New CarPlay Support Email?

[kylealden]

I won't buy the truck if they don't add non subscription based wireless carplay.

Carplay means two things to me:
1) I don't need to pay for a monthly data plan for my car, to use any internet features.
2) a decade (+-) from now, with Rivian stops sending updates out for the nav (or the Rivian's modem no longer functions, because the cellular network is uses has been depreciated), the feature set on the nav will remain up to date.

I buy cars and keep them for a long time, and tend to have 5-6 of them. I refuse to pay for a data plan for each car, and nothing dates a car faster than an obsolete ICE setup (which carplay avoids).

Plus, even today it doesn't have the features I want-- Apple Music and Waze for nav/police alerts .

So, if they won't add it, I'll just wait for a truck that does. AFAIK, Tesla is the ONLY company out there not offering CarPlay. Not coincidentally, I've never owned a Tesla and currently have no intention to.

Meanwhile, my 20 year old M5 and 15 year old M3s (purchased new) have wireless Carplay, giving me every ICE feature I actually care about in modern cars

No carplay guarantees tech obsolescence and means you have to pay a monthly data plan (once the free included period is over). To me, that is unacceptable.

I guess now that we're verbatim reposting things from another thread in the last week, it's safe to assume there's nothing new to be said here ?

Nobody needs to prove that this is a dealbreaker to you. That's reasonable and personal. I hope you're all channeling the feedback to Rivian rather than just venting on forums.

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[Obioban]

I hope you're all channeling the feedback to Rivian rather than just venting on forums.

Oh yes.

But the more people that want it, the better my odds of success. More efficicent to repost it in a repeat topic, than type it out again-- not like any of it didn't apply.

 

[astonius]

Good carplay implementations have no perceptible latency. You can see it in the video below (through wireless carplay)

You can also see Carplay pop a map on the cluster, between the gauges, when he opens maps on the interactive screen in this i4 promo video (around 9:00):

Yep, my X5 has the iDrive system before the one featured in this video. Full-screen, wireless CarPlay, and there is no perceptible lag. It's perfect.

 

[the long way downunder]

This "Amazon is making them do it" narrative keeps coming up, but it's ridiculous. Having driven the R1T, you know what the default music service is? Spotify! Does Amazon own Spotify? No. Most of Amazon's Apps work with Car Play and Android Auto and Apple Music works just fine with Alexa. Amazon isn't making product calls at Rivian either.

You scoff at the observation Amazon is in a position to influence business decisions at Rivian, especially when it comes to creating revenue share for competitors, but you think it's logical to assume Rivian is excluding the two phone integration platforms that customers will pay for as an option without any business rationale. tsla doesn't offer aapl or goog or amzn … I think it's reasonable to observe that Tesla has the same motivations as Amazon (and therefore Rivian) … never give an inch to your competitors.

I think you've got the business model jumbled, fair enough, it's one of the most complex domains of the tech industry. While I've worked in Silicon Valley, surrounded and immersed in these specific companies every day since before the Google IPO, I don't purport to have a full, clear picture, and just as soon as the solution comes into focus, something changes, a new player, a failure, new technology, changes in policy and law … and we're off to the races again.

Ford for example pays Google for Android Auto integration services and cloud. One of Amazon's core businesses is integration and cloud services.

I don't see Bezos starting a new business that is in a trillion dollar market and agreeing to a business model that pays money to AAPL and GOOG while giving them access to the customer.

Funnily enough, that's why Alexa exists … to own the customer relationship and capture all the customer behavior data and own the digital assets of the customer (as well as charging them for streaming services and controlling the end to end delivery of that service and content.)

In a few years, I could see Rivian building cars for Amazon to sell direct to consumers. If this sounds far-fetched, have at look at Nio and BYD. Presumably Amazon will try again to build their own phone, but the Fire line of products has flamed out, so I imagine those teams are not winning favor with the kind of R&D or branding budget necessary to take a phone to market under their own label. Phone makers are difficult partners … note that Google gave up on OEMs and built their own silicon … Apple has quit Intel … Tesla quit nVidia … these giants play hard.

Rivian has to build fleet management software and 100,000 vans for Amazon … they'll be using Amazon cloud services. I don't think it's far-fetched to consider the scenario where Bezos said he'll order the vans so long as he gets the cloud business and aapl and goog get nothing. When Rivian sells the next 100,000 fleet vehicles, Amazon gets recurring revenue. Why let aapl and goog get recurring revenue on retail vehicle sales?

With production of R1T and R1S sold out for years to come, excluding carplay and android auto won't cost Rivian one sale, but it will create considerable leverage for future negotiations to allow for phone integration platforms on terms more favorable to $RIVN and $AMZN.

