Future Roadmap and the R3X

Support for this show comes from Adobe Acrobat. We all know sending a file is easy Making sure your clients understand the file is the hard part But with PDF spaces and Adobe accrobat, You can give your clients the full picture with custom intros, audio summaries, and a helpful AI assistant So if you want to stop the endless follow ups Do that with acrobat You need to make your dots crystal clear do that with acrobad. Wna make sure your clients get everything they need to hear Do that with Arobat Learn more at addobe d. com slash do that withith acrobat Support for this show comes from Clavo Imagine hiring two brilliant employees The first takes your marketing from idea to full campaign, email, SMS, push and the time it takes to describe it The second handles every customer conversation twenty four seven Answering questions, recommending products, handling orders both on brand and always on Your next hires, Clavio's AI agents. Get started at K L A V I Y O . com Support for the show comes from serervice Now. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways Service now turns that chaos into control With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done and what it's about to do so you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit serviceNow. com llo and welcome to thecoder.'m Ia Ppp,etitor andief of the Verge and Coder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Sim Benzayet, the chief software offic at Rivian, and the CEO of Rivian's platform joint venture with Volkswagen which everyone just calls RV tech. That joint venture kicked off about a year and a half ago, with a nearly six billion dollars investment from Volkswig And it effectively puts WSIM in charge of the operating system and electrical architecture for every future EV from Volkswagen and its associated brands, including familiar names like Audi, but also new companies like Scout. There's a lot of decoder ideas in there. I really want to know how that joint venture works and how it's structured to preserve Rivian's unique software culture What she'll hear what him talk about is the core element to the entire thing. I also wanted to know where the lines were Wh parts of Rivian software get to be just for Rivian, and which parts of the core technology are shared across both the smaller company and the behemoth that is Volkswagen And of course, I wanted to understand how Wesim navigated the tension between the two Classic decoder papage It's also a big moment for Rivian in general right now The company is gearing out to deliver the more affordable Rivian R two, which is the first vehicle based on this new architecture. and the company also just shipped the AI powered Rivian assistant in its R one vehicles. You'll hear with Sim talk about the assistant is the beginning of a big bet for Rivian as it tries to create a more agentic software platform in its cars I've actually had to spend some time with Rivian asssistant in an RNS ahead of my conversation with WSim, and I found it to be a fascinating experience, and certainly powerful and engaging, but at the same time it's frustrating in a lot of really interesting ways. Of course, I had a bunch of feature request, bug reports, and questions about the future of AI in assistance in cars. We talked about his prediction from just a few years ago that buttons in cars were just an anomaly And of course, how he's feeling about Android auto and CarPay these days Hear it, but spoiler alert. D't get your hopes up This is a really fun episode of Doder. It's really in the weeds of a lot of my favorite things to talk about Okay, W Sin Benea, Chief softare Officer at Rivian and co CEO of RV Tech. Here we go What's in Ben said? You're the chief software officer at Rivian. You're also the co CEO of a very important software joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen, which is just straightforwardly called Rivian Volkswagen group technology. Welcome to Deoder. Thanks N.' super excited to be here I am very excited to talk to you. I have a lot to talk to you about. It occurred to me as we were doing the prep for this episode that you're in charge of building a new kind of software for cars, but also because of the joint venture in charge of building a new kind of software company that builds the new kind of software for cars It is the most fractile decoder I think we've ever had Awesome There's a lot here. Let's start with the organization. So you're the chief soft offfficer at Rivian I think a lot of people understand what that means that you're the guy that they can yell at about carplay. Don't worry, we'll come to that U There's new Rivian Assistant, which is an intelligent agent inside the car that I've been playing with that I want to ask you a lot of questions about. Then there's RV teech, which is the joint venture with Volkswagen. You're building a new zonal architecture for a bunch of cars. I believe the R two is the first that's going to run that new architecture How does that all work? What are the lines between RV tech and your role there, you have the Coso there, and your role with Rivian. And what is the boundary between the software you build and the joint venture and the software you build at Rivian Before we dive into Achitch and the joint venture, I think It's really important to talk about the overall industry landscape. The automotive industry is really going through a major disruption the amount of software content in the cars with technologies like electrification, connectivity, autonomy is significantly increasing and that is creating a big divide between traditional OEMs and then new tech forward companies And consumers now have really much higher levels of expectations. in terms of the overall experience and convenience in the cars And multiple OEMs have I tried really hard to get software content It's not easy. It requires a very different type of talent. It requires in some cases really complete cultural change because you're not only developing software, but then you need to adopt different methodologies, different ways of doing things, you need to be much more agile. when you look at the industry Companies have tried do that in house, some of them tried to partners, some of them tried to use tier ones and a lot of recipes do not really work And that was really the genesis of the great partnership that we have now with the Volkswagen group, which has really taken the Rivian technology stack, takaking software, the electrical architecture, the Rivian DNA and culture as well, and then marrying that And the incredible scale that waswagenu Puse And it really provides fantastic opportunity for both companies becausecause now we can have a solution that not only underpin the Europevan vehicles, as we mentioned, with they are two as the first car that the joint venture is shipping, but then Eventually in the future, every single model in the VW group. and think about it from your premium cars and Audi, for example, to luxury cars with Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini to the mass market cars And that suddenly provides an opportunity of scale But then also it exercises the technology in very different ways and really puts us in a wonderful position so that We can build an architecture, an operating system for the entire industry So that question of architecture and operating system, it feels very complicated. As you said, the