CarPlay is now widely available in most cars, but Rivian is one of the major players that still doesn’t support it.Alongside Tesla and GMIn a new interview this week, Decoder PodcastRivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained why the company won’t support CarPlay, while also touting the company’s overall “great relationship” with the Apple team.
Will Rivian support CarPlay?
As for Rivian’s lack of CarPlay, Scaringe explained that the company is focused on “creating a pure product experience,” specifically pointing out the user experience of needing to open the front trunk while using CarPlay, which requires jumping out of the car to do so.
“We believe the digital experience in the car should be consistent across all touchpoints and harmonious across the board. To achieve this, we need the idea of letting customers jump in and out of applications that we don’t control and that don’t have the advanced capabilities to leverage other parts of the in-car experience. For example, if you want to open the front trunk in CarPlay, you have to leave the application and go to a different interface.
That doesn’t align with our mindset of actually creating a pure product experience.”
Rivian doesn’t support CarPlay, but Scaringe added that the company is focused on “adding features that people want within CarPlay on an a la carte basis,” which would include Apple Music on Rivian. Officially Announced Support Last month (with spatial audio):
“To provide the functionality that people are asking for within CarPlay, we’re launching it on an a la carte basis. So, we’re launching Apple Music in the car. We have a great relationship with the Apple team. This is a partnership with Dolby Atmos.”
But Scaringe also seems aware that Rivian drivers have had complaints about the first-party software implementation, particularly around mapping, an issue he said the company is working to address.
“I think the biggest complaint right now about not having CarPlay is that mapping needs to be improved, and that’s something that will be improved in the future. But even with mapping, we want to be able to individually select the routing, individually select the basemap, individually select the points of interest, and overlay that with the charging routing. This is very important and very specific to the vehicle itself and the network, and our assessment of the network. To support this, we’ve acquired a route planning company. We believe that the digital ecosystem is very important real estate and something that we want to preserve.”
We understand that it will take time to fully realize all of CarPlay’s features, and we hope our customers realize that, and we think CarPlay often gets more attention than it deserves.
Besides mapping, we also have text messaging integration on the way. This is something we know is needed, and the team is actively working on it.”
Scaringe said Rivian’s use of CarPlay would be akin to Apple using off-the-shelf Windows software instead of developing macOS and iOS, so while Rivian and Apple have a “great relationship,” don’t expect CarPlay to come to Rivian vehicles.
“We have a great relationship with Apple and we really believe in their products, and if I put myself in Apple’s shoes, let’s say Apple makes the Mac and someone has a software application, say Windows.
And they said, “Here’s a turnkey platform that anyone can learn to use.” Would they put it in their cars? Would they develop their own iOS?
I know how that played out. So as much as I love their products, there are reasons why, ironically, we want to control the ecosystem, which is very much in line with Apple’s ethos.”
You can listen to the full interview below. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
9to5Mac’s take
I’m in favor of “all automakers should support CarPlay,” but Scaringe seems to have a much better understanding of what people want than other CarPlay opponents. From the way Scaringe talks, it seems like at least Rivian’s lack of support for CarPlay is due to: Subscription Play.
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