🛩️Autowist Report 135

China’s market regulator released draft automotive pricing guidelines aimed at reining in the ongoing price war.

The rules represent Beijing’s strongest intervention yet in auto pricing practices and are open for public comment until December 22.

Automakers and dealers are warned of significant legal risks for selling vehicles below production cost to eliminate competitors or monopolize the market.

Below-cost sales are allowed only when legally clearing excess inventory.

Discounts or subsidies that push factory prices below cost.

Providing extra vehicle quantities to reduce effective pricing.

Submitting below-cost bids in tenders.

Selling below procurement cost at the dealer level.

Price collusion among automakers or parts suppliers, including fixing prices, price ranges, or calculation standards.

Paid feature activation (“paid unlocking”) must be fully disclosed at the time of sale.

Free trial periods must clearly state duration and post-trial fees.

Customers must be reminded before trials expire.

Features not disclosed at purchase cannot be charged later.

Volvo is seeking partnerships and licensing deals for its new centralized software stack that will underpin all future electric models.

The move signals confidence that Volvo has resolved earlier software issues that delayed launches and caused recalls, notably with the EX90.

The system runs on a small number of high-performance central computers, similar to software architectures used by smartphone makers.

Volvo’s CTO says the company is open to collaboration, seeing software as a potential new revenue stream.

Rivian announced major advances in in-house silicon, autonomy hardware, and AI-driven software at its first Autonomy & AI Day.

The company aims to reach personal Level 4 autonomy, positioning this as a major inflection point for the ownership experience.

Rivian introduced its first in-house chip, RAP1, a custom 5nm processor built for vision-centric physical AI.

RAP1 delivers 1,600 sparse INT8 TOPS and can process 5 billion pixels per second.

The chip powers Rivian’s third-generation autonomy computer, ACM3, designed for scalability via a low-latency interconnect called RivLink.

Future R2 models will add LiDAR, improving redundancy and detection in difficult driving scenarios.

Gen 3 autonomy hardware is undergoing validation, with R2 deployment expected from late 2026.

Rivian unveiled its Large Driving Model (LDM), trained similarly to large language models using massive driving datasets.

The system uses Group-Relative Policy Optimization to distill better driving strategies into vehicles.

Near-term software upgrades bring Universal Hands-Free driving to Gen 2 R1 vehicles across 3.5+ million miles of roads in the US and Canada.