slow to turn into the rival company's lot. The R1S eventually noticed this, too, braking hard just before the Rivian employee nearly intervened. During my demo drive, there was one actual disengagement. The...
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