Autobayng News Team
Major automakers must develop their own software architectures or risk losing market share by the early 2030s, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has warned. Speaking on a podcast, Scaringe said that right now, most major automakers rely on “little islands of software” for specific functions that aren’t always able to communicate with each other. This reality is not compatible with an AI-driven automotive world.“I think it’s inconceivable that by, call it early 2030s, that a car company can exist at scale and maintain their market share and not have a software defined architecture,” said Scaringe.”There’s so many abstraction layers between the actual code and the manufacturer. I think that must go away for you to be competitive in a world of AI, where you want deep contextual understanding of what’s happening across the vehicle and being able to create these highly immersive, highly evolving experiences that get better and better over time,” he added.
EV market share at stake, warns Rivian CEO
Automakers who don’t adapt could soon feel the consequences, Scaringe said.
“If manufacturers don’t make that change, they’re just going to lose market share. And the ones that do have that technology are going to gain a lot of market share in the next 10 years,” he said.
Scaringe acknowledged his pitch is somewhat self-interested. Rivian, which has its own technology stack, has an up to $5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen to work on developing software for both companies. Beyond similar agreements, traditional automakers might struggle, he said.“I think every car company is either going to try to develop it themselves, which is hard because they don’t typically have those skill sets,” Scaringe said.
“Try to source it from suppliers. That’s very hard because those companies are precisely the ones that don’t want to see all their little computers go away. Or, work with us,” he noted.
Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals.
Subscribe to Newsletter to get latest insights & analysis in your inbox.
All about ETAuto industry right on your smartphone!
- Download the ETAuto App and get the Realtime updates and Save your favourite articles.
