Electric vehicle-maker Rivian is one of the few companies that doesn’t offer Apple CarPlay – despite it being a purchase requirement for many, many buyers. Rivian’s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe confirmed Monday that Rivian vehicles will never get the full Apple CarPlay experience.
Lawrence Hodge for Jalopnik:
Speaking to The Verge’s editor in chief Nilay Patel on the site’s Decoder podcast, RJ Scaringe likened Rivian using Apple CarPlay to Apple using Windows as an operating system instead of developing its own OS. He told Patel he wants to create a unique operating experience for owners.
“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 ethos for us to want to control the ecosystem.” CarPlay isn’t “consistent with how we think about really creating a pure product experience,” Scaringe said.
Scaringe did mention that some of CarPlay’s most popular and desirable features would come to Rivian eventually, but only “on an à la carte basis.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Already off our list of prospective vehicle makers, due to being an electric-only vehicle maker (and a relatively nascent one at that), Rivian just falls further away into the void of vehicles we’d never consider buying.
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I’m a big fan of Rivian (and, unlike MDN, I love EVs – I’m on my second one). But RJ Scaringe’s reasoning is completely illogical – I suspect he knows it too, but of course he doesn’t want to give the real reason for not allowing CarPlay (or Android Auto) into his cars: money. Like Tesla, he hopes to sell future customers subscriptions to services they likely already have on their phones!
Why is Scaringe’s argument ridiculous? He says that he wants its customers to get the best possible digital experience, customized to their car. But he acts as if it’s an either-or situation! What prevents him of providing this experience? Nothing! If it’s as great as he thinks it is, his customer will never push that “CarPlay” button on the Rivian Infotainment system!
Tesla was able to pull it off (at least for now), because they were the only EV game in town. But as their 45% profit drop announcement shows, even they might have to re-think their decision if they want to attract the maximum number of customers to their cars. That goes double for little Rivian – it makes no sense for them to exclude potential customers when they’re still trying to survive and grow!
Our friend’s electric bill shot up $600 a month, and they just have a plug-in hybrid. So now the guy has to drive to a place that has a free charger, wait for it to open up, then sit there for an hour as it recharges — every day. Talk about insanity. He was just complaining about that how it’s straining their relationship.
Either you are lying, your friend is lying, or someone else is using his charger. If he really IS using $600 in electricity every month for his PHEV, then he’s driving enough that he is also saving hundreds of dollars on gas.
By point of comparison, my PHEV has enough range to do my commute on electricity alone, five days a week, provided I charge it when I get home. That 35 miles a day raised my electricity bill by about $45 a month — but I’m now only buying gas monthly instead of weekly, if even that. So I’m saving about $100 in gas for that same $45. I have no special ToU rates, either.
PHEVs are a great compromise for most of us…
Is there perhaps a chance that electricity rates in different areas of the US are higher than yours? Is there a chance that people live in larger houses that hit the second and third tier of electricity billing more often than for your situation?
The fact that you call this a lie without considering a more obvious situation shows how weak your logic is.
Why, Bill? Because $600 a month additional from adding one PHEV just can’t happen in the real world. The biggest battery in a PHEV available today in the US is around 15 KWh. It takes approximately 5 hours at 240v/16a to charge that. Charging a PHEV in an hour can’t happen either, because they don’t use DC fast charging… it’s either 120 or 240 volts AC and that’s it, and the fastest it’ll charge is about 4 hours.
So, let’s assume this hypothetical owner has that 15KWh battery. At my rate of 10 cents per KWh, that would be $1.50 for a full charge, and a range probably 30-40 miles depending on the vehicle. Over 30 days, that’s… hey! $45! My home charger app tells me it’s been a bit less to charge my car, but close enough.
According to USA today, the most expensive electricity in the US is in Hawai’i, at 44 cents/KWh. (https://www.usatoday.com/money/homefront/deregulated-energy/electricity-rates-by-state/)
So .44 x 15 = $6.60 per day. Over 30 days, that’s $198. Expensive, but not anywhere NEAR $600. Rhode Island is the highest continental state, and that would STILL be less than $140/month.
In very very specific situations, like Texas during the power crisis where people had to pay spot market prices, yes, I can see a month adding $600 because some people were seeing $3k power bills for normal usage. BUT… as someone else mentioned, it’s a PHEV. Just drive it on gas alone for a month or two until the prices come back to normal (which on average in Texas is .14/KWh or $63/month for our hypothetical driver).
So yes, unless the OP can produce something more concrete than “my friend says” then I will consider it a lie.
“The biggest battery in a PHEV available today in the US is around 15 KWh.“
I stopped reading there.
