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Rivian Activates Apple Car Key Support in Second-Generation Vehicles [Update: Coming Soon]
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TBH fine with me, because:
1) don't text and drive!!!;
2) my family treats group rcs like a Slack channel and texts so many times a day, notification pings would be even more annoying from the car and not my phone;
3) if I'm safely parked somewhere, I think I'd rather pull out my phone to reply anyway.
I don't even remember that feature on the family's Y; maybe I need to re-pair like it keeps telling me for advanced features, to try it out? Oh: my family uses gifs and the rcs mixed stuff but hardly any emoji, so the car interface would have to handle those as well. And show link previews.
The R1s is a nice car and more spacious than a Model Y.
How good is Rivian FSD or its equivalent? I spent a month trying FSD this summer in a Model Y 2024 model and it is a game changer. I was a skeptic as they come, but it worked amazingly for me, once i figured out you needed to change the settings in the car and not that app. This was FSD dealing with Miami drivers, i cant even explain how bad Miami drivers are in general lol.
It’s crazy how many people feel passionately about CarPlay. I had it in my VW and rarely used it. I have a Rivian now and it’s the best UI I’ve ever had by far in a car. No interest in CarPlay whatsoever. I don’t need another reason to stare at my phone or its countless notifications all day. Yall are nuts.
I don't disagree, but more specifically than just "control" it's about money!
The want control so they own the outlet to provide services for which they can charge.
I drive about 20k per year. Access to my calendar, zoom (join meetings via audio), ability to send iMessages via voice, and have it read my emails to me aloud are critical. CarPlay makes that all handfree and as safe as possible.
I'm trying to think of what services Tesla wants to charge us for, that CarPlay would have instead. The only subscription we have from them is standalone car internet for about $100 a year, which I don't think CarPlay offers. There's no subscription afaik for the Tesla phone app that handles key, remote locks and watching the video cameras in sentry mode, which I also don't think CarPlay can do, but am mentioning because I think other car manufacturers may charge for. Possibly whoever was trying to charge a monthly fee for heated seats.
I haven’t actually used a Tesla or Rivian system, but I’m happy to allow that they may do certain features better than Apple. The thing I really want CarPlay for, however, is what someone else mentioned: continuity. I like getting into my car and having the location for the appointment I’m heading to (from the event on my calendar) pop up on the screen so I can just tap it and go. I like being able to quickly navigate to my kids’ locations (from Find My) when I am headed to pick them up from somewhere. I like being able to use Siri to fire off a quick message to anyone. I like being able to hop among my family’s cars, or even rentals, and have my music continue right where I left off in the middle of a long playlist. I like having my car pop up the button to open my HomeKit-controlled garage door as I near the house and trigger other things to happen inside the house as part of HomeKit automations that know who I am. I like having things like favorite/recent/frequent locations and preferences (avoid toll roads and such) from my maps app work exactly the same and be consistently available, again, no matter which vehicle I’m in.
For me, it’s not about comparing specific map interfaces or whatever. The functionality I find important from CarPlay is similar to what I get from cloud services that integrate all of my devices. CarPlay ties my car, through my phone, into the rest of my life. Having to use the car system feels like going back to a single computer that could only connect to the Internet through dial-up and only synced with other devices by plugging them in and running some specialized software. And what little integration these systems have tends to come at the price of privacy. For example, I’m not crazy about the idea of sharing all of my destinations with a company to resell to others for advertising purposes, and I can’t tell you how many rental cars I’ve gotten into to find someone else’s list of contacts in there because they did the Bluetooth syncing so they could have a feature that CarPlay handles without that sync.
That said, I would prefer to stick to my phone for functionality in some cases where the car does offer it. For example, maybe I want to use my SiriusXM streaming subscription, or use the Target app to tell them I’m on my way to pick up an order. The car system might offer these apps as well, but just getting logged in is a pain because they don’t generally offer a good way to not have to type my 40 character long random password that my phone auto-fills from 1Password or Keychain. And when I do get in, I still have to set up preferences and such for each car. And sometimes, they don’t offer the app, or their version of the app isn’t as well-maintained as the one on my phone. It’s often easier for these things just to use the apps that are on the phone that you know get the most attention from the companies and which are already authenticated and set up how I like them.
