Apple CarPlay is a decade old this year, and it's a hit with consumers. Despite that, not every automaker is eager to hand over control of the in-car experience to Apple. General Motors famously announced its plan to dump CarPlay and Android Auto in March 2023 to swift backlash. Rivian has never offered the feature, and that stance won’t change anytime soon, even as a handful of customers clamor for it.
It seems strange not to offer a feature people want, but there’s more to integrating CarPlay than music and texting. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said on Monday’s episode of the The Verge’s Decoder podcast (58:20 mark) that the company wants the digital experience to feel “consistent and holistically harmonious." That means not having users jump in and out of CarPlay to access various vehicle features, like opening the front trunk.
Instead, Scaringe said Rivian wants to bring people’s desired CarPlay features “on an a la carte basis” and act as a “curator” for getting various apps and platforms into its vehicles. While Rivian models don’t have CarPlay, it is launching Apple Music and will soon have YouTube, but it wants to retain control of its vehicles’ digital ecosystems.
The company is aware of areas it needs to improve, like maps and texting, but Scaringe is hopeful consumers understand it will take time to integrate every Apple feature. There’s plenty of online chatter about automakers dropping the feature, as it’s one less choice the consumer has, but the issue could be getting “more noise than it deserves,” according to the CEO.
Maybe he’s right. Decoder host Nilay Patel noted that Apple’s employee parking lot had several Rivians in it the last time he visited. The lack of CarPlay doesn’t seem to phase them.
