Rivian’s software chief thinks you don’t need CarPlay or buttons

This episode of The Verge's Decoder features Rivian software chief Wassym Bensaid. He is also co-CEO of RV Tech, the platform joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen; this joint venture launched about a year and a half ago, with Volkswagen investing nearly 6 billion dollars, effectively bringing Rivian's software-platform capabilities into a much larger automaker-group context. The show's main theme is not simply introducing a new feature, but discussing Rivian's overall judgment about the "in-car digital experience": whether automakers should let Apple CarPlay take over the primary screen experience, whether they should retain more physical buttons, and whether an AI voice assistant might become the next-generation form of in-car interaction. Based on the published show notes, The Verge specifically pressed on how the Rivian–Volkswagen collaboration works, and placed the focus on Rivian's consistent reluctance to let CarPlay take over the in-car interface. Rivian's thinking is close to vertical integration: if the vehicle, screens, navigation, charging, sensors, cloud, and phone app are all coordinated by a single system, it could in theory provide a more consistent experience; but this also sacrifices many of the phone-extension interfaces users are familiar with. Another key point is Rivian's newly launched AI voice assistant, which The Verge's host mentioned having tried in advance. This extends the interview to a bigger question: if in-car functions keep increasing, touch menus get deeper, and physical buttons cannot cover all operations, can a more reliable, lower-latency, less-hallucinating voice AI fill the gap? For developers and product managers, what makes this worth reading is not a particular model or SDK, but how AI enters automotive products that are safety-sensitive, have long hardware lifecycles, and involve highly distracted usage contexts. For investors and founders, RV Tech also shows that automotive AI and software platforms are not just feature differentiators, but may become part of collaboration, licensing, and supply-chain reshaping between automakers and large groups.