Anyway, music streaming is small fry. The big game is in-vehicle advertising and content delivery. Once Google delivers an autonomous taxi on a large scale, there will be a large touchscreen playing google content for the occupants (youtube or anything that arrives on Chrome.) Apple is playing catchup. GM doesn't know what they're doing. Ford has an autonomous vehicle ready but just made a potentially fatal mistake by quitting a joint venture with Rivian … how self-involved does an executive team have to be to quit Rivian after they've succeeded in building their car and launching their IPO? Inconceivable. Amazon really knows what they're doing and they bought into Rivian … the strongest competitor to Tesla short of BYD … Bezos was smart enough to realize that with his share of Rivian, ordering 100,000 vans would be a net gain just in stock value … he gets an electric fleet for free … I loathe his ethics, but I applaud his business acumen. Who doesn't? If uber and lyft ever figure out how to make a taxi driver profitable, I'm sure Google and Amazon will jump on that market. I think the solution is to turn Uber into last mile logistics, not just "eats" but fulfillment, only Amazon "owns" that business. We'll have to see what China does in the US domestic … maybe Aliexpress will team up with BYD and offer a "lease to drive" competitor to Uber that will use those drivers as competitors to Amazon/UPS/Fedex. Even Amazon and Tesla will want to hide behind Uncle Sam's coattails if Alibaba tries to start robo-taxi and uber/lyft competition.

So, yeah, Bezos asked RJ to nix Apple and Google. : )

 

[jtshaw]

You scoff at the observation Amazon is in a position to influence business decisions at Rivian, especially when it comes to creating revenue share for competitors, but you think it's logical to assume Rivian is excluding the two phone integration platforms that customers will pay for as an option without any business rationale. tsla doesn't offer aapl or goog or amzn … I think it's reasonable to observe that Tesla has the same motivations as Amazon (and therefore Rivian) … never give an inch to your competitors.

I think you've got the business model jumbled, fair enough, it's one of the most complex domains of the tech industry. While I've worked in Silicon Valley, surrounded and immersed in these specific companies every day since before the Google IPO, I don't purport to have a full, clear picture, and just as soon as the solution comes into focus, something changes, a new player, a failure, new technology, changes in policy and law … and we're off to the races again.

Ford for example pays Google for Android Auto integration services and cloud. One of Amazon's core businesses is integration and cloud services.

I don't see Bezos starting a new business that is in a trillion dollar market and agreeing to a business model that pays money to AAPL and GOOG while giving them access to the customer.

Funnily enough, that's why Alexa exists … to own the customer relationship and capture all the customer behavior data and own the digital assets of the customer (as well as charging them for streaming services and controlling the end to end delivery of that service and content.)

In a few years, I could see Rivian building cars for Amazon to sell direct to consumers. If this sounds far-fetched, have at look at Nio and BYD. Presumably Amazon will try again to build their own phone, but the Fire line of products has flamed out, so I imagine those teams are not winning favor with the kind of R&D or branding budget necessary to take a phone to market under their own label. Phone makers are difficult partners … note that Google gave up on OEMs and built their own silicon … Apple has quit Intel … Tesla quit nVidia … these giants play hard.

Rivian has to build fleet management software and 100,000 vans for Amazon … they'll be using Amazon cloud services. I don't think it's far-fetched to consider the scenario where Bezos said he'll order the vans so long as he gets the cloud business and aapl and goog get nothing. When Rivian sells the next 100,000 fleet vehicles, Amazon gets recurring revenue. Why let aapl and goog get recurring revenue on retail vehicle sales?

With production of R1T and R1S sold out for years to come, excluding carplay and android auto won't cost Rivian one sale, but it will create considerable leverage for future negotiations to allow for phone integration platforms on terms more favorable to $RIVN and $AMZN.

Anyway, music streaming is small fry. The big game is in-vehicle advertising and content delivery. Once Google delivers an autonomous taxi on a large scale, there will be a large touchscreen playing google content for the occupants (youtube or anything that arrives on Chrome.) Apple is playing catchup. GM doesn't know what they're doing. Ford has an autonomous vehicle ready but just made a potentially fatal mistake by quitting a joint venture with Rivian … how self-involved does an executive team have to be to quit Rivian after they've succeeded in building their car and launching their IPO? Inconceivable. Amazon really knows what they're doing and they bought into Rivian … the strongest competitor to Tesla short of BYD … Bezos was smart enough to realize that with his share of Rivian, ordering 100,000 vans would be a net gain just in stock value … he gets an electric fleet for free … I loathe his ethics, but I applaud his business acumen. Who doesn't? If uber and lyft ever figure out how to make a taxi driver profitable, I'm sure Google and Amazon will jump on that market. I think the solution is to turn Uber into last mile logistics, not just "eats" but fulfillment, only Amazon "owns" that business. We'll have to see what China does in the US domestic … maybe Aliexpress will team up with BYD and offer a "lease to drive" competitor to Uber that will use those drivers as competitors to Amazon/UPS/Fedex. Even Amazon and Tesla will want to hide behind Uncle Sam's coattails if Alibaba tries to start robo-taxi and uber/lyft competition.