industry is moving to software divignine vehicles, which is a great buzzword And every car executive that I talk to very clearly has a different definition of what software defivined vehicle means. What is your definition of what software defivined vehicle means? First of all, I hate that buzz worord D you brought actually I can't find a better name. So I admit that I'm also using the same in the lack of a better definition But think about it this way. I mean, when you look at opener architecture cars They' really an aggregation of multiple mechanical components. And then underneath that, there's in some cases hundreds of electronic units, which are meant each one of them is meant to do one thing O And generally that's actually mirroring the way those cars are built because they are developed using different ter ones and then different suppliers. And In that world, integrating an into vehicle feature requires a ton of coordination between many of those suppliers. It requires veryer long development cycles, and that approach kind of worked in the past when the expectations of consumers were not super high in terms of andint features in the cars, but I think with the advancement of AVs, with the types of user experiences that The Teslaas and the Rivians and the Chinese cars are offering now That's no longer really an option for any car manufacturer. And I'll give you just This small example I mean, when you walk to Rarivan and I know you're currently having a gentu quad U You have your let's say digital key, you walk to the car and then the car will recognize you And then there's a liing sequence And then you get to the car and your entire profile is configured and then whether it's the seeds whether it's the steering wheel, whether it's the infotainment system, whether it's the H rack, everything is configured for you seequence is probably in just fifteen seconds But doing that in the traditional world requires the coordination of more than ten different suppliers. You need to talk the seat supplier, you need to talk to the door supplier, you need to talk to the HVac supplier, you need to talk to the entertainment supplier, you need to talk to the security system, you need to talk to the cloud, you need to talk to the third party for the digital key And then just imagine that For whatever reason, you want to slightly change that sequence then you're going again for another cycle of changes And this is why old model really doesn't work anymore. Cars now are integrated system with what we call of computers and thinks about them as this is general purpose powerful compute that we place in the middle of the car and they become the centralized brain of the different functions. And then the more software you can move on those zones, the more it provides a control of those end to end features for the customers So this is the pitch that every sort of pure play car startup has been making for a long time, right? The way that the OEMs built cars was done, And you shouldn't have twelve hundred ECU's from tw thousandelve hundred different suppliers And that was fine for gas cars that were pretty dumb where the only computer was like my old pioneer head unit that had the screen that folded it out By the way, I love that head unit. if you could bring that back, that would be great for me. I fond teenage memories of my dumbelled car with that head unit. Now the whole cars are computers and you expect a lot of things to happen and that integration is too hard. What I would say broadly is that the legacy OEMs have known this for years. right They have been on their own journey to solve this problem to cut down on the number of ECUs. I don't know, Jim Farley was on the show from Ford five years ago being like, too many ECUs we're cut down And Volkswagen in particular had its own giant project to do this that failed. I think we can now now there's enough distance here year and a half into the new JV. We can say Carad, which folks I had started failed Why do you think the new JV and the infusion of Rivian culture is going to be successful Volks Wagen's attempt do it on its own. did not meet any kind of positive results You're getting me in trouble meing That's my job. That's what I do here. I think it really What I personally appreciate in terms of the Volkswagen Group decision is The recognition that developing what is called social defined vehicles requires a complete clean sheet approach You cannot approach it just by band aates and then just by trying to have some level of software content into into the car. And as we said, the Volkswagen group have tried. they actually, they have tried wies But really deep inside, there's two things which are really important here. One is You need to have Balent who are able to develop true software, not Abstracted functions like what the automotive industry are using with things like probably you have heard about autorsar But like a true hand goaded operating system And then you also need a deep cultural change. We really very different way of approaching the car and the overall development. And the old traditional model Cars are defined many, many, many years in advance. People claim that they know about the software features four or five years in advance And then it's a very fixed waterfall approach The way we design bars Adragian, for example is We actually really designed a car around the electrical architecture and around software and around the adaptability of software. so software Technology is at the table since very early. It actually impacts the overall packaging of the car and we really use platform and that operating system mindset so that we have a car that can evolve over time and that get better and better for our customers And such changes. Yeah So deep where really to do it when you either need to have the right Partner I you go with a clean sheet approach and I think The Volkswagen group has made the wide decision to really partner with Livian in this case and not only embrace that technology that we built from the ground up, but then also embrace Goucher. Broach And then the DNA of Faribbeian as a company How is the joint venture structured? I know you have a CciO. It's Karston Helbing who's Volkswagen CTO. So you're the two CosciOs. How is it structured underneath that Underneath that, there's a technical team. So software, engineering, electrical engineering. The technical team will forced to me and then Caren is my partner in crime. He takes care of the operations and then he's also the main interface to the Volkswagen group. There's a ton of complexity in terms managing different requirements, different importputs from the brands really doing all that arbitration. So that we continue pushing towards a platform approach and then we reduce the overall complexity of the portfolio that we're supporting with the BW Group So one of the questions I have here is you describe it as an operating system. It seems like a good framework. People understand what operating systems are. I realize car operating systems are vastly more complex than people give them credit for, but it's an operating system. Then there's expressions of the operating system. And I know that know, our audience they think of the software in the car and they think of the infotainment screen and that's it That's just one expression, right? The user interface that Arriivian is running There's going to be other expressions