Rivian’s Software Chief Bets AI Kills the CarPlay Debate

Rivian’s chief software officer told Nilay Patel on the May 28 episode of Decoder that the rise of in-car artificial intelligence makes the long-running argument about Apple CarPlay support “completely obsolete.” The line landed two weeks after the Irvine carmaker pushed its first AI voice assistant to R1T and R1S owners through over-the-air software build 2026.15.

Wassym Bensaid backed the claim with an internal survey number Rivian has not previously disclosed: five years ago, when the original R1T and R1S began shipping, more than 70 percent of buyers asked for CarPlay; in the most recent survey he cited, fewer than 25 percent still do. The numbers underwrite a bet that the in-cabin interface war ends with agents, not with mirroring.

The Quote That Closed the Door

Bensaid, who runs all software at Rivian, framed the CarPlay refusal as a long-vindicated product choice on Patel’s podcast, which is published by The Verge. Patel routinely asks every automotive executive he hosts whether the company will support Apple’s platform. Rivian chief executive RJ Scaringe answered the same question last fall by saying customers would “appreciate” the absence over time.

The blunter version came from Bensaid this week.

What we’re seeing right now with the advancement of AI technologies is just another reason why I deeply believe that RJ and Rivian made the right choice by investing into our own technology and software. Cars are moving from the buzzword software-defined to AI-defined. The possibilities now for such deep AI integration in the car make the entire CarPlay debate completely obsolete.

Wassym Bensaid, chief software officer at Rivian, speaking on the Decoder podcast on May 28, 2026. He went further on the mirroring layer itself, telling Patel that “the challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users.”

The 70-to-25 Survey That Underwrites the Bet

The percentage shift is the load-bearing fact in Bensaid’s argument. It is also the fact with the thinnest paper trail.

Rivian has not published methodology, sample size, panel composition, or the exact wording of either question. The CSO described both data points as internal surveys of Rivian customers, which means the second figure measures people who already bought a vehicle that has no CarPlay, not the wider pool of buyers Rivian wants to convert as the cheaper R2 ramps later this year. Self-selection is doing real work in that 25 percent.

Three caveats worth holding in mind when reading the number:

• Sample bias: respondents are existing Rivian owners who already accepted a no-CarPlay vehicle at purchase, not the mass-market buyer the company needs to reach with R2.
• Question framing: “Do you want CarPlay” registers different intensity than “Would you skip a vehicle without it.” Public surveys consistently find the second formulation produces near-majority refusal rates.
• Timing: the most recent number was apparently captured around or after Rivian Assistant began rolling out, which may have temporarily softened demand among the customers most likely to be sampled.

Even taken at face value, a 45-point swing in customer preference over five years is striking; against the McKinsey global mobility data, it would put Rivian’s owner base in a very different mindset from the wider EV market. The consultancy’s 2024 connected-car study found 25 percent of US EV buyers and 30 percent of global EV buyers still call CarPlay or Android Auto a hard requirement for their next vehicle.

Rivian Joins a Short List of Holdouts

The set of automakers betting against smartphone mirroring is small, and Rivian is the youngest member. Tesla has never offered CarPlay. General Motors said in 2023 it would phase the feature out of its electric vehicles, and chief executive Mary Barra has since extended that policy to gas-powered models scheduled for its 2028 platform refresh. Every other mass-market brand still ships it.

The wider market still wants the feature. As of April 2023, 98 percent of new cars sold in the United States supported either CarPlay or Android Auto. A Strategy Analytics survey widely cited inside the industry put the share of new-car buyers who would not consider a vehicle without smartphone projection at close to 80 percent. The 2024 GM Authority/Autolist study put it at one in three buyers refusing to consider such a vehicle, a softer number but still a substantial drag on the addressable market for any holdout.

Rivian’s calculation is that the cohort that can afford a $70,000-and-up R1S, or the upcoming $45,000 R2, is unusually willing to trade familiarity for a polished native experience. The data point that would settle the bet, the share of lost sales attributable to the missing feature, is the one no holdout discloses.

