The New Role of AI in Electric Vehicles

Rivian at NVIDIA GTC

By Rivian

March 31^st, 2025

NVIDIA GTC is a global AI conference for developers that brings together experts, engineers, researchers, inventors, developers and tech enthusiasts from all over the world.

This year’s event featured a dedicated XR Pavilion and extensive discussions on XR (extended reality)—where Rivian demonstrated how technology like NVIDIA AI software is revolutionizing electric vehicle design and manufacturing.

Rivian founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, sat down with Rishi Dhall, VP of Automotive at NVIDIA, for a fireside chat to discuss the groundbreaking innovations shaping the future of electric vehicles and the role of cutting-edge technology within Rivian. Their conversation spanned the evolution of automotive innovation, the competitive landscape, and the complexities of building vehicles at scale. Dhall also asked Scaringe about the latest advancements in AI and GPU-powered technology, and the future of self-driving vehicles. Watch the full conversation here.

Rivian seeks to innovate in every step of the development process—including vehicle design. Extended reality brings innovation to this design work by enabling immersive, interactive design reviews and collaboration. To achieve the level of visual fidelity necessary for these reviews, the Rivian design team tested the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition, integrating the latest NVIDIA AI, XR and accelerated computing technologies, in collaboration with Autodesk.

This technology was shown at the XR Pavilion, where Rivian demonstrated the use of dual GPUs, enabled by RTX PRO GPU's VR-SLI feature. This resulted in incredibly sharp, photorealistic graphics within the Varjo XR4 headset and Autodesk VRED environment, which displayed the R1S California Dune Tri-Motor in the ultimate high-fidelity XR experience.

Rivian and NVIDIA also demonstrated interactive XR capabilities with AI-driven voice activation and advanced visualization in Autodesk VRED, powered by NVIDIA NIM microservices, part of NVIDIA AI Enterprise, for fast, enterprise-ready deployment of AI models and RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs.

Digital tools such as XR allow Rivian to make more informed product decisions earlier, quicker, and more efficiently, reducing the reliance on analog properties and materials. Not only does this make the design process more efficient, but also more sustainable.

In addition to displaying Rivian’s limited-edition California Dune Tri-Motor R1S at the San Jose Convention Center, Rivian also hosted demo drives of our R1S and R1T all week.