for Volkswagen for Scout, I presume for Lamborghini. all running the same core operating system expressed in different ways That is a real push and pull dynamic, right? Where do the features live? Who gets to build what feature? What are the core capabilities of the operating system and the platform? versus what does Lambordini want that It doesn't want Rivian to have How do you make those decisions Yeah great question I mean, really first of all, I think What's important for us is to clarify the role of the joint venture. So we're responsible of underlying electrical architecture and then the operating system. And what that means exactly is, I mean when you look A a modern car today prettyretty much every single interaction you have with the car is powered by software. And in lots of cases, you don't realize it. I mean, people tend to associate software to the infotainment to what they see on the UI and the screen There's software everywhere in the car. I mean, the way the car navigates, the way the car drives, the way the car saves energy, the way the car does Gabin Gemfort, all of that is actually managed through software. So the way to think about this is our role is to, first of all, build and electric g architecture with as less as possible of computers in the car so that we simplify the overall packaging, we simplify the overall bill of materials And this is the brains of the system And then on top of that, we developed software that the different brands can use so that they express their own identity and think about it in a way where We do eighty percent, ninety percent of the hard work. and then we provide customization hooks so that an Audi drives like an Audi and then a Lamborghini presents a different UI than a Rivian, but then what's happening under the hood, what's happening behind the scenes is based on the same platform When you think about that underlying electrical architecture and know zonal computers are're going cut down the number of computers but have fewer and more powerful computers, one of the things that It seems like an obvious opportunity for Rivian. and maybe way more complicated for Volkswagen is that you have a big battery that can just power those computers all the time. They can be online, they can be functional, they can be available Folks I can also makeakes gas cars and in hybrids. there's some pendulum swing in the industry between electrics and gas vehicles, particularly here in the United States. Is that a challenge or are you just not thinking about their gas cars at all The scope of the joint venture for the time being is really powering all the electric vehicles. I mean, this is the agreement that we have with Vadieswagen And honestly, a big part of it is One of the main reasons personally, I Join Rivian is I join Rivian for the mission. And I think the joint venture provides us with an extraordinary opportunity so that we can get this technology to accelerate electrification into many more cars around the world, one of the first products that we're building the Volwagen Group is the ID one, which is takaking our technology to a mass market vehicle. I mean, this is a car that will sell for less than twenty five thousand dollars And will the opening U the technology opening that rich feature set to many more consumers around the world. Now can the technology be used for Non EV is going to be used for hybrids or eyes And obbviously, the answer is yes, but for the time being, this is not the priority of the joint venture How big is RVTch? How many people Oh. We're about one thousand five hundred people And then how is that split between Rivian folks or Volkswagen folks? Are they do you have is it Employees of both companies are they employes of RBTech They're employers of RVTch. actually we started with about eight hundred nine hundred. developers coming from Reerivian and then uh we had about fifty colleagues who joined us from the Volkswagen group And then the rest, this is developers and engineers that we hired in the past eighteen months So Everybody's R. The reason I said that is you mentioned at the very beginning that it's an infusion of Rivian's culture But now they're not Rivian employees. But then you were also the Chief software officer of Rivian How does that culture persist if the thing is its own entity And it's not as directly connected to Rivian or're not Rivian employe I think The way I probably define my job and probablybably my priority number one Please help the company grow. and build on our domain assets. And I think our domain assets is one technology and to our people and culture teechnology, I think we have a wonderful opportunity now by taking that technology into many more cars across a wide range of portfolio and trrends And then Gure That's my daily obsession, which is really making sure that We continue to have the same DNA of agity being nbul prioritizing action, quick decision making and really iterating really fast so that we are at the forefront innovation One of use I said is, you know, there's Rivian decisions that maybe Volkswagen will make At Riviananss right now, they run unreal engine, right is the graphics and the infotainment. It's really fun. I'm not sure that every single Volkswagen is going to run unreal Egine, right? That's a decision that it feels like at least as I understand it the different brands can make for themselves. But you're the Chiefs offfficer at Rivian, and you're like, we need better support for the Unreal engine interface. And then maybe the platform doesn't want that and you wear that hat too. How do you reconcile those tensions? Does Rivian's needs always win Qinenss is How can we do the software in a way that allows different expressions And I think in this case, revine's interface will show up through an realel engine, but then we need to have hooks in our frameworks so that L to your question. I know you would ask me that Volkswagen cars can have car play and the team will develop that even though Rivian and whatnot U I gott carplay. So it's really about creating those different hooks into the operating system so that we allow different ways to express the user and phase It strikes me just talking to you about this that there aren't a lot of models in an industry as big as the auto industry like this where the player. is letting the smaller company define the culture and the opportunity, define the architecture, which will define its roadmap in the future What thingsings have you looked at that are similar You say that's successful. We should build the model based on this and operate like this. And what versions of this have failed that you've looked at where're like, I want to avoid those mistakes? Y. Great question. I think Lots of people look at joint ventures and I think there's probably many more failure stories than success stories. And this has been really one of the Guiding principles, and we spent a lot of time discussing with the VW leadership before we engage in such partnership. M Now, really what made Ajay and myself lean heavily into this partnership is one the opportunity and then to the honest and constructive partnership from the Volkswagen group leadership. I mean, first of all, we are talking about taking theant technology into the second largest OEM in the world This is by far the biggest licensing deal in the automotive industry And as Arenie and I started the discussions with Oliver Blumer His number