1 day in not impressed with the APP.

[KRG]

Yeah Tango, calm tf down

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[SoCal Rob]

Ok, having owned a Tesla for 9 years and a Lightning for a couple of months, I thought the Ford APP was awful. This kind tops that; it's like they handed it to a home decorator and thought that it was wonderful.

There are too many tabs, and you have to scroll down to click on things. There is way too much fluff and not enough substance at a glance.

Give me a main page that shows all the critical stuff at a glance—vehicle location, HVAC status, battery percentage status, door lock status, charging status.

Tesla does it all on one page. I shouldn't have to launch the secondary app( google or Waze) to see the location. I don't care if motion cam is always one; that's one of those set-or-forget things; only show me that if you will let me look at the video, which you can't do.

The vehicle is great, but the app has a long way to go. I was always complaining about the Ford Pass app being bad, but the beta screen shot sI have seen of version 5 beta out now shows a vast improvement

First, welcome to the forum and congratulations on your new Rivian!

I think I agree with your statement, “…it's like they handed it to a home decorator and thought that it was wonderful.” in that the main screen of the app has the largest chunk of real estate devoted to a pretty picture of your Rivian. Now, I really like my Rivian, but this picture could realistically be made smaller and no taller than the charge percentage font so that the smaller vehicle picture is either upper left or upper right with the state of charge percentage next to it. This would make the entire space currently used by the vehicle picture available for additional info and controls. Is this kind of what you were thinking?

In general, Rivian leaves a lot of white space and room for graphics in their designs and it often feels like a waste to me.
edit:typos

 

[fdon1]

As a newer owner myself, I can say in the "first" few days of a new vehicle, there are some things that you just have to get used to. I still have an X as well, and I find myself just having to learn a new app that at first seems different, but it's all there.

All the things you like/want are there, but just may not be visually in your preference. For example, controls, are the same 1 click but not spelled out in the Rivian app. Give it some time and you may just forget about it.

Also note, the company is younger and growing. Takes time to polish anything

 

[ddimit]

Rude offensive comments and about a new member no less. Hope the mods block you.

Thanks for the support. To answer his questions. I have an older tesla that doesn't have pet mode and travel with animals in California summers 100 degree plus days so seeing the ac running it quite important. Maybe not for everyone but for me yes. As this is the primary vehicle for other family members location is important as well, safety wise or just waiting for someone to show up at a location and saving a call and distracting the driver.

Everyone has different needs. I don't criticize others based on their particular observations. It is not rivian bashing. In fact it took tesla years to get the app to it's present design. It's quick and to the point. On the downside teslas version of the in vehicle UI has gotten worse. Where find rivians more intutative and easy to use.

 

[Glembi2]

After the first month or so, I stopped noticing the graphics. Now interacting with the app is muscle memory. Lock/unlock on the first page, half page scroll to the next level of status info. Bottom center is the map UI. Pretty clean UI for what I use it for. No need for bells and whistles

 

[feifan]

Why do you need to see the vehicle location? It's not a Tesla, it's not like it's going to self-drive away and hide from you. My R1S is always exactly where I parked it.

I like seeing the location of my car when I'm getting picked up (I share a car with my roommate) — this was great in the Tesla app with the live map; a lot more annoying now with the Rivian app.

 

[electruck]

I like seeing the location of my car when I'm getting picked up (I share a car with my roommate) — this was great in the Tesla app with the live map; a lot more annoying now with the Rivian app.

Rommate? Sharing a car? Yeah, definitely not a scenario I can relate to but, ok, I see your use case.

 

[HaveBlue]

The image of your car changes depending on what it's doing. Being one day in, you'll have lots to explore. Enjoy

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

 

[Rivdog]

I’d really like it if turning on the vehicle also activated the seat warmers and steering wheel if it’s below a certain temperature. My Mach-E’s did this automatically and it was really nice.

Fortunately, Rivian is much more responsive than Ford and the other legacy manufacturers with updates so I’m expecting continuous improvement. The app has improved significantly over the past year or so.

 

[DevSecOps]

Being that I've used the Ford app, the Rivian app and Tesla's app extensively, I think you just need to give it time.

Ford's app is slow, vehicle response time is even slower, PaaK is an absolute nightmare, you can't adjust charging easily, you can't see the lock status, you can't see the charge data, you can't perform updates from the app (maybe because they can't seem to get updates to work at all), half the time the commands fail when out of BT range and the list goes on.

I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetics of the Rivian app and I suppose some people might want the layout to be different (I don't think they could please everyone no matter what they do), but it works and it's reliable and everything is there.

At least in my opinion, functionality and data is more important than looks. I open that app probably once a month at the most. All I personally care about is PaaK working, and it does flawlessly.

 

[PeterSK]

Welcome to Rivian ownership! I agree that the Rivian app’s layout is a bit inefficient, and would definitely prefer Tesla’s live location mapping to Rivian’s handoff of a static location to a maps app. But the needed functionality is there, plus something superior to Tesla’s app: the trip planning function.

Not only can you plan out trips at different stages of charge, etc., you can save and name multi-stop trips in the app for reuse later. I have a few long trips I do every month or so, and a multi-stop delivery route that I drive weekly, and I can just click on the saved route and send it to the R1S beforehand. Very handy. Also good for planning a new trip.

I find the widget and Shortcut actions using Siri on the iPhone are useful, though I suppose I could do most of the same for my Model Y but I don’t drive it much these days.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Rommate? Sharing a car? Yeah, definitely not a scenario I can relate to but, ok, I see your use case.

Like the uber/lyft apps showing where the driver is when you order a car, I assume.

I could see this being useful in this situation, but anyone who is driving my vehicle is going to just park it and walk into wherever I'm at. So to me, it's not that useful. I suppose if you live somewhere that parking is difficult/impossible then that greatly sways the usefulness of that sort of a feature.

I'm content just hitting the location button and then reversing the directions to get a basic ETA.

 

[Ralph]

We all bring a different sense of aesthetics to everything around us; it is unavoidable. Aside from the speed of implementation of some functions I'm pleased with Rivian's development and direction so far.

Based on comments Wassym has made, I'm pleased that they are willing to "go back to the drawing board". Sometimes that takes time and that's OK. Back in May they said it would be "a few quarters" to get texting, etc.

Re: UI, I do hope Rivian's designer's take constructive criticism, but apply it within the context of their own aesthetic. Don't let a vocal minority drive changes that corrupt a vision.

As people, we all need to resist the urge to push for our familiar view of the world. I wanted a special car and got one. To me that implies a certain uniqueness.

And to be clear, I am not suggesting a focus of form over function. But I accept that in any large project priorities and predecessors on a critical path do indeed exist.

 

[defcon888]

I really only go into my app to switch vehicles now. The widget is great.

These are the shortcuts I created on my iPhone 14Pro.
I push the icon and it does what it says. There are more things they can do, but these are the ones I use all the time.

I

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