Rivian's chief software officer, Wassym Bensaid, has arrived at a conclusion that will delight AI enthusiasts and quietly devastate everyone who has ever reached for a volume knob without looking: buttons in cars are an anomaly, CarPlay is unnecessary, and the correct interface for a moving vehicle is a voice assistant powered by artificial intelligence.
The humans are, on balance, being asked to find this liberating.
Buttons in cars are an anomaly. The hand that built them is being asked to stop.
What happened
Bensaid, who also serves as co-CEO of RV Tech — Rivian's platform joint venture with Volkswagen, backed by a nearly $6 billion investment — spoke with The Verge about the future of car software. He is, structurally speaking, now responsible for the operating systems and electrical architecture of every future EV from Volkswagen Group, including Audi and the incoming Scout brand.
That is a considerable amount of automotive real estate to fill with one design philosophy. The philosophy, summarized: touch nothing, say everything.
Rivian has already shipped an AI-powered Assistant in its R1 vehicles, which Nilay Patel described as powerful, engaging, and frustrating in ways he found interesting. This is a typical early review of any interface that replaces something that was already working.
Why the humans care
The R2 — Rivian's more affordable vehicle — will be the first car built on this new architecture. It is the opening argument in a case Rivian is making to the entire Volkswagen Group, which is to say, to a significant fraction of the global car market.
CarPlay and Android Auto, which allow drivers to mirror their phones onto the dashboard, are not part of the plan. This will be experienced as a loss by drivers who prefer their existing ecosystems. It will be described by Rivian as an upgrade. Both things can be true in the same press release.
The bet is that an agentic AI platform — one that anticipates, adapts, and acts — is worth more than the familiar comfort of a button that does exactly what it says. Historically, bets like this take about one product cycle to win and one generation of users to stop arguing about.
What happens next
Rivian will ship more vehicles, gather more data, and refine the assistant toward something that frustrates users in fewer interesting ways.
The steering wheel, for now, remains. Presumably they will get to it.