A year after dismissing the integration of Apple’s CarPlay system into Rivian’s EVs, the company’s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe reaffirmed the ambition of providing an in-house developed ecosystem.
Speaking at The Verge’s podcast Decoder, the chief executive reaffirmed plans of not integrating Apple’s CarPlay into Rivian vehicles despite seeing the company as “a close partner.”
The software is integrated into over 800 models across more than 20 brands, including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, BYD, Ferrari, Hyundai, and Lucid Motors.
“We’ve made the decision, which I’m very confident about, that in the fullness of time, customers will appreciate, which is that we wanted to have a seamless digital experience,” Scaringe stated.
The executive said the system “feels the same way in every car” not allowing the US EV maker to provide a dedicated experience to customers.
“To not have the need to jump between CarPlay, which feels obviously like CarPlay, and so it feels the same in every car, and then what we create as a Rivian environment,” the CEO said. “And rather, think of it more à la carte, create all the same applications.”
According to Scaringe, Rivian is starting “to integrate AI into the vehicle.”
“Over the next 18 months, we’re going to see a lot of new features that, by necessity, are performing tasks or making decisions to connect different applications,” he stated.
The chief executive believes that with Rivian’s own ecosystem, the brand can provide “a richer, better experience for you as a driver or occupant of the vehicle.”
At the same time, Scaringe announced that a voice to text feature is coming to Rivian vehicles withour providing a timeline for the feature launch.
“So piece by piece, everything that someone may have missed from their CarPlay experience, whether it was a mapping, or soon we’re going to have a voice-to-text, is going to be there, and it’ll be beautiful,” Scaringe stated.
Later in the podcast, Rivian‘s CEO hinted that customers will he able to open the vehicle via their Apple Watch and Ultra Wideband saying “there’s a whole host of things coming.”
“But you don’t need to use CarPlay to do that,” he conclude. “You can do it in other ways.”