one priority was we need to keep the Rivian way for doing things We u to realize that you are bringing not only a software IP, you are bringing not only an electronics IP, but you are bringing a different process, you are bringing a different culture. And we need that change from the inside for the VW group. And I think across the past eighteen months. I mean, obviously In some cases, there's daily tensions. I mean, there are cases where as you mentioned, one brand might request a different requirement than another brand What really helped us to continue is that support that we have from the highest levels of the leadership and the Vwagen Group to really help driide. transformation and that cultural change in the group We need to take a quick break, we'll be right back Support for this show comes from Shopify Starting something new isn't just difficult. Sometimes it can be truly intimidating. You're putting in all of this time and energy without knowing for sure if it's going to pay off But there's always another way to look at it What if it does work What if your gut has been right the whole time? That's where Shopify comes in. 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Dot com slash decoder That's Shopify d. com slash decoder Support for this show comes from Adobe Acrobat We all know sending a file is easy Making sure your clients understand the file is the hard part But with PDF spaces and Adobe accrobat You can give your clients the full picture with custom intros, audio summaries, and a helpful AI assistant So if you want to stop the endless follow ups Do that with Arobat You need to make your dots crystal clear Do that with acrobats Wna make sure your clients get everything they need to hear Do that with acrobat. Learn more at adobe d. com slash do that with acrobat Support for this show comes from Dppel Maybe that pink you just got is an urgent message from your CEO Or maybe it's a deep fake trying to target your business. Stobble is the AI Native social engineering defense platform fighting back against impersonation and manipulation As attackers turn to AI to power increasingly sophisticated strikes, Dopel uses it to fight back Their digital risk management dismantles attacker infrastructure, while human risk management builds team resilience through simulation and training With automated takedowns multi channel coverage and AI defenses that build intelligence with every fight Dpple works relentlessly to protect people, brands, and trust. Doppple Outpacing what's next in social engineering Learn more at doppble. com That's D O P P E L. . com We're back with Rivian software chief with Sim Bened. Before the break, we are discussing his role as co CEO of Rivian's joint venture with Volkswagen and how that organization is structured Now I want to ask the other decoder question. How does SwissM make decisions Let' me ask you the other decoder question and I want to turn to the software itself As ask everybody this question. we've talked about it a little bit How do you make decisions? What's your framework for making decisions I think the number one rule, I mean, obviously, my job every day is making decisions, but there's a number of guidelines that I try to apply First of all, in terms of coaching with my team. I tried to push decisions as much as possible to the lowest levels of the organization. and I think really one of the anti patterns that I see in a bunch of companies where they try to bubble up decisions to the highest levels of executives and that tends to create a culture where Things are slow and then employees don't feel really empowered Now in cases where I personally have to make the decision, few guidelines to the team never come to me with one option show that you went through an analysis have multiple options And then make a recommendation. I want a culture where I emp my team to be really a for of proposal and then come up themselves with recommendations now The rule that I use in terms of how much time should I spend on a decision is really Is it a one way door decision or is it a two way door decision If it's a to door decision then I don't need to spend that much time on it. It doesn't need to be really a hard framework We don't need to go into an extreme in some cases of collecting tons and tons of data so that we get to a decision. And in some cases, I will just use my gut U and I'm a product builder at Heart and I know that some of the decisions Even if the data are against me, then I would go with my feeling. And in some cases, I'm wrong and I'm the first to recognize that Now if it's a one way do decision, then that's a different process, which requires much more preparation requires much more data and then arbitration for how we do things. Do you an example in this context of a one way door decision at RVTch and at a two way door decision? U There's multiple of them. and I think probably one of them is like leading to Broad the next topic of discussion that we will have, which is our overall approach around AI and We had a ton of debates internally of whether we should basically just usese the third party AI solution or develop our own solution And There's a ton of tension because you look at the advancements in the AI world and you would think that with everything which is happening on This is honestly a hard problem to solve. now It was really clear for me, given the opportunity given how transformative this is for the entire user experience that we really need to own our destiny in terms of having a platform that allows us choice, that allows us to change foundation models. as we wish and own that integration layer allows us power the entire car operating system So this is Rivian Assistant. I've been playing with it for a few days now. truly had some searching conversations with it. Just to push the boundary of what it can do. It's super interesting to have a car where you know even in the interface, it does the wavy line on the main screen. it's very much the car is running its assistant not an overlay. You can tell the assistant can go and address lots of parts of the car And then there are places where it can't or it won't. And it actually, I think one of the most interesting things about it is that It won't tell you why it can't do things. It is insistent that it won't tell you why it can't do things. Don't worry. I have very specific questions about that. But it strikes me that this is a natural evolution of U Okay, the whole car is run by a finite set of computers And that means our assistant can just run around and talk to those computers and talk to the functions that those computers control in a way that I don't know, if you try to glue an assistant onto I have a Cadillac EV. If you try to glue an assistant onto that, it has to like go talk to its CCUs. Like it's just very obvious that something else is happening with Google Assistant in that car. That's the opportunity. The assistant can talk to the whole car. thenen there are places where it just can't for some reason I'll give you one example. It just struck me as very odd. I was driving in the rain and I said, Hey, turn on the back window wiper And it just won't And I thought, is that a safety reason? Is that You just don't know how to do it. You're like lost in the zonal architecture. And I asked it and said, I can't tell you why I can't do these things. But here's where the button is which is really interesting