And yes, there’s the pricing aspect of it as well. Different companies do different things, but it’s not unusual for car companies to try to get you to pay subscription fees–sometimes heavy subscription fees—for things that CarPlay gives you for free. Think, updated map data, access to real-time traffic data, or cell access.
For me, it’s not about comparing specific map interfaces or whatever. The functionality I find important from CarPlay is similar to what I get from cloud services that integrate all of my devices. CarPlay ties my car, through my phone, into the rest of my life. Having to use the car system feels like going back to a single computer that could only connect to the Internet through dial-up and only synced with other devices by plugging them in and running some specialized software. And what little integration these systems have tends to come at the price of privacy. For example, I’m not crazy about the idea of sharing all of my destinations with a company to resell to others for advertising purposes, and I can’t tell you how many rental cars I’ve gotten into to find someone else’s list of contacts in there because they did the Bluetooth syncing so they could have a feature that CarPlay handles without that sync.
That said, I would prefer to stick to my phone for functionality in some cases where the car does offer it. For example, maybe I want to use my SiriusXM streaming subscription, or use the Target app to tell them I’m on my way to pick up an order. The car system might offer these apps as well, but just getting logged in is a pain because they don’t generally offer a good way to not have to type my 40 character long random password that my phone auto-fills from 1Password or Keychain. And when I do get in, I still have to set up preferences and such for each car. And sometimes, they don’t offer the app, or their version of the app isn’t as well-maintained as the one on my phone. It’s often easier for these things just to use the apps that are on the phone that you know get the most attention from the companies and which are already authenticated and set up how I like them.
And yes, there’s the pricing aspect of it as well. Different companies do different things, but it’s not unusual for car companies to try to get you to pay subscription fees–sometimes heavy subscription fees—for things that CarPlay gives you for free. Think, updated map data, access to real-time traffic data, or cell access.
The only thing I really do not like about my R1S is lack of CarPlay support:
- Apple Music support is very basic and buggy
- Apple Podcast app is not supported
- Libby is not supported
- Messaging is not supported (with any app)
- No access to personalized AI (inconvenient now, critical later)
- Calendar is not supported (and I need to manually choose to send address for my next calendar entry)
- Forces you to pay $15/m subscription
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I don’t text and drive. But getting notifications and having it read out to you while you are driving is very helpful. This was literally one of the larger reasons we went Tesla instead of Rivian.
Yup ... it's about the money ...
But you know what, if Rivian is so hell bent on making me pay for basic access to what's on my phone they should offer CarPlay for $20/mo and lets see which service gets more subscribers.
I love FSD and used it for many long, long road trips. Rivian has an autopilot equivalent, but for now there is no FSD equivalent. However as I understand it, the CEO has said it’s on the way, either next year or maybe 2027.
I think the idea is people using Carplay just use their phone's data that they already pay for. But if you want something better than Bluetooth and you have a Rivian/Tesla/GM EV post-Lyriq, you pay for the data connection.
Some of those might allow you to use wifi hotspot on your phone so you won't need a data connection, but for many people that's a nuisance (start hotspot every time you get into the car), plus you may need to pay more for hotspot data anyway.
So these car manufacturers just don't support Carplay and get more subscription customers, if they supported Carplay a number of customers would not pay for any car subscription if they can just do enough with Carplay. This is what the GM people implied at least, they said they wanted to raise subscription revenue into the billions by 2030, so what do you know they removed Carplay from GM's post-Lyriq EVs.
Good built in software is good to have, it just is annoying to close off an option that some people would want. And it doesn't have any great disadvantage to include Carplay. If Tesla or Rivian had it, it would still allow them to have their software doing what they do now. And in GM's case, they literally have the same software for gas cars but Carplay is included for gas cars, and also still included on new Lyriqs and new Hummer EVs.
Yep. I like driving my Tesla. And if I had to do it again would still purchase one. They do most ev things excellently, including the infotainment system, which is the best in the business.
But Apple is again raising the bar with a standard way to support digital keys.
Certainly doesn't matter to me.
Tesla has always made half backed cars with a record of poor initial quality and marginal reliability. I'd much rather spend my money on a GM, Audi, or Rivian electric vehicle.
I would pick up a rivian after a model s. They are the only other manufacturer aside from Tesla worth buying, imo.