Rivian's software chief thinks you don't need CarPlay or buttons

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Appatel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Wasim Ben Sayat, the chief software officer at Rivian, and the co-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 $6 billion investment from Volkswagen, and it effectively puts Wasim 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 wanted to know how that joint venture works and how it's structured to preserve Rivian's unique software culture, which you'll hear Wessem talk about is the core element of the entire thing. I also wanted to know where the lines were, what 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 crew.

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