Future Rivian Features Coming (i.e. Dash Cam in Fall) - According to VP of SW Engineering

[pc500]

Hard to add via software I'm afraid...

I actually don't think this is entirely off the table it is from an off the grid perspective but Sirius XM has been moving to a data-driven streaming service.

Sponsored

 

[pc500]

Perfectly understandable and I'm not arguing against the merits of that for those that place value in it. It just might be 2024 before they get there.

They have to determine the perceived return on investment for investing finite time and resources into delivering on something. It's not a vacuum where the question is - do we enable USB audio playback or not? The question is where does that fall on the list, which is pages long, of requests. Do we give them USB audio first, or reduce vampire drain? Or would they like USB first, or another music app? They think through a process of, ok how many people know and care what lossless audio is? Maybe 1%. And then of those, what percentage of their time is spent out of data connectivity? Many audiophiles will rarely if ever be out of connectivity (I've only been for less than 10 of 1,900 mi thus far), and the adventurers are still only less than 5% most likely (600 out of 12,000 mi /year).

When doing this analysis, they would arrive at a fairly low perceived "return" equal to it being something that affects 0.01% of miles driven by owners. They would probably have another variable for whether there is a reasonable, even if suboptimal, alternative currently, which there is (blue tooth). That process would spit out a result that says - this is not an issue likely to impact our ability to sell vehicles and maintain desired levels of customer satisfaction for the time being. And perhaps these are the stats they assumed in their planning, but over time they will collect data that tells them the average time people spend adventuring out of connectivity is not 5%, but 20%, and research shows that audiophiles make up 5% of the population, not 1%. They can update their model and restack the priority list. Who knows.

For the people that care about it deeply, it means everything and might even ruin their experience and these numbers are meaningless, and that's fine. But Rivian has to think about things from a macro perspective. That's my only point.

USB audio was certainly a lower priority but it's also fairly low cost. They can peel off a a few of the 600 developers to work on it a year from now and spend two months on it and it'll be done.

 

[pc500]

I don't know what BT has to do with anything as that's not the comparison. The offerings for high quality audio are streaming services, which is sufficient for the vast majority of their user base. How does plugging your phone in, and streaming music from one of those services to your phone and transmitting to the vehicle via a cable improve audio quality? You're still streaming, just to a different device.

If you're saying you are playing music you own and is local to your phone/device, my point is most people stopped owning music a long time ago so it wasn't on their radar. They may very well have not had a single person working there that does that. All of the music you own can be streamed through Spotify or Amazon at quality that 99.9% of people can't distinguish between vs. the highest quality lossless local media. Amazon UHD is on paper 10x higher quality than Spotify Premium yet I can't really tell the difference if it were a blind test. The highest quality local media wouldn't even be that much of a difference to Amazon, so you're already running into diminishing returns. Your Toyota had/has it because they've been around long enough to have needed it at some point, and once you have it it's easy enough to just keep it because you still need USB plugs anyway. Starting from a blank state, Rivian is just asking themselves, how do people listen to music in this day in age? They stream it, so that's the only avenue they went down.

Which brings the question do they support the higher bit rate Spotify over the cell data Network?

 

[electruck]

The lack of cell coverage is usually addressed through offline and cached streaming playback which is the same way I use Spotify on my cell phone with no cell coverage.

Certainly a possibility but is that actually a current or future feature of Rivian's Spotify client? Are there settings for an offline mode? How much storage has Rivian allocated for offline content? Right now I think they buffer just enough to smooth out spotty cell coverage. Will they eventually cache enough content to support being disconnected for multiple days?

 

[godfodder0901]

I actually don't think this is entirely off the table it is from an off the grid perspective but Sirius XM has been moving to a data-driven streaming service.

You can add SiriusXM right now via Bluetooth from your phone. But that won't work in low coverage situations that others are describing. And without the hardware to support SiriusXM, that limitation won't change.

 

[pc500]

You can add SiriusXM right now via Bluetooth from your phone. But that won't work in low coverage situations that others are describing. And without the hardware to support SiriusXM, that limitation won't change.

If you're willing to go the Bluetooth route there may be a solution. SiriusXM has a dash mounted thing that is a radio tuner, connecting via Bluetooth like your cell phone. It's mostly used by truckers and the likes, but previously was how you added it to cars.

I know it's not ideal, but is a solution for live content (ie sport's) if offline playback of the sxm app isn't sufficient.

 

[ERguy]

But the point is, less than 0.5% of people likely play music from a USB drive

That's nonsense. Most people plug their phones in to cars and listen to music using Android auto or carplay, both of which are common on mass produced vehicles.

