CarPlay Is Optional, Not a Takeover: A Rebuttal to Rivian's No-CarPlay Stance

Rivian continues to refuse Apple CarPlay support, and its Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid defended that choice on The Verge’s Decoder podcast by arguing that screen-mirroring solutions commandeer every pixel in the car, conflicting with how Rivian wants customers to interact with its vehicles. Casey Liss dismantles that reasoning on two fronts. First, it conflates ordinary CarPlay with CarPlay Ultra: standard CarPlay occupies only part of the display—Liss points to his wife’s Volvo XC90, where the manufacturer’s own UI sits above and below the CarPlay window—and even Ultra leaves room for the automaker’s interface. Nobody, he notes, is demanding the full-screen variant.

His core argument is that CarPlay is additive and entirely optional. If Rivian’s native software is as strong as the company claims, drivers simply won’t use CarPlay—but the option lets owners reach the thousands of apps (his example is the podcast player Overcast) that have polished CarPlay interfaces yet no native Rivian equivalent. Liss also preempts the navigation objection—that the car’s driver-assist systems benefit from knowing the planned route—by pointing out Apple is addressing route-sharing in iOS 27.

The piece is ultimately about platform lock-in and consumer choice in a market where automakers increasingly want to own the in-car software stack. Liss frames CarPlay as table stakes: an enthusiast who has driven and admired the R1T and R1S, and who wants an R2 and R3X, says he will not buy any car lacking CarPlay, illustrating the real customer cohort Rivian forfeits by holding the line.