Yeah, Bill… somehow that doesn’t surprise me. You seem like that type…
$600 in a month may be possible in Germany which has one of, if not the highest cost of electricity in the world (thanks to retiring nuclear power plants and wasting hundreds of billions on wind/solar and now rapid building coal plants).
Their monthly electricity bills are typically 2x-3x what we would pay stateside.
Why does he have to do that? It’s a plug-in hybrid – plugging it in is optional. Why not just drive it like a regular car and enjoy the much better mileage it gets?
I actually became very interested in Rivian recently. I just read this. No interest at all now. Deal breaker.
Same here. My next car will be an EV 100%. The first requirement after that is full CarPlay integration. If that’s not possible that car doesn’t even make my list. I’m not sure why these companies keep doing this to themselves. Hard to sell a SaaS when no one buys the vehicle in the first place.
I wouldn’t mind car makers not using CarPlay if they had an actual clue on how to make a user-friendly UI. They all seem to have an inexplicable, insatiable desire to make the UI more cluttered and confusing. I just want to drive my car, not operate the moon lander.
No matter how good a car maker’s user interface, it’ll still not be able to access all the data on your phone. Plain Bluetooth or cable connections might give you some primitive access (e.g. play music and operate the phone), but it doesn’t let you access calendars, reminders, to-dos, contacts (unless you let the car download them) or – and more importantly – make queries to the voice assistant using this data. For instance, I can currently ask Siri to give me directions to my appointment – heck I don’t even have to ask Siri. When I connect to CarPlay, Apple Maps already has the route to my appointment ready to go – because it can look at my calendar and/or my emails!
Not all people care about these things: they just want a good map and play music. But an increasingly large number of customers (the younger, the more) insist on that.
No CarPlay in Tesla.
EVs are for useful idiots.
EVs are for those who’d like to cede their freedom.
EVs are for those who’d like to put their ability to travel at the whim of others.
EVs are for those who like to wait hours to “refill” their vehicles.
EVs are for those who don’t understand how electrical power is generated and distributed.
EVs are for those who like to make themselves feel better about moving emissions from their tailpipes to coal and other fossil fuel-burning power plants.
EVs are for woke, weak, beta, effeminate Ed Begley Jr.-like losers.
EVs aren’t selling; even Hertz woke up and canceled their orders
EVs aren’t workable; even Apple woke up and canceled their EV project.
EVs are for those who can’t do math.
EVs are for the mentally disabled.
Wow, Brutal “Truth.”
While I agree with some of your points (you’re right about the impact of mining, manufacturing, and where you get your power,…), you lost me with the misogynistic, bizarre political lyric it turned into.
Sure, there will be other interesting better options as technology advances (Hydrogen, magnetics, and plenty we’ve not yet dreamed of), but EVs are still a step in the right direction in spite of some of the flaws I can acknowledge in your sonnet.
Even the centralization of pollution and how we get and store our power, will ultimately make it easier to monitor and clean. Tailpipes covering every inch of the planet are not going to cut it until we find a fuel we can burn that has zero emissions.
EV’s, at this stage, don’t make sense for most people mainly because of current battery technology – capacity and time to fully charge a battery are key limitations. Safety (fire) is a concern as well.
Electric motors have some advantages. Modern motor controllers are inexpensive while providing sophisticated control over speed, torque, etc. EV motors are also used as generators to re-capture energy. With many functions in Toyota hybrids being electrified, there is no longer a need for an accessory belt. The air conditioning system is all electric. Brakes last longer. Although limited in practical terms, I could generate electricity from solar and use that to power my vehicle – limited use case, but at least I have an option that is not controlled by big oil, corporations, government, etc. Cost of hybrids has improved quite a bit and maintenance costs are at least comparable to regular cars.
Heating definitely works better with a standard internal combustion engine for obvious reasons. Electromagnetic emissions may be a concern as well.
To me, hybrids are the sweet spot until battery technology improves significantly or we get another power source such as a hydrogen fuel cell or Mr. Fusion.
For the record, I like traditional transmissions, auto or manual, for the way they feel, especially when coupled to a nice turbo.
A little insulting to people’s intelligence. Must be an EV hater. Some points I agree with but you are also insulting the creators in addition to buyers. I guess we should just stay on gas and never evolve in technology. Gas is the best solution based on the listed insults of people who like EVs. Let’s keep our heads buried in the sand as Americans typically do anyway and keep the pollution going. It’s the American way. IMO, EVs are great. People buy them for different reasons and they are not stupid or idiots. People who adapt to change are opened minded, risk-takers, creative and like to think outside the box.
Just like VCRs to streaming. CTRs to Flat screens. Plasma TVs were expensive and now OLEDs are not. Right now EVs are crazy expensive and overpriced. This is just a stepping stone to something better. Right now it’s battery vehicles. It might be a brief stepping stone to something else. Who knows. I am thankful that we are even doing something instead of nothing. What if the cars in general were never made. Think of what people were saying when Ford first started. People were walking and using horses. Now we have gas cars all over. We have to evolve. We can’t be stuck in the past.
