Rivian’s Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid confirmed today that the .46 OTA update will bring Digital Key support to the second-generation R1S and R1T. Here’s what that means.
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Rivian’s CEO RJ Scaringe was the latest guest on the Decoder podcast, and during the interview he vehemently defended the company’s decision to not support Apple CarPlay. Here’s what he said.
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Rivian is one of several CarPlay holdouts, opting instead to build its own infotainment system focused on deep integration with the R1S and R1T hardware. A new aftermarket accessory hitting the market this month, however, claims that it will add CarPlay and a wide suite of other apps to Rivian with a do-it-yourself installation process that takes just 25 minutes.
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Following Tesla last month, Rivian is now rolling out support for Control Center widgets for iPhone users running iOS 18.
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While CarPlay is widely available on the majority of cars nowadays, Rivian is one of the primary holdouts (alongside Tesla and now GM). In a new interview this week on the Decoder podcast, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained the company’s reasoning for not supporting CarPlay, while also touting its overall “great relationship with the Apple team.”
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A long-time Apple hardware engineer is departing the company. As first spotted by RivianTrackr, Jeff Alves is leaving Apple after more than a decade to join Rivian, where he will join the automaker’s battery engineering team.
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Rivian today unveiled its second-generation R1S and R1T vehicles, which our friends over at Electrek have covered in-depth. For Apple users, however, there are two new features worth calling out. While Rivian still doesn’t support CarPlay, it has added support for Apple’s car key platform as well as Apple Music with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos.
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Earlier this year, Apple canceled its decade-long Project Titan electric car initiative, but a new report from DigiTimes says that Apple’s electric vehicle ambitions might not be over. According to the story, Apple is “assessing the possibility of teaming up with a certain US EV startup, and Rivian is a very likely candidate.”
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Rivian is rolling out an update to its iPhone app with support for Live Activities. This lets Rivian drivers track their car’s charging progress right from their iPhone’s Lock Screen or the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15.
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Update: Deal closed
Sources tell Electrek that Rivian has been in talks to acquire the world’s most popular EV route planning service, Sweden-based A Better RoutePlanner, or ABRP for short. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but ABRP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Iternio, which lists a small employee count of under 10 people and 8 people on LinkedIn.
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While Rivian isn’t working on CarPlay support, the EV maker is planning a few other features that Apple fans will appreciate. In a recent Q&A session this week, Rivian’s head of software development, Wassym Bensaid, revealed that the company is actively testing support for allowing Apple Watch to serve as a key for R1T and R1S vehicles.
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CarPlay is available on the vast majority of cars today, including on electric vehicles from the likes of Ford, Polestar, and others. One of the most notable CarPlay holdouts (alongside Tesla) is Rivian, and new comments from CEO RJ Scaringe today make it clear that the up-and-coming EV company has no plans to adopt Apple’s platform…
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