for an assistant Car to do. Its said I'm not going to do it for you, but the button is on the stock, push the button. How do you make those decisions in the context of an assistant of what it can and cannot do Awesome. So there's a lot of things here. I mean I mean, first of all, I think you describe it really, really well. Our approach, our philosophy for theion assistant is not just put a chat bot and then slap it on top of the UI. It's really developing what? will become the connective tissue that enables our users to interact with pretty much every single feature in the car. And even more than that bring their own person with the digital ecosystem and the car through the gantic integration. Now to your question, what it can do and then what it cannot do. us controlling the wiper, it's obviously possible. And I'm sure that you have seen that it can do way more. it can change your drive modes, it can change your ride height Right. I could raise and lower the car at fifty five miles an hour with the air suspension, which was cool. and it was like the slowest low rider experience you could possibly have And then I couldn't turn on the wiper. So what is the split? And that's up Honestly, this's one of my favorite features. And the way I like to interact with it is I don't tell it to change the right height, I tell it okay Give me dry mode with more prep And then it does it and it changes to sport mode. I mean this is really the magic of having that true conversational experience. Now, the reason it does not do wiper is by design We actually block a number of features which are safety related And cars are obviously home related, regulated. So everything related to wipers, things related to windshield controls, things related to highway assistance, those are regulated functions, which today, through our framework we block them for safety reasons. And like safety is really one of the core tenets in how we develop the entire experience So the other one that struck me, you know, cars have rear seat sensors. We have kids. So every time I get out of my car, it reminds me There might be a kid in the backseat because it has sensed the weight in the back seat. I think this is one of the funniest sensors any car can have becausecause the car seat is always in the back seat. So it's always reminding me that the kid might be in the car. So I asked it, is anyone in the back seat Maybe this is just a bug, but it said, I'll find out. and then it said, I can't access that sensor. And I said, what sensor are you trying to access? And it refused. And I probably had a five minute argument with your assistant about why it wouldn't tell me what sensor it was trying to access The reason I'm asking this is not because it's a boger. I really needed to know if anyone had car seat at the time. I'm just very curious as you think about builduilding the the assistant that can access all of the sensors and the architecture of how that might work and how we might interact with cars There's just a moment where maybe it's for safety reasons or Maybe it just can't doesn't work right now in the version I have. where the LLM has to go talk to another computer and that computer has to give it permission And I don't know if anyone in any part of the tech industry has figured out exactly how that should work And I'm just wondering what your point of view is. Yeah. And I think in this specific case, it should have actually told you what's in the back seat. So that's the bu that's on it was like, I'm not telling you what sensor I'm trying to get. And I was like, why? And it was like I just I'm not to tell you what sensor I'm trying to get to. Yeah. That one is on me and I think you hear that I mean We have it in house and then we'll be able to calibrate that answer and then we'll fit the do and send you a newTA next time. That's very good. Every time we get a car executive on the show I just complain about the experiences I have, it's perfect. But that But that piece where it's how do you talk to the computer? And what permission does that other computer give you Every assistant at every level is running into that specific barrier. and I'm just curious what you think the answer is I mean prettyretty much, I think think about our architecture this way, the assistant has deep integration into the entire vapor operating system. So in theory I mean, with the integrations that we have built, unless we have a buggger like the one that you have, you should be able to do everything only functions which are not allowed are functions which are safety related because obviously of the homologologation reasons, but then also functions where we think that the level of reliability that we can get from the otherherlands does not make us comfortable to expose them to the end users. But that's really like the beauty of the internal in house orchestration layer that we have built. where we have a ton of guardrails which allow us to control which functions are exposed by the assistant or not All right, you mentioned that I was going to get you in trouble. I'm going get you in trouble again. in twenty twenty four, you said using buttons in a car is an anomaly of modern design and that and people love buttons in their cars so that you got in trouble for saying that. But the thing you said was that voice should be the future Okay, this is the first gestureate voice being the future Is it good enough? Because you know, we're right on the cusp of are these things actually good enough to build the kinds of products people want I think we are on the cusp of something really big. and I deeply believe like when you think about it, you're in a car, you're driving, you're focused on the road. So in theory, in theory, the primary interface with which you should be interacting with the car is actually your voice. The only reason that drivers and consumers so far did not interact with the car through voice is that To put it really bluntly, the technology has been broken And I think that's really the beauty of what we have now through the technology disruption, which is coming would be foundational models The foundoundational modelers are providing us this wonderful opportunity so that we can truly get to a conversational experience. And we're drivers can interact with the car in human language. I don't need to tell the car open the front. I can say open the front punk or actually I can say I have a band in front of the car and it will actually open the front And I think that completely changes the way you interact with the car On top of that, we have now the opportunity with all the aentic framework So that We truly can people their time back. in the car and I hope you tried our Google Clendar agentic integration. But you can imagine how the experience would be in the future where you're driving and then you should be able to perform operations on your calendar. You should be able to perform operations on your email and then in the future withith the framework that we have with the agent to agent integration, you can actually interact with many more apps from your own digital personal ecosystem Can ask you about the word eentic in this context. So the way the Google calendar integration works with Rivian Assistant, just describe it quickly for people. It shows you a QR code, You can connect your Google calendar to it and then Rivian Assistant can like Read your calendar, add events, remove events, do