@Thomas, well said. 👍🏽
I don’t know more than you do about Scaringe’s argument (probably less), but my first take was that I get what he’s saying. It’s not an unreasonable rhetorical point and a clever way to both flatter and clap back at Apple. The digital screen in most modern cars today is being taken over either by really shitty automobile software designers, Apple, or Google. It’s also one of the things that the driver and front seat passengers see and interact with the most, so it’s gotta be annoying to see a different branding there. 🙈
Toyota’s sucks. 👎🏼
They make great cars, the most reliable on the road last I checked. But their interface (while “prettier”) is like Windows 3.1. Takes forever to find anything. EIGHT months into leasing the nicest car I’ve ever “owned,” a 2024 Rav4 Prime plugin hybrid, I still cannot find a setting to show me how many miles I’ve driven on battery alone and how many miles on gas! EV-only mode is 42 miles on a full charge, and that’s about 90% of my driving in my small town between charges at my house.
The cameras, adaptive speed control, and the zip of hesitation-free acceleration in EV-only driving around town is fantastic. I really love my car. But I can understand an automaker’s reluctance to put someone else’s software in there, particularly because it’s superior to anything they have going.
One could argue that Apple making a deal with ChatGPT (and Google Maps before that) was exactly that compromise. But you know it just stung, right? Apple Maps is still not as good as Google’s because of the huge head start Google had, and I wonder if they should just cave and buy ChatGPT or some Perplexity aggregate model therein.
Apple’s desire to make all the hardware for its devices is slowly paying dividends, but hardware takes ages to get up to speed. The PPC consortium eventually failed, so Apple had to eat some crow and go with Intel. However, the eventual move to having TSM make their own A & M-chips has truly paid off. Not only has it lowered Apple’s costs, but they’re beyond superior to any CPU that has ever driven Apple devices.
Rivian is an interesting proposition and this recent infusion of capital from VW (and others) really saved their bacon. It remains to be seen if they can become as profitable as Tesla as we wrestle with the infrastructure issues, battery charge times, range anxiety, and money required for ordinary-income folks to own an EV. I have a close friend who owns one and loves it but says the service and support are horrible.
So, stay tuned, and we’ll see if they ever become a threat to Musk’s evil genius or ego. 🦹♂️
It’s about customer choice. On every car that supports the current version of CarPlay, there’s a “CarPlay” button that appears somewhere on the car manufacturer’s infotainment screen. The customer first sees the manufacturer’s screen and has to consciously choose CarPlay – it doesn’t start on its own. If Rivian was truly just striving to provide the best digital experience in their car, there’s nothing preventing them from doing so! Just include that “CarPlay” button for when a customer wants/needs to access something only CarPlay can provide. If Rivian follows through on their truly awesome ‘experience’, there will be less and less reasons for its customer sot press that “CarPlay” button.
But that’s not what Scaringe is doing/saying. He knows that he’s not yet providing a better experience than CarPlay in some cases (e.g. maps/navigation) and he knows that there are just some things he simply won’t be able to provide his customers – e.g. anything that requires access to iPhones’ private data. For instance, his “exceptional user experience” will never be able to automatically bring up the directions to your dental appointment – his system simply doesn’t have that information. It’s in the Apple calendar and/or email, neither of which Rivian has access to.
Things will only get more hopeless as AI becomes more widespread. Apple’s AI is done entirely on its devices or its AI servers. Without CarPlay and Siri, a Rivian customers won’t be able to ask any of the in-depth questions you’ll be able to ask Siri. Given that Scaringe isn’t stupid, one must surmise that Rivian is doing it purely for a profit motive.
“We want to control the car experience…”
Translation:
– We know we can’t keep up with Apple or Google mapping software, but we want to pretend we can, and we’ll use Google if we must – oh we must…
– We know music and podcasts are a big deal, and we’ll integrate that stuff in the way we can somehow from Apple…
– We know voice to text and AI moves at warp speed, and we’ll ignore that for now, or integrate it slowly over time with Apple and Google…
– We know answering calls, hearing alerts, and more is important, so we’ll kinda integrate some of that stuff as we believe it adds value to the customer.
Translation 2: RIVIAN is arrogant and like all car companies does not want to give a tech company like Apple that moves at warp speed compared to a car maker, value which takes away their value and uniqueness… Thus, they will build half-baked crap integration of CarPlay, instead of just giving you CarPlay.
Summary: Buy something else.
If an automaker wants to roll their own Infotainment system, install a full vehicle service app for the owner to access to diagnose and service their own vehicle; otherwise they should stop pretending they know how to make a usable UI.