Google Pixel phones can act as a car key for ‘next-gen’ Rivian EVs

Ben Schoon | Jun 6 2024 - 12:15 pm PT

Rivian is bringing keyless entry powered by your smartphone to its latest electric vehicles, and it includes support for “select” Google Pixel devices.

Announced today, Rivian is refreshing the R1T and R1S with “next-generation” models which bring updated batteries, tweaked designs, improved drive units, and other significant improvements to many major components of the vehicles. Electrek has more on everything that’s new.

But, alongside the refresh, Rivian has also announced that these “next-generation” vehicles will support using iPhone, Apple Watch, and “select” Google Pixel devices as a car key.

Rivian explains that Apple users will be able to store their car key in Apple Wallet and share it with friends and family. The digital car key will be able to unlock and start the vehicle.

That same functionality will be available on Google Pixel devices.

Rivian owners can use car keys in Apple Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch, or with select Google Pixel devices, to seamlessly unlock and start up their vehicles, and even share keys digitally with family and friends.

Google Wallet is not directly mentioned by Rivian, but the app does support this exact use case on Google Pixel devices. As for why only “select” Pixels are supported, we suspect it has something to do with UWB, thought Rivian did not provide an answer on that. On a portion of Rivian’s website, though, ultrawideband is specifically mentioned.

We asked Rivian for more specifics on what Pixel devices will be supported, but there’s nothing available just yet. Rivian says that it will share more details when keyless entry arrives “later this Summer.” It’s unclear if the same functionality will be available on existing Rivian vehicles, but it sounds entirely possible.