"Completely obsolete" says major car manufacturer about Apple CarPlay – all thanks to a common trend

Apple CarPlay finds itself under attack again, as Rivian's chief software officer, Wassym Bensaid, has outlined that "the possibilities now for such deep AI integration in the car make the entire CarPlay debate completely obsolete".

Rivian is one of the brands that doesn't support Apple CarPlay and has no plans to, instead preferring to develop its own software experience. As a new car manufacturer, it's taking a similar line to Tesla, choosing to offer minimal physical controls and turn of bespoke software and voice control instead.

Revealed during a winding interview on The Verge's Decoder podcast, the impact of Bensaid's position on CarPlay could reach much further than just Rivian's EVs. Bensaid is also co-CEO of Rivian's joint venture with Volkswagen to develop future EVs for the group.

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Rivian's avoidance of Apple CarPlay aligns with the messages that come out of Tesla, but are also echoed by companies like BMW and Mercedes who want to own the customer experience rather than hand it over to Apple.

That's thought to be one of the leading barriers to CarPlay Ultra adoption in cars: manufacturers don't want to lose that connection with customers.

Rivian goes on to say that the decision to avoid Apple CarPlay is backed by its own data: "Five years ago when we first shipped the R1T and the R1S, the number one request from customers was CarPlay. We did all sorts of surveys with customers at the time, and more than 70% were requesting CarPlay."

That position has changed, however: "In the recent survey, that number is less than 25% because with the level of features that we have shipped to customers, level of end-to-end integration, and the level of convenience that we are bringing, CarPlay or Android Auto is no longer the topic of discussion."

While on the surface that suggests that Rivian is doing the right thing in developing alternative solutions, it's not clear whether that drop to 25% is driven by changing attitudes of car buyers, or if existing Rivian owners have just got used to not having access to Apple's systems.

Returning to the point about AI, Bensaid's position is that AI integration can do all the things that you might want CarPlay to do, while advancements in voice interaction allows for much better control.

In the past, voice systems developed by car manufacturers were pretty poor and very limited in the commands that they understood. The likes of Google Assistant changed that, but with the advent of modern AI, there are much greater opportunities.

That perhaps doesn't account for easy and familiar access to your favourite apps, but Bensaid's argument is that voice and AI – especially with agentic powers – is a better experience:

"I deeply believe that voice has the chance to be the primary interface in the car. I also think that buttons can exist, but they shouldn’t be the primary way with which you interact with the car. I think there’s more that is possible with voice since you can do more than one single function."

While that seems to be the future of Rivian – podcast host Nilay Patel talks about having long discussions with the AI in the car – it will be interesting to see how this lands with Volkswagen. Based on user feedback, Volkswagen has just performed a significant u-turn, restoring buttons to its latest ID models, to improve the driver experience.

This looks like a debate that's going to continue to divide the driving community.