So, yeah, Bezos asked RJ to nix Apple and Google. : )

I worked for Amazon for 13 years (I left pretty recently), much of it in a reasonably senior leadership position. I understand quite well how they work and I'm incredibly skeptical they are behind the scene calling the UX shots on Rivian's consumer products. The lack of including Carplay and AA is probably much more related to the fact they want navigation (and other things) to be much more tightly integrated into their multi-screen UX and neither Carplay or AA support that competently today.

I'd also point out that Alexa DOES integrate with Apple, and many other people who compete with other Amazon businesses (Spotify, Sonos, nearly every other music streaming platform, etc). FireTV supports Apple TV, Google products like YouTube and YouTube TV, Netflix, HBO, etc. There are many many examples of collaborations between these companies.

 

[yizzung]

I worked for Amazon for 13 years (I left pretty recently), much of it in a reasonably senior leadership position. I understand quite well how they work and I'm incredibly skeptical they are behind the scene calling the UX shots on Rivian's consumer products. The lack of including Carplay and AA is probably much more related to the fact they want navigation (and other things) to be much more tightly integrated into their multi-screen UX and neither Carplay or AA support that competently today.

I'd also point out that Alexa DOES integrate with Apple, and many other people who compete with other Amazon businesses (Spotify, Sonos, nearly every other music streaming platform, etc). FireTV supports Apple TV, Google products like YouTube and YouTube TV, Netflix, HBO, etc. There are many many examples of collaborations between these companies.

It’s hard to bring reason in here. People don’t seem to grok that giving up the “brain” in the car to Google or Apple just turns the car into a dumb combo of metal and plastic, and forfeits future revenue streams to big tech.

It’s exactly what has gutted the consumer TV market and the consumer cell phone market, and funneled huge profits away from OEMs to friendly tech companies. All those flat panels in Best Buy are just dumb boxes sold for not much more than it cost to make/market them. All the real $ flows to Silicon Valley.

Tesla knows this and that’s part of the reason why they have a trillion $ market cap. They aren’t willing to give up the customer experience, the customer data, nor the customer relationship out of convenience. They play the long game.

Rivian doesn’t want the market cap of Nokia or LG. Asking for these features is basically asking them to slowly commit suicide. I get why people won’t stop asking but no way a pressure campaign is going to work. If it’s a deal breaker, I’d look elsewhere or prepare to mount your phone to the windshield. Just my $0.02.

 

[NashvilleR1S]

I have carplay in one vehicle and love it, but it's not in my 4runner and its not a big deal. It's only not a big deal though because I have a very convenient air vent to mount my phone to right next to the steering wheel. In the R1S i'll be stuck...sticking the phone to the dash or windshield which is ugly and harder to reach/interact with. So I would LOVE for them to get carplay asap.

 

[jtshaw]

It’s hard to bring reason in here. People don’t seem to grok that giving up the “brain” in the car to Google or Apple just turns the car into a dumb combo of metal and plastic, and forfeits future revenue streams to big tech.

It’s exactly what has gutted the consumer TV market and the consumer cell phone market, and funneled huge profits away from OEMs to friendly tech companies. All those flat panels in Best Buy are just dumb boxes sold for not much more than it cost to make/market them. All the real $ flows to Silicon Valley.

Tesla knows this and that’s part of the reason why they have a trillion $ market cap. They aren’t willing to give up the customer experience, the customer data, nor the customer relationship out of convenience. They play the long game.

Rivian doesn’t want the market cap of Nokia or LG. Asking for these features is basically asking them to slowly commit suicide. I get why people won’t stop asking but no way a pressure campaign is going to work. If it’s a deal breaker, I’d look elsewhere or prepare to mount your phone to the windshield. Just my $0.02.

Yep. There are financial motives here. Rivian called out the membership program as a major source of future revenue in their S1 filings. CarPlay and AA would erode the value of the membership as they use the phone’s connectivity, not the cars.

 

[endress14]

We aren't really sure if you will have to pay for the service to have web based features of the vehicle. I would bet you do, but that's just my guess. My car uses my phones data wirelessly to play the native UI Spotify app and use maps with traffic, etc. I'm not saying its better than CarPlay, but it's still an option for Rivian. The only reason I don't use CarPlay now is that the maps don't have HUD or instrument cluster support for my ride.

 

[pinolero]

I'll just miss the Waze integration via CP. I use that regularly just for heads up warnings along my route.

