Real choice

It was interesting listening to Rivian’s CEO on this week’s Decoder, talking about controlling the in car experience to ensure that it’s seamless and integrated (and hence forgoing CarPlay).

It’s super ironic that this immediately rankled  fans and pundits, given that no one takes controlling all aspects of their products to the extreme more than Apple itself. It feels like this should have been a very understandable stance from a company that clearly cares about nailing their customer experience.

I’ve had CarPlay in my last five cars and use it all the time. It’s very solid and convenient and I would definitely prefer to have it than not. The same also goes for Android Auto as my Mrs doesn’t use iOS. But I’d still stop short of saying that I wouldn’t buy a car without them. It really would depend on how good the overall experience was and if there were enough benefits to offset the lost convenience. Rivian (and Tesla) clearly see this a point of differentiation versus every other carmaker that simply outsources ICE to Google and Apple.

But I feel like the point that everyone is missing is that people actually have a real choice here. If CarPlay is so important to you, you literally have your pick of hundreds of vehicles which come installed with it. Vote with your wallet.

RJ literally references this in the podcast.

We’re really convicted on this. For some folks, that means they’re not going to buy a Rivian. We accept that. It’s a decision. I say this all the time: part of building a product as complex as this is recognizing and being okay with the fact that we have to make a ton of decisions, like the products, like a vehicle has many millions of decisions together. Some of those decisions, not everyone’s going to agree with, and that’s okay.

If he’s really is wrong, they’ll change tack soon enough. Rivian doesn’t have an App Store or iMessage to lock customers in. You don’t also have to change your credit card / TV puck / watch / desktop computer to move car brands. There isn’t only one other option which is largely the same. They will literally live and die by how great their cars are.