Apple’s CarPlay Ultra Is Quietly Expanding

While Rivian was building a counterargument, Apple was building a more invasive version of the product. CarPlay Ultra started shipping in May 2025 on Aston Martin’s DBX, DB12, Vantage, and Vanquish, taking over the full instrument cluster rather than the center screen alone. Aston Martin’s own brand page on the launch describes the rollout as covering new orders in the US and Canada first, with retrofit availability for existing DB12 owners from January 2026.

Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis have committed to CarPlay Ultra during the current year, with the Hyundai Ioniq 3 expected to debut the implementation. Porsche has also confirmed it as a future option. The vendor list is still short, but it is moving in the opposite direction from the holdouts, and it answers the most common critique of standard CarPlay by giving Apple control of gauges, drive data, and climate. The product Bensaid called obsolete is shipping with deeper hooks into the car than ever.

Why Rivian Assistant Has to Deliver

The bet only pays off if Rivian’s own software clears a high bar quickly. The Hey Rivian assistant pushed in build 2026.15 is what the rest of the argument rests on.

Capability Set at Launch

The assistant offers native control of drive modes, climate, ride height, the front trunk, cameras, and range. It is trained on the owner’s manual and will field troubleshooting questions about tires, sensors, and features. General knowledge queries work, including weather and local news. The first third-party integration is Google Calendar, which lets owners ask the system to check schedules, move meetings, and combine calendar context with navigation and messaging in one multi-step command.

Where Owners Say It Falls Short

Early reviews on owner forums and from EV-trade publications credit the natural-voice handling and the owner-manual lookups, then list the same complaints: the assistant feels laggy on complex prompts, calendar support is restricted to Google accounts (a problem for the Apple-loyal share of the buyer base), and it still cannot operate the windows, which forces owners back to the mobile app. Several reviewers described it as a credible first step rather than a finished product, the same phrase the auto industry has used for every voice assistant of the past decade.

The Subscription Layer

Rivian Assistant requires the company’s Connect+ plan, priced at $14.99 per month or $149.99 per year. That puts the agent layer behind a paywall on a vehicle that already costs upwards of $70,000, and it sets up a recurring revenue line the company will defend through software updates. If the bet on AI replacing CarPlay works, this line is where the upside shows up.

The Numbers Behind Rivian’s Confidence

The argument Bensaid made on Decoder is not just product-philosophical. It has a balance-sheet reason.

• $2.5 billion in software-related revenue Rivian is targeting for 2026, including payments from the Volkswagen Group joint venture and from its Autonomy+ driver-assist subscription.
• $2 billion of that figure Rivian expects to recognize directly from VW within the current calendar year, after winter-testing milestones were cleared in March.
• 1,500 engineers now staffing the joint venture, branded RV Tech, working across Palo Alto, Wolfsburg, and other sites.
• 38,019 R1 deliveries in 2025, with the R2 production line opening at Normal, Illinois in April 2026 and first customer deliveries expected this spring.

Volkswagen’s one-year update on the RV Tech joint venture said the first VW Group models running the Rivian software stack will launch in 2027. The stack is also being prepared for licensing to other automakers, which means the in-cabin experience Rivian is defending today is the product it intends to sell to peers tomorrow. Supporting CarPlay would weaken that pitch. Saying CarPlay is obsolete, on a podcast every automotive executive listens to, strengthens it.

The bet has a clean test window. CarPlay Ultra is widening its automaker list through the back half of 2026, Hyundai is expected to ship the first non-Aston implementation by year-end, and Rivian Assistant is on a monthly release cadence with its first major upgrade slated for the R2 launch. If the Hey Rivian agent is meaningfully better six months from now than it is today, and if R2 reservations convert without the smartphone-mirroring feature surfacing in cancellation surveys, Bensaid’s line ages well. If owners are still complaining about lag in November and CarPlay Ultra is in three more brands, the consensus calls the obsolete product the one Rivian shipped.