From the article:
> The system includes an array of 11 internally developed cameras and five radars performing over 250 trillion operations per second, which Rivian says is an industry-leading statistic
I generally like what they are doing with their overall architectural simplifications, but gee-zus; the feeling of complexity I get from that one statement leaves me with the feeling of "it's just a car man... it takes us from point A to point B... is all that really necessary?"
Even leaving aside autopilots and such, automatic breaking and lane keeping are now a hard requirement for new vehicles in many places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_emergency_braking_sy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_departure_warning_system#...
Distributed systems are hard, more so in a real-time environment. If you can reduce the number of components or the need for them to communicate they will almost always become more robust and also easier to code.
Rivian added some network redundancy and central monitoring to make this design safe, but otherwise the core design principle was basically KISS.