0.5%... No way. You are out of touch with reality.

Rivian doesn't need to reinvent the wheel on stuff that already works. Rivian will never be better at designing and updating apps than Apple or Google, and they clearly made a mistake here.

Similarly, there was no reason to over engineer AC vents.

Do you know how to keep the vents from pointing the wrong direction when you turn on a vehicle? Just ask Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, and everyone other than Tesla. Their vents work well.

Manual vents are easier and faster to adjust and don't glitch out.

Rivian designed a cool truck, but they brought a lot of these glitches and problems on themselves by trying too hard to be different.

 

[atebit]

I wonder how people survived 25 years ago!

A sun visor full of CDs and navigating by trying to read a printout from Mapquest while you’re driving.

I, for one, welcome our new infotainment masters.

 

[bd5400]

That's nonsense. Most people plug their phones in to cars and listen to music using Android auto or carplay, both of which are common on mass produced vehicles.

0.5%... No way. You are out of touch with reality.

To be fair, the person you quoted referred to playing music from a USB drive, which is not the same as a car supporting CarPlay or Android Auto. The number of people who play music via USB through their phones is likely exponentially higher than those who load up USB drives with music and plug them into their cars. I expect even that number to drop in the future though if wireless CarPlay continues to spread across the industry.

 

[electruck]

If you're willing to go the Bluetooth route there may be a solution. SiriusXM has a dash mounted thing that is a radio tuner, connecting via Bluetooth like your cell phone. It's mostly used by truckers and the likes, but previously was how you added it to cars.

I know it's not ideal, but is a solution for live content (ie sport's) if offline playback of the sxm app isn't sufficient.

This has been mentioned here before and I believe one drawback that was mentioned is that the Rivian can only connect to a single bluetooth device at a time meaning you couldn't use this and take calls through the truck at the same time.

 

[jemkewl]

Add me to the 1% that doesn't prefer Bluetooth for my music and would appreciate a higher fidelity option for a very well done stock audio system.

 

[DJG]

That's nonsense. Most people plug their phones in to cars and listen to music using Android auto or carplay, both of which are common on mass produced vehicles.

0.5%... No way. You are out of touch with reality.

Rivian doesn't need to reinvent the wheel on stuff that already works. Rivian will never be better at designing and updating apps than Apple or Google, and they clearly made a mistake here.

Similarly, there was no reason to over engineer AC vents.

Do you know how to keep the vents from pointing the wrong direction when you turn on a vehicle? Just ask Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, and everyone other than Tesla. Their vents work well.

Manual vents are easier and faster to adjust and don't glitch out.

Rivian designed a cool truck, but they brought a lot of these glitches and problems on themselves by trying too hard to be different.

Plugging into run CP/AA has nothing to do with playback from USB. Most people are plugging in to run a streaming service. Ok, 0.5% may be slightly exaggerated, the share of music industry revenues from digital sales of albums and singles was about 3.5% in 2021 and shrinking into oblivion. Rivian is within reason to care little about local media playback and can reasonably assume doing so will have no material effect on their business.

 

[DJG]

Which brings the question do they support the higher bit rate Spotify over the cell data Network?

Why wouldn't they? Spotify's highest bit rate streaming is still measured in kb per second....You can stream Amazon Ultra HD, 10x more data than Spotify, on a cellular network without issue even in spotty reception. Music files, even high quality ones, are microscopic in the world of 4/5g cellular data.

 

[DJG]

Certainly a possibility but is that actually a current or future feature of Rivian's Spotify client? Are there settings for an offline mode? How much storage has Rivian allocated for offline content? Right now I think they buffer just enough to smooth out spotty cell coverage. Will they eventually cache enough content to support being disconnected for multiple days?

Who knows, but once again we're asking about solutions to extreme use cases that isn't going to be their priority right now. I've gone 20-30 minutes without coverage and no interruption to streaming on Spotify, don't know how much longer that would have lasted. If you're going camping in an area without coverage, you can play music once stopped through the camp speaker or another speaker of choice. While driving, you can choose to cache/download content to your device and play it over BT when out of service.

So, the question really is, how much attention should Rivian give to allowing owners to have lossless, pristine quality audio in any and all conditions, with or without service? Certainly a noble pursuit when they have a lot of other high value add things buttoned up.

 

[electruck]

So, the question really is, how much attention should Rivian give to allowing owners to have lossless, pristine quality audio in any and all conditions, with or without service? Certainly a noble pursuit when they have a lot of other high value add things buttoned up.

And Rivian determines the answer to that question based on the bigger picture of the features their customers want and ask for so quit trying to tell the rest of us what our priorities should be.

Sponsored