Rivian Meets Anime: New UI Update

The electric car manufacturer Rivian has made an update to its user interface available for download, and it looks like it was inspired by anime.

Rivian’s former head of design Eric Wood, who I remember from his SAP days and who has been head of design at VW Cariad since this month, has published a comment on LinkedIn that is at least as interesting as the new user interface itself:

The real story here isn’t about new technologies; it’s about risk-taking. Throughout the project, it wasn’t clear that this would work out. There were concerns it might look cheesy, that the 2D shading effect wouldn’t translate well to 3D, that the frame rate could be laggy or inconsistent, or that it could bog down the entire system. Despite these challenges, a group of passionate individuals worked together to push the limits and create something genuinely unique, with no guarantee of success—and importantly, leadership created the space to enable this and encouraged it.

Seeing the latest UI update from the Rivian team really fills me with pride. It’s been a year-long journey, deeply collaborative across various disciplines—UX/UI Designers, Illustrators, 3D Visualization experts, Studio Designers, and, of course, the Software Engineers who brought it all together.

Bravo team! I can’t wait to see where you go from here.

What do you think of this visualization?

This article was also published in German.