The Rivian Owners Forums are now back online! The forums were offline for awhile as can be seen by the legacy threads and member communications, but hopefully we can begin growing again and be a great outlet for all current and future Rivian owners without being force fed ads all in your face as other forums out there do.
Never used or fully understood the purpose of CarPlay either.I don’t think anything has been announced yet, but out of curiosity, why is this a “must have”? I’ve never used CarPlay, but I know in the Model X (all Teslas for that matter), everything is customizable and based on pictures I’ve seen of the Rivian- it will be the same.
Tesla provides some online music service (Slacker I believe), FM and satellite tuners (XM). Carplay is not, AFAIK, available on Tesla. And I believe that XM is not available on the 3 though it can be kluged up with blue ray/USB receivers. I hope that Rivien will, at least, supply the satellite and FM tuners. I have little doubt that some streaming service(s) will be made available. CarPlay seems most unattractive.I’ve never used CarPlay, but I know in the Model X (all Teslas for that matter), everything is customizable and based on pictures I’ve seen of the Rivian- it will be the same.
At least for the use of the Navigation/traffic info Google provides with AA.
Can't help but wonder how much Google support apps/services will be available in a Rivian EAV seeing that Amazon has invested $700m in Rivian.
The kicker with refusing to do Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support is that it is a customer-hostile stance. The implementation of either is trivial. 99% of what happens in Apple CarPlay and Android Auto happens on the phone and upgrades when you upgrade your phone. The infotainment system just acts like a dumb screen and sends inputs back to the phone. Both appear like an app in the infotainment system and within either there is an icon to go back to the standard infotainment system. Much easier than the Pandora implementations that proliferated a few years ago and certainly easier to implement than Sirius XM. I bought a cheap Alpine deck for my old 2008 Honda Accord and added Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for a few hundred dollars so the kids could inherit that car and have smartphone integration (and a backup camera).
So when Tesla (or previously Toyota) say they are not going to implement either Apple CarPlay or Android Auto they are telling their customers that they want to lock them in and force them to use the user interface that they provide. Elon Musk even talks about a Tesla App Store -- like somehow that is going to take off and make millions of dollars for him -- downloading games to your Tesla is a joke. You don't need games on your Tesla touch screen to pass the time while charging -- you already own a smartphone for games -- and you certainly cannot play games while driving. It is as annoying as Apple's iOS not letting change the default browser or mail client (which is supposedly changing in iOS 14 -- finally) -- but at least with iOS we are talking about a $1000 smartphone with a lifespan of 3 years -- not a $100,000 SUV with a lifespan of 8 to 10 years.
Customers who are dropping $40,000 to $120,000 on a new car should have the freedom to use full smartphone integration and not be trapped into the factory infotainment system for the sake capturing all their usage data. On the big Tesla screen you could even do smartphone integration on part of the screen and leave many of the native Tesla elements up on the screen.
Hopefully Rivian supports both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And Porsche, if you are listening, you should add Android Auto support -- because you can and your cars are expensive.