 

[Dbeglor]

Yep. There are financial motives here. Rivian called out the membership program as a major source of future revenue in their S1 filings. CarPlay and AA would erode the value of the membership as they use the phone’s connectivity, not the cars.

It's nowhere close to a major source of revenue or a driver of valuation (directly, I think it may be indirectly through customer loyaly).

For example, if by 2030 they are making close to 800k vehicles annually, and have a cumulative fleet of nearly 4m vehicles on the road with 50% opting for the Membership, it would equate to about 1.5% of that year's revenue ($1b of $67.5B). Higher sources of revenue will be Delivery Fees ($1.3B) and Service ($1.3B).

Also, for what it's worth, I have to sign up for an Audi data plan to use wireless Carplay, because it connects via wifi.

Finally, there are numerous reasons to sign up for the membership beyond the data plan.

 

[CommodoreAmiga]

Also, for what it's worth, I have to sign up for an Audi data plan to use wireless Carplay, because it connects via wifi.

If Audi is charging for wireless CarPlay then that's simply a money grab. There is no technical reason for the charge. WiFi is a local network and does not rely on cellular or any subscription services to function.

 

[the long way downunder]

I worked for Amazon for 13 years (I left pretty recently), much of it in a reasonably senior leadership position. I understand quite well how they work and I'm incredibly skeptical they are behind the scene calling the UX shots on Rivian's consumer products. The lack of including Carplay and AA is probably much more related to the fact they want navigation (and other things) to be much more tightly integrated into their multi-screen UX and neither Carplay or AA support that competently today.

I'd also point out that Alexa DOES integrate with Apple, and many other people who compete with other Amazon businesses (Spotify, Sonos, nearly every other music streaming platform, etc). FireTV supports Apple TV, Google products like YouTube and YouTube TV, Netflix, HBO, etc. There are many many examples of collaborations between these companies.

You're not addressing the contradiction in your argument. Also the Alexa functionality contradicts your argument, it doesn't prove or even support your supposition that Rivian would arbitrarily neglect to support Carplay and Android Auto, nor do you explain why Tesla deliberates keeps Apple and Google out of their vehicles.
My observation is just at the business strategy level, not the technology, but for an example of the features and functionality of integration, I have a '21 F-150 Hybrid that supports Carplay and Android Auto. It has a "multi-screen" instrument panel and both Apple and Google work fine; far from great, but they do work. Ford, Rivian and Tesla should all offer HUD. GM, the dullard of the auto industry, has had a pretty good HUD for years. Personally, what I'd like to see Rivian build is a multi-user integration platform (for four occupants to all be able to connect their phones simultaneously) regardless of Carplay or Android Auto.

Apple and Google should put some effort into Carplay and Android Auto, but I suspect they want a bigger slice of the UX pie, which they are building with other car makers.

 

[Dbeglor]

If Audi is charging for wireless CarPlay then that's simply a money grab. There is no technical reason for the charge. WiFi is a local network and does not rely on cellular or any subscription services to function.

Well, they don't explicitly charge for it, but you can't use it without a data plan. There's nothing wrong with a money grab when people are willing to pay for it. Our entire economic system is a "money grab" in a loose sense. BMW's error was that they got greedy and explicitly charged for wireless CP on top of a data plan.

 

[Toadkillerdog]

It’s hard to bring reason in here. People don’t seem to grok that giving up the “brain” in the car to Google or Apple just turns the car into a dumb combo of metal and plastic, and forfeits future revenue streams to big tech.

It’s exactly what has gutted the consumer TV market and the consumer cell phone market, and funneled huge profits away from OEMs to friendly tech companies. All those flat panels in Best Buy are just dumb boxes sold for not much more than it cost to make/market them. All the real $ flows to Silicon Valley.

Tesla knows this and that’s part of the reason why they have a trillion $ market cap. They aren’t willing to give up the customer experience, the customer data, nor the customer relationship out of convenience. They play the long game.

Rivian doesn’t want the market cap of Nokia or LG. Asking for these features is basically asking them to slowly commit suicide. I get why people won’t stop asking but no way a pressure campaign is going to work. If it’s a deal breaker, I’d look elsewhere or prepare to mount your phone to the windshield. Just my $0.02.

it feels likes that to you but maybe you arre the one unable to grok correctly. Just because people disagree with you doesn’t mean they cannot reason correctly. They just disagree with your opinion. Bringing carplay to the entertainment system does not turn it into a “dumb combo of metal and plastic or forfeit future revenue streams to big tech” in my opinion. I disagree with you there completely. It simply gives options to the consumer. I like options. Nothing is preventing Rivian from building a better app ecosystem in their media system. They just simply haven’t done it yet. Maybe they are working on it. However, They are grossly lacking in app options right now.

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