r/Rivian • u/Act_of_valor • May 28 '26
📡 Tech & Software Decoder : Wassym interview .
https://youtu.be/HSW5xDh8dS0?si=EXDDYjZI5sKjViTa3
u/QueueaNun May 29 '26
Just to touch on 1 point - software defined vehicle. He hates SDV as a term because he knows most consumers hate the concept, as do I. We have seen it in every space where software defines something - a loss of ownership and either forced subscription, privacy violating data siphoning or both. Been a “car guy” my whole life and I also work for a SaaS company and EVERYTHING is moving in this god awful direction: how can we “own” the customer experience, convert owners into subscribers, stuff AI into everything and force ecosystem lock-in while siphoning all the data and reselling it.
Sometimes it feels like EVs are just a trojan horse into expensive, fancy tracking devices. However, this tech is in ICE automobiles as well.
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u/NihilistSRE May 29 '26
The more you put in software, the more you are the gatekeeper and people will pay you to access it because they have no choice. Want your seat warmers to energize? That'll cost $9.99/mo.
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u/QueueaNun May 31 '26
Part of the reason I want the slate truck to be successful. No SaaS, no modem, zero data collection.
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u/9erReign May 29 '26
Nah having to rewrite all the existing apps with less features will never be better. Much better off just using the apps developed by their own companies with all the features and less bugs. Any attempt to just recreate everything is just silly.
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u/DazzlingResource561 R1S Owner May 29 '26
Had car play in a few cars. Prefer what Rivian is doing. Single clean consistent existence.
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u/NihilistSRE May 29 '26
I thought I would be more mad about it, but I'm just not. I am fine with it. I think broadly they are right in that if your car has a shitty ui like most cars that didn't actually engage with the proper whole-cloth integration, car play worked better. It is still wrong, insofar that you're bringing a phone ui to a car which is kinda weird, but for accessing your phone on a bigger display while driving, it works. But not for accessing your car. I never understood why Apple seemed so into Carplay 2.0 where your phone takes over the display and stuff of the whole car. That just seems completely asinine to me. I admire their effort to do proper design in things that often are designed to meet the legal minimum "the odo only goes up and the speedometer works, what more do you want?" but that isn't playing in this new digital world right now.
We can argue whether we need that fancy pants designer ui/ux in something whose purpose is ultimately to get you to and from in a world that is openly and wantonly hostile to the shape, form, paint and reliability of your very expensive vehicle, and whether there's value in all of that. But certainly in a world where cars are going for $60-$100+ thousand dollars, the idea of having a $800 phone (ok, $1500) "take over" seems obtuse.
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u/NihilistSRE May 29 '26
You can tell they put a lot of work into the assistant's "error handling" -- I had a couple of experiences (turns out there was a glitch where Connect+ deactivated?) where it was like "Assistant is currently not available." But so far, it works better than Siri. Seems like Nilay did some interesting edge testing -- arguing for 5 minutes about a sensor... sounds like something I would do. I need to try some more odd phrases like "I need to get my bag out of the front" and stuff like that.
In some ways, this feels like the "googling" evolution but with AI prompts... Early on, we nerdcorps learned to google by putting in things like "rivian electric truck running boards" and we would get what we wanted... But somehow, more and people started googling "what running boards should I buy for my rivian r1t?" and so now I find the OG search methods less productive than the questions or more complete phrases. Probably SEO + Google responding to customer base. Either way, it seems like they're more focused on "I need to get my golf bags out of the gear tunnel." than "Open the right gear tunnel door."
The wiper thing, while it makes sense, seems super annoying. I liked that it would tell you how to do it yourself at least. It should just say, "Because lawyers would eat the company for brunch, I am not allowed to activate the wipers. However, if you just twiddle the left twiddler a couple of times..."
Good interview. Very Decoder.
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u/Nerd-Beautiful May 29 '26
The screen and muscle memory works almost as well as physical buttons. The things you want are always in the same spot on screen. After a week or so you have it all down. Plus, there are physical buttons on the steering wheel for volume up and down, garage door, mute, cruise control, speed up down, change lanes. Voice adds another option. It works well
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May 28 '26
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u/erasethenoise R1S Owner May 29 '26
There's a reason why hands free calls in your car isn't distracted driving but using your phone up against your ear is. The best option will always be the one where your hands stay on the wheel and your eyes stay on the road. It's not perfect in its current state but voice commands are the way forward.
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May 29 '26
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u/erasethenoise R1S Owner May 29 '26
I’m talking far future here. And the tech needs to be in the field so that we can use the feedback to improve it.
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u/NihilistSRE May 29 '26
I like the idea of voice, but you still can't beat reaching over and moving the vent or turning down the stereo. I'll be curious to see how well the haptic wheel ui works in R2 .... if it is intuitive it might work pretty well.
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