Rivian CEO Says CarPlay Is Not Coming

Despite Apple’s claims While most consumers will only consider purchasing vehicles that support CarPlay, Rivian says it still has no plans to adopt the iPhone’s mirroring system. The edge EIC Nilay Patel on today’s episode of DecoderRivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe compared Rivian’s adoption of CarPlay to Apple’s choice to use Microsoft’s Windows operating systems instead of developing its own iOS and macOS alternatives in-house.

“We have a great relationship with Apple,” he said. “As much as I love their products, there’s a reason that ironically is very consistent with Apple’s ethos why we want to control the ecosystem.” CarPlay is not “consistent with how we think about creating a real product experience,” Scaringe said.

Scaringe cites as an example CarPlay’s inability to “leverage other elements of the in-vehicle experience,” which would require Rivian customers to leave the app to perform actions such as opening the vehicle’s front trunk. “We’ve embraced the idea that the digital experience in the vehicle should be consistent and seamless across all touchpoints,” Scaringe said. Rivian’s CEO said the company will eventually add CarPlay’s most exciting features “a la carte.”

Scaringe says the exclusion of CarPlay will allow the company to be more selective about features like routing and charging point mapping, noting that Rivian had acquisition of route planning app maker Iternio last year to facilitate this.

“We recognize that it’s going to take time to fully leverage all of the features of CarPlay, and I hope customers see that. I think it often gets more hype than it deserves,” Scaringe said in the interview. “The other thing that’s coming, beyond mapping, is better integration with SMS. We know that needs to happen, and it’s something the teams are actively working on.”

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