Rivian Software Chief Says Apple CarPlay and Android Auto Are Redundant in the World of AI
Rivian Software Chief Says Apple CarPlay and Android Auto Are Redundant in the World of AI
Publish Date: 2026-05-28 15:52:00
Source Domain: www.thedrive.com
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If you’re a stickler for high-quality smartphone integration in your new cars, your world is about to be upended. According to Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, Wassym Bensaid, dedicated app integration is about to become a thing of the past thanks to everybody’s favorite tech buzzword: AI.
Bensaid’s argument is pretty simple: Screen mirroring may be great, but it’s very invasive, often taking over the entire screen (though that has become less of a thing with the current generation of tile-based infotainment UIs) and essentially side-stepping the experience that was engineered by its design and software teams.
With AI, Bensaid argues, an automaker like Rivian can offer all the same functionality provided by a dedicated app without the need to sidestep the factory interface. And to make that integration as clean as possible, Rivian will have to rely heavily on voice commands, as its current assistant already does for text messaging and other basic functions.
Going forward, Bensaid says, AI will further hone that experience for users in a way that can take full advantage of the automotive environment:
“I really believe that the way you interact with apps which are mono-threaded, single buttons, single icons, a lot of that will be now completely reshaped into a world where it will become an agentic integration that presents itself into a wholesome user experience to the user,” Bensaid told The Verge‘s Decoder podcast (h/t to MacRumors).
“With the level of features that we have shipped to customers, with the level of end-to-end integration, with the level of convenience that we are bringing, CarPlay is, or Android Auto to that extent, is no longer the topic of discussion,” he said.
In other words, where we’re going, we don’t need…