calendar stuff. I'm very curious how that's agentic and how it's built such that word eentic is meaningful Because I have like five hundred apps over the past ten years that can do Google calendar stuff through the standard API. So one, how is it agentic? Is it MCP? is it something else? And why build it that way versus just doing a bunch of API integrations? I mean, you can actually build it with an API integration. I think the advantage of an agencing integration is that you can share the context and then you can perform multiple integrations within the car. and in this case it's based on like this is an MCP integration, which also allows us I mean Think about it in a way where you can imagine that in the future, instead of having that monal access to every single app on your car, or honestly, to that extent, even on your smartphone you can start aggregating and connecting many of those apps through the agentic framework and have them present a unified user experience. and This is how we're able to connect the navigation to Clendar, for example, like, I can go to the assistant now and I can tell the assist and okay, I want to plan a trip fromr San Franisco to San Diego And I want to have two charging stops. I want them to be close to an Italian restaurant Lve Italian food. The assistant would go and play that and then I'll say, okay print the summary and add it to my calendar and then send it as a text to my wife and This type of integrations when you have behind the scenes the aentic framework, can really allow Oh many more capabilities which in the future as well and this is where aentic can be A even further utilized, you can start going into more autonomous functions in the sense that Let's say you have an invitation in the calendar with X,YZ details and then you can start having reminders saying, okay, do you want to go to this place or you're actually really late to your meeting, Do you want me to start preconditioning your car? So that's the beauty of bringing the depth of the aenic integration We need to take another a short break, we'll be back in a minute Rupport for the show comes from Upwork Scaling a business takes the right expertise at the right time Upwork helps growing teams quickly bring in specialized freelancers so you can move faster and take the business to the next level Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers, letting you delegate and then just keep it moving You can find specialized talent across web and software development data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more Browse profiles, review their past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence. 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It takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation So whether you're prepping for a soC to or running an enterprise GRC program, Vanta keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving Vanta says that companies like Ramp and Ryder spend eighty two percent less time on audits with Vanta That's not just faster compliance, it's more time for your business to grow You can get started at vanta dot com slash decoder. That's V A N T a dot com slash decoder Banta d. com slash decoder We' back with Rivian Chief software Oicer with Sim Bense, discussing the in ins and outs of the company's new AI powered voice assistant So I think I understand that. right? you're in your car, it can go access a bunch of apps and services you have. You can take actions across them. you've collected a lot of data one place This brings me to like a very deep sort of existential question whenever anyone talks about ambient computing in this way, where does the logic live Right? The idea that you're going to have that interaction in your car. and not at your laptop or on your phone That seems like a big jump to me Right? The same way that when the smart speaker companies would be like, you're going to talk to your thermostat. I think why? I'm going to talk to my phone. I don't feel the need to talk to my thermostat in this way Do you think people are going to do that in the car or you going to bring assistant to the Rivian app on a phone? Can you compete with the series and Google Assistantance in that way? How is that all going to work I think that Actually, like the way I think about it, I think it will be both. And I think this is really the big difference between the old world where we had unique applications and then the new world where we have agentic integrations And think about the Rivian assistant has an agent orchestrator, which has privileges because it can deeply integrate would u vehicle controls with the vehicle operating system, it understand safety it understand which things to do, which things not to do And nobody else can develop that better than us because we develop the entire vehicle software. But then at the same time, it has interfaces and connections to other agents. and This is just the beginning. I think think about it in a way where in the future, you can actually to hard be able to bring your own personal favorite. Asistant and chat board to the car and then it can share context with the Rivbeian assistant. I mean, this is really be possibilities this new world, this new type of integrations He is allowing us to do. Is the Riving asssistant the kind of thing that is possible because of the RV tech software stack and is it possible that we'll see the Rivian assistant or something just like it in Volkswagens as well? or this spepecial Terivian This is special this is special toy and everything which is AI stack is developed uniquely for Rivian. I mean this is Rivian's brand priority as we see cars becoming more and more air defined. But we're in discussions so that we can have some new technologyies for the Wolswagen group Rivians are sort of famously on LTE When I first got in this car, I saw the LT indicator and I thought, Oh something musts be wrong. And I drove around and then I realized that's just LTE. Is there any latency concern with that, especially with voice and going out in the world and doing whatever inference you need to do T two things. Nely onene, we need to get you an Artu. The Atu has my ke. There we go. It's coming soon and it's amazing. And then two, and I think you touched base really on one of the architecturure considerations for the technology, which is U when you look at vehicles like the Arabian island today mostost of the interactions will happen with the cloud. So as you say It's connectivity dependent and then they will happen f when there is a strong connectivity with the external world. Now there's a number of interactions that happen locally with the car. and If you take the car I am coned That interaction is being managed by a small language model that sits directly on the edge. Now the beauty of what will happen next as we get to R two, not only will have IG, but then Ed AI will be way more powerful and capable on the R two on the R. just to be clear for the audience, when you say dge, you mean local Right? It's runningly in the car. Yep. meaning that the local computer on the R two will have to two hundred spars Stobs. compute dedicated to I. I know this sounds like extremely technical, but think about it as this is more capable than some of the self driving platforms today and it's more capable than the amount of AI compute that you have in your smartphone. All of that would be available locally in the R