Rivan, like Tesla has and will continue to be pretty stubborn when it comes to adopting smartphone mirroring services, such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. In a recent interview with Nilay Patel on the Decoder podcast from the Verge, the Rivian CEO, RJ Scaringe said that support for Apple CarPlay will not happen as the company prefers to develop its own software in house. Like Tesla though, the native OS does have third-party apps such as Apple Music and YouTube, but some Rivian owners still say that the lack of CarPlay support is a major thorn in its side.

"We have a great relationship with Apple. As much as I love their products, there’s a reason that ironically is very consistent with Apple ethos for us to want to control the ecosystem. (CarPlay) isn’t consistent with how we think about really creating a pure product experience. We recognize that it’ll take us time to fully capture every feature that’s in CarPlay, and hopefully, customers are seeing that. I think it often gets more noise than it deserves. The other thing beyond mapping that’s coming is better integration with texting. We know that needs to come, and it’s something that teams are actively working on."

RJ Scaringe - Rivian CEO

RJ also said that adopting Apple CarPlay would introduce the need for more taps as customers move between CarPlay and the Rivian software. He went on to say that CarPlay cannot “leverage other parts of the vehicle experience.”

Rivian offers two vehicles in the US, the R1S SUV and the R1T pickup truck. Three new vehicles are due to launch at some stage, the R2, R3 and R3X with the latter of the three gaining the most attention.