Rivian’s opposition to CarPlay is well-documented, with CEO RJ Scaringe emphasizing the automaker’s focus on creating a native and integrated infotainment experience.

In a new interview with Kara Swisher this week, Scaringe once again reiterated those thoughts, while simultaneously touting a “great working relationship with Apple.”

Scaringe appeared on the On With Kara Swisher podcast today to talk in-depth about the R1S, R1T, and impending launch of the R2. Towards the end of the interview, a listener asked Scaringe about why he believes not supporting CarPlay “leads to a better experience for customers.”

Scaringe once again reiterated Rivian’s focus on integration between “anything that has to do with how the vehicle is operating” and “the media or user interface experience.”

“We want to control that whole platter, and we think that becomes more important as AI enters more and more into the existence of how you run the vehicle,” Scaringe explained.

“The challenge with CarPlay is, of course, it’s an app that runs on the screen, but it takes you out of the vehicle experience into a separate app that’s very media centric, but it’s very difficult to create consistency across all the different platforms, and to create consistency with every part of the user interface. What’s missing, what draws that question is, I want to have the exact same ease of using my text, or ease of using functions around my phone. What we’ve done is we’ve worked really hard with Apple, and similarly with Google, to create the same menu of options, but we’re Rivian is the, we’re setting the table.”

Scaringe touted Rivian’s work to integrate Apple Music into its native infotainment system, Apple Wallet car keys, and more.

“Two years ago, three years ago, this was a bigger issue because we didn’t have all those integrations,” Scaringe said. “Some of those discussions we had with our partnership with Apple and with Google took some time, but we’re now in a place where we have a great working relationship with Apple, a great working relationship with Google, where we can serve up all those items.”

While I admire Scaringe’s pitch on this topic, I still think there’s little harm in simply offering CarPlay as an option to Rivian users. If Rivian then continues to make its own infotainment system better, then users should naturally gravitate towards that instead of CarPlay.

I do wonder if Rivian will rethink its strategy if reports that Tesla is adding CarPlay support pan out.

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