Despite Rivian rolling out nearly one over-the-air software update every month this year, the performance of its infotainment system remains one of the most discussed and criticized topics among owners.
Over the weekend, a Rivian Gen-2 owner shared on X that while his vehicle was in service, he was given a Tesla Model 3 rental through Enterprise.
“My Rivian is in service so they gave me a rental through Enterprise. A [Tesla] Model 3,” the user, Ruckus, wrote on Saturday.
“Rivian is my first EV and I love it but just have one question… HOW is the infotainment so snappy and responsive in a Tesla while Rivian feels like I’m using an old 3rd-party Android tablet?!”
Tesla‘s official account replied on late Sunday, writing “Snappiest UI in the game.”
The company quoted a previous post of a promotional clip showing the responsiveness of its in-car display with the caption, “A vehicle display you actually want to use. No lag, no buffering.”
The original post reached over 160,000 views as of early Monday with nearly 300 comments.
Tesla’s infotainment system runs on AMD Ryzen processors and a proprietary software stack that powers real-time map rendering, video streaming, and in-car gaming.
Rivian’s vehicles use an Android-based platform developed internally atop Google’s Android Automotive OS, which allows carmakers to build their own interfaces and apps on top of Google’s open-source framework.
While Rivian has issued eight major OTA updates so far this year — including one aimed at eliminating touchscreen lag — many owners say its infotainment remains less responsive than Tesla’s, with reports of delays and occasional freezes.
Tesla’s software division saw its chief leaving the company earlier this year.
David Lau, the company’s vice president of software engineering, departed in April after almost 13 years with Tesla.
Lau’s team oversaw all vehicle software, including infotainment, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and OTA update systems.
Separately, last week Rivian’s vice president of autonomy and AI, James Philbin, commented on Tesla’s approach to autonomous driving, telling Business Insider that Tesla’s “rigid point of view” on sensor design — notably its rejection of LiDAR — isn’t “fully explainable just from an engineering point of view.”
Rivian plans to incorporate LiDAR in future models as sensor costs fall.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, has repeatedly cast doubt on Rivian’s long-term prospects.
In early 2023, he said that “unless something changes significantly with Rivian and Lucid, they will both go bankrupt,” adding that both EV startups need to “cut their costs dramatically.”
