Five years ago, more than 70% of Rivian customers said they wanted CarPlay. A recent internal survey put that number below 25%.
That shift is the most quietly radical data point in the current EV software conversation, and Rivian’s software chief Wassym Bensaid is leaning on it hard.
Think about what that number actually means. Rivian never added CarPlay, customers complained loudly, and then somewhere along the way, a huge chunk of them just… stopped caring.
Bensaid made this point on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, framing it as evidence that a well-built native experience can genuinely change what people think they need.
Why Rivian Won’t Budge on This
Bensaid’s core objection to CarPlay is about control over the screen. His argument is that a mirroring solution essentially commandeers every pixel of the display, which leaves no room for the kind of integrated software experience Rivian wants to build.
He describes what Rivian is going for as end-to-end integration, where the car’s interface and features are a single, continuous experience rather than a patchwork of your phone overlaid on the vehicle’s own system.
Where AI Fits Into All of This
Bensaid believes the entire CarPlay debate will eventually become irrelevant, and his reasoning isn’t that Rivian’s interface will simply get better.
He thinks the way people interact with apps is about to change fundamentally. Right now, apps are built around tapping icons and following linear menus.
His bet is that an AI agent will handle most of what you’d currently open an app to do, pulling information and completing tasks without you ever navigating to a specific screen.
In that world, the question of whether your car runs CarPlay becomes a lot less meaningful. He’s careful to admit that this future isn’t arriving tomorrow. Getting AI to function as a genuine alternative to individual apps will take real time to develop.
What the Demand Shift Actually Tells Us
The drop from 70% to under 25% is worth sitting with for a second. It could mean Rivian’s software genuinely won people over.
It could also mean that buyers who absolutely required CarPlay simply ruled out Rivian from the start, so the remaining customer base was always going to skew toward people open to alternatives.
Probably some of both. Either way, Bensaid’s confidence that the conversation has already moved on seems grounded in something real, even if his AI-agent vision for replacing apps entirely still sounds like a pitch for a future that hasn’t fully shown up yet.