two car, which is coming soon and that allows as you mentioned to basically not face such limitations and issues with connectivity, but truly get to much lower latencies because a lot of the processing will happen directly on the embedded locally and get to a truly conversational and experience where it's pretty much instant Can I just ask you very Very in the weeds question. We're talking about putting compute in the car.'re going we're going to do some amount of local inference in the car. GPUs are expensive. RAM is expensive. How much of the buildill of materials is RJ giving you to do all this in the car versus I don't know, bigigger motors, bigger batteries How much of the range can you pull off to do local inference in the car? I mean, this is kind of the trade off you're talking about I mean, this is what I love about Ala, which is M What has always attracted me with Aj is that Aj thinks big things long term and he knows that in this case that the world is moving to AI. and this is why the way we do decisions, for example, from a belie a material standpoint It's a very hard process where there's a ton of tradeos all the time and you can imagine the tension between people wanting to push for a better exterior part and then people wanting to push for a better interior part and then peopleeople wanting to have better technology. And then we have what we call the fund or the differentiation budget in the car. Aj absolutely it was no discussion that We would equip the car with higher inference compute and then higher memory because this is really the future and it's an opportunity for us completely reshape the way people interact with their cars. And actually in the long run to be honest It sols itself from an unit economic standpoint because As we do more and more interactions locally in the car We avoid the back and forth with the clouds. We avoid the connectivity costs and then we also don't have to pay for the inference costs on the cloud of And the long run is actually economically positive as well. That's not just a spreadsheet you made to win an argument that actually models out G. Beuse I could probably make them a spreadsheet to win an argument. The reason I ask that my next question was about inference costs, right? They're going up that there's rate limits and all the big providers. What model are you using right now? What are the frontier models you're using right now Actually, like the architecture that we have built is not model dependent. So really one of the foundations of the architecture is it allows us to interact and plug and play pretty much with different foundational models and similarly it can use different modalities in the way users can input their request, whether it's voice in this case, but then it can use vion as what It can instax if we want to enable that when it comes to the models themselves. We use currently a combination of internal models for everything that runs locally on the edge and then we used modns u with from Google. We have partnership with Google. Th are Uh going really well in terms of deep access to the advanced GMini models as well as the grounding of results which was also powered by Googment This is yet another question. you know, asked it to just what are the top five headlines in the Vverge Just to see. can this thing browse the web? And it returned some results. They were just, I think they're twenty four or forty eight hours old Right It was their top five headlines from yesterday. Does this thing have like a web browser in the background? orr is it just pulling from a Google data corpus? How does that work It actually can it should in theory connect real time And then this is where the grounding with the Google results come into the picture. And in theory it should give you the latest headlines. So if it didn't, then that's another one on me. Well, I was just curious like there's some, you know, a lot of people have this experience now where like the data in the model is old. and then there's some cutoff. And I was just trying to find the cutoff And then I had a long searching conversation with it about we need to buy a new air conditioner. and I was just asking it to do math about air conditioner efficiencies. This is very boring, but this is what I talked to your car about for a while. And it I just it occurred to me like I am making it think very hard. likeike I'm burning to like I am wasting more energy talking about how efficient of an air conditioner to buy. L this is not a good This' not a good ratio of energy spent to save energy over here. How does that work? I mean, you have to you have to pay a monthly fee for the connectivity package access assistant. But then I might burn way more tokens than that fee. could ever pay for. How does that math work out It really depends It's a great question. Now, obviously in these cases, there's all sorts of techniques of what we call rate limiting that we can apply. L if we have seen in your case that you're spending twenty hours discussing with the assistant, then we may do something behind the scenes. simimilar in the way we configure the models we I mean, given the types of interactions that you have in the car You would not be interacting with the latest and greatest say Ous four point seven models so that you bring you burn so many tokens. and then A lot of it also depends on the aggregation across users in terms of the types of requests as well as arbitration that we do between the edge and the cloud. And as I mentioned, the more we move to Ege and local compute, the var is for us in terms of overall inference costs So let me just ask you this question again. Now you've shipped the software, people are using it, you're getting extremely detailed feedback from me. Do you still think having buttons in the car is an anomaly I think I deeply think that voice has the chance to be the primary interface in the car I also think that buttons can exist, but then they shouldn't be the primary way with which you interact with the car. I think there's much more that is possible through voice where you can only do one single function, you don't have to go and fiddle with So many functions, you don't have to go even deep into the touch screen to look into specific features No Great voice experience can really elevate all of that and allow users Tonk to the car as a human would do And will you take the overall experience to the next level Are we going to get the H track buttons back in any future Rivians? That's really what I'm asking here Actually with the R two, we have a great way to have a tactile feedback U for Hing paddles on the wheel. Yeah. Yeah They arere really awesome. It's a good pivot, but I'm asking, Are we gonna to get the fan speed button back in the center stack And the center stack no, but we have the same in the halo inst It's a very compromise You knew it was coming and I have to ask you about carar playay here because it strikes me just as you as you Imagine this future of the car where it's connected to your calendar, it's connected to all this context. You just it has autonomy, which is something you're also working on U you get in the car and it knows it's time to go to work and you just say, let's go and the car takes off driving This is when you would use like a vast number of applications This might be when you have the focus to push the buttons again. I'll just make that argument. But this is when you