Rivian’s software chief thinks you don’t need CarPlay or buttons
TL;DR
Wassym Bensaid, Rivian's chief software officer and co-CEO of the company's joint venture with Volkswagen, explains his vision on Decoder: no traditional buttons, no CarPlay, just Rivian's own operating system in every vehicle. The roughly $6B alliance with VW is meant to push that model into Audi, Scout, and VW brands too. The core asset, he argues, is Rivian's software culture.
Nauti's Take
Nauti gets the logic: to truly own car software, you need full OS control — Apple and Tesla prove vertical integration pays off and speeds up updates. The catch: stripping out CarPlay takes away something drivers use every day, and porting Rivian's software culture into VW, Audi, and Scout is a massive execution test.
Tech-savvy buyers will cheer; more conventional customers might push back hard.
Sources