1 Reason to Buy Rivian Like There's No Tomorrow. Hint: It's Not the R2

Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) investors knew 2025 was going to be stuck in neutral with no vehicle launches until the highly anticipated R2 hit the streets this year. It may have been especially frustrating for investors to watch Rivian's production and deliveries decline last year, while rival Lucid Group cruised to set eight consecutive quarters of delivery records.

The new year brings plenty of opportunity for Rivian, and here is one primary reason investors can consider the young electric vehicle (EV) maker as a long-term investment.

The road to autonomy

Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) wants to become a big player in the future of driverless vehicles, and it's certainly putting its money where its mouth is. Uber has over 20 active driverless vehicle partnerships in some capacity, and just this month, it announced yet another with young EV maker Rivian.

Uber's committing up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, of course subject to the latter achieving autonomous performance milestones. Initially, once the agreement goes through regulatory approval, Uber will inject $300 million into Rivian to kickstart its ambitions to build toward a fully autonomous fleet of Rivian R2 robotaxis.

The companies expect to begin deploying roughly 10,000 robotaxi R2s between San Francisco and Miami in 2028, with expansion to 25 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031.

While this partnership is great news for Rivian investors, what Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, had to say in a press release could be just as important:

We're big believers in Rivian's approach -- designing the vehicle, compute platform, and software stack together, while maintaining end-to-end control of scaled manufacturing and supply in the U.S. That vertical integration, combined with data from their growing consumer vehicle base and experience managing the complexities of commercial fleets, gives us conviction to set these ambitious but achievable targets.

The bigger picture

Rivian's partnership with Uber and its driverless ambitions are in a way the appetizer, and Rivian's proprietary hardware, subscription-based software services, and strategic partnerships are the main course. Rivian is strategizing and designing its products to transform the company from a pure hardware/vehicle automaker into a higher-margin software-defined vehicle platform – and that could be lucrative long-term. Remember that Rivian's partnership with Volkswagen Group helped the company achieve positive gross profits.

The driverless technology opportunity is knocking on the door, and Rivian is opening that door. Investors won't have to wait long to get a better chance at grasping its potential. The automaker's third-generation autonomy platform, which management expects to be one of the more powerful combinations of sensors and inference compute in a North American consumer vehicle, will be launched in the R2 late this year.

Daniel Miller has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.