Rivian’s Gambit for Full Autonomy

I’m sitting in a Rivian R1S SUV as it drives itself down the leafy streets of Palo Alto, Calif., through areas crowded with touchstones of tech history. We cruise near the landmark HP Garage, the one-car workshop where Hewlett-Packard, and, arguably, Silicon Valley, was founded in 1939. I skirt Stanford University, where a team led by computer science professor Sebastian Thrun won a US $2 million DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. The team’s Volkswagen SUV, named Stanley, became the world’s first ve