would want a whole number of apps. And I hear from our readers every time I talk to a car executive The reason I want CarPay is because there's five thousand apps on my phone and no car OEM is ever going to support them on the in the built in infotainment This is where you would say, okay, project your phone to the center stack. The car's driving itself. haveave at it. phone projection all day Do you think that the tide is turning or are you still absolutely committed to not having car pight and raiviian vehicles I think first of all, it's really important to go through our philosophy How is see software in the car and how is see user interface? The challenge with screen mirring solutions is that they take over every single pix in the car. And that's not the way we see ourselves interact with our users U You drove our car four years ago. And you drove the car in the past few days And I hope you have seen how much change in the car and that's like truly by bringing and and features. I mean, not only changing user interface, but having your navigation know exactly about your drive mode, know exactly about your efficiency offering that level of convenience It is. really what is resonating with a lot of our customers. I mean, even if I look at our own internal statistics five years ago when we first the RNT and the RNS, the number one request from customers was Copplay. And at the time We do all sorts of survey with customers. moreore than seventy percent of customers were requesting carPay. In the recent survey, That number is less than twenty five percent now because with the level of features that We have ship to customers with the level of to an integration, with the level of convenience that we are bringing Bay is or under it o to that extent, is no longer the topic of discussion. And I think actually seeing right now with the advancement of AI technologies. is just another reason why I deeply believe that Arjer and Rivian, we made the right choice in terms of investing into our only technology and our software. cars are moving from, as you said, the buzzy word of software defined to AI defined and the possibilities that we have now to have such deep AI integration into the car It will make the entire play debate in the future completely obsolete. I really believe that the way you interact with apps with which are mono threaded Single button singled icons A lot of that will be now completely reshaped into a world where it will become an engetic integration that presents itself into a wholesome user experience to the user I buy that in the big picture, but give you an example of that. just I'll just put up a an idea that I get from our readers all the time. So for you to react to There are tons of little apps. They're basically media playing apps on phones. and it's trivial to like push the button and do the Carplay app. The one that I was thinking about, we got an email from Reader and he said, I have a Bible app that is never going to be inbilt into anyone's infotainment system. It's made by a small developer, and I love it, and that's why I need C cararplay and I'm always going to buy a car with CarPplay because of it That is about as small of an edge case as you get, but this one customer is going to pick a car based on it Are you going to make that developer build an agentic AI integration into the Rivian assistant orr are you just going lose that customer to carplay I mean, this is the beauty of like that technology disruption in which we are today. the answer in that case does not necessarily need to be we will build an aentic integration for that particular app. It can be, if it is like say a Spotify or an Apple music, absolutely. But then if it's a small app, the answer to that could be that from the Rvian Asistant, we have an integration to your favorite voice assistant on the car and then you can ask the v assistant on the car to play that particular app through Blutus Audient That is possible as we open up the framework and as we allow more integrations to bring your own digital ecosystem to the top So you're saying I've got we'll use Google because Gemini is more present on an Android phone than Siri is currently on an Phone. So is Google and they're also your partner So you're saying You talk to Rivian assistant, Rivian assistant knows about your Google account and your Android phone, and it's going to go talk to Gemini. and Gemini is going to go operate your phone and stream Bluetooth audio to the Rivian assistant In the future, all of that is possible Is that better or worse than phone projection? right? Its This is like a different kind of loop than just saying, put the interface here and let the user doing it It could be possible through phone projection. I think the challenge with phone projection again is that I mean, first of all, youll have to go like as you're driving, you'll have to go through your phone. in some cases, you have to press like multiple buttons so you get to the menu of your own app. The other thing is that it takes over the entire screen and that is a degradation of the experience. Now is the alternative solution like available right now No, but I think the beauty of the wave of technology in UriI is that we finally have the building blocks so that we can really reallyine those type of interactions and we can allow hooks now into your own personal device through a different way of interaction rather than truly integrating and to the app on the car itself. O take over the entire screen from your phone. There's a third path now, which is possible I mean, obviously, I think it might be easier with Google. again, they're your partner, but where would that connection to Google Assistant happen wouldould I be like I don't think I'm holding up my Android phone to the speaker and letting the assistants talk to each other out loud. That Although that would be fun. I mean that would be deeply hilarious to hear the two assistants just have a conversation. L can you please play the music app for me Is Do that happen in the cloud? Does it happen locally? Where does that integration point between assistants happen I mean, think about it as the assistant in the car will know how to talk to your take Jim and I, own personal assistant and then In that case, your own personal assistant would be controlling your phone. The reason I'm asking this in this way is At some point you have one main assistant and all the other things are sort of like agents that can talk to And then maybe no one's ever talking to Rivian assistant again R? Like this is kind of the you pull that thread all the way and Gemaniz is doing everything for you all the time Is that Is that a danger or are you just knowhere close to even having to worry about that Honestly, we don't worry about that because we know We' now I really opportunity that we have and we know the level the bread capabilities that we can offer. No other assistant will be able to as much as there haveian assistant about the Kon Cs none. Similarly The fact that we have the surface of integration sit in our own operating system enables a ton of opportunities in terms of use cases that you cannot simply do with your phone or you cannot simply do by calling another assistant. like imagine, okay, ye, I'm driving and then I'm in the near future, we should be able with the technology to have an engetic integration with your favorite delivery, and then you would say, okay I u