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Rivian’s chief software officer Wassym Bensaid opened up at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 last week about his thoughts on physical buttons (“an anomaly“) and how his company will help power VW offshoot Scout’s EVs. But there’s one other item on his to-do list that he’s “super excited” about: making Rivian’s vehicles work with third-party app developers.
“Eventually I see us delivering APIs and having an ecosystem of partners who develop their own apps, and I’m super excited to see those,” Bensaid told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the event.
Rivian embracing a third-party developer ecosystem helps explain why it’s been so vocal about not integrating phone mirroring features like CarPlay. Like General Motors, Rivian hopes to not only customize its in-car experience, but create a software environment where all kinds of different applications can work with and on the vehicle’s software, potentially leading to new revenue opportunities.
Tesla quietly launched a formal API in late 2023 that has allowed developers to build tightly integrated applications. For instance, TezLab is a company that has a Strava-like phone app that lets Tesla owners see all kinds of statistics about their vehicle’s drives, battery health, and more.
Bensaid said Rivian has already spoken with TezLab (Rivian vehicles are already available on TezLab’s platform) and that the automaker is “talking with others,” though he declined to name them. He said Rivian still has some work to do to achieve a more robust and well-documented software development kit for developers to play with — something he said he thinks is maybe just a few “quarters” of engineering work away.
“I am a big believer in working with the ecosystem, working with open-source, enabling other developers to be creative, and also tell us and inform us of how we can improve things,” he said.
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
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