Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has made it clear that Apple’s CarPlay will not be coming to Rivian vehicles anytime soon. Speaking on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Scaringe defended the company’s stance, saying Rivian wants to build a deeply connected, intelligent software experience that goes beyond what CarPlay can offer.
When asked if he still dislikes CarPlay, Scaringe laughed before clarifying, “No, we definitely don’t hate CarPlay. 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.” He explained that CarPlay feels identical in every car, while Rivian wants to craft an experience that is uniquely its own.
Scaringe said the company’s focus is to integrate essential services natively rather than rely on Apple’s system. “You have YouTube, you can go to Spotify, you can go to Google Maps, you can go to Apple Music, you can go to everything,” he said. “But for us to hold the glue for putting that all together becomes even more important as we start to integrate AI into the vehicle.”
Over the next 18 months, Rivian plans to introduce AI-driven features that will connect apps and in-car systems in smarter ways. “Knowledge of what’s the vehicle state, is it in drive or parked, what are the conditions outside the vehicle, what’s your driving history, what are your preferences—knowledge of all that at an ecosystem level allows us to present a richer, better experience for you as a driver or occupant of the vehicle,” Scaringe explained.
He added that handing over control to an external interface like CarPlay would make that integration difficult. “It’d be really hard to do that if we had to put all that through an application that expands to take over the screen and provides you essentially with a set of bubbles that feel very much like a CarPlay experience,” he said. “So piece by piece, everything that someone may have missed from their CarPlay experience, whether it was mapping, or soon we’re going to have a voice-to-text, is going to be there, and it’ll be beautiful.”
Scaringe admitted that this approach might not please everyone. “For some folks, that means they’re not going to buy a Rivian. We accept that,” he said. “Part of building a product as complex as this is recognizing and being okay with the fact that we have to make a ton of decisions. Some of those decisions, not everyone’s going to agree with, and that’s okay.”
When the interviewer joked about Rivian possibly adopting “CarPlay Ultra,” Scaringe laughed and replied, “Yeah, that’s what the takeaway is—definitely doing it.” He then clarified that Rivian still maintains a strong relationship with Apple. “We have a great relationship with Apple. They’re a close partner. We have a bunch of integrations that are coming soon. Apple Music was the first demonstration of that, but there’s a lot more coming,” he said, hinting at future support for messaging and Apple Watch vehicle access through Ultra Wideband.
Rivian’s approach, then, isn’t about rejecting Apple, it’s about redefining how digital systems in cars should work. The company believes that controlling the full software stack will allow it to innovate faster, especially as AI begins to handle more tasks and decisions on the road. “We’re really convicted on this,” Scaringe said confidently.
Whether that conviction wins over buyers who still prefer the familiarity of CarPlay remains to be seen, but Rivian’s bet is clear: it believes its own software will soon outperform CarPlay by design.
(via The Verge)
