Rivian has officially announced its acquisition of 'A Better Route Planner'
ABRP
There is a significant move in the electric vehicle landscape. Rivian, the Michigan-based automaker, officially announced its acquisition of A Better Routeplanner (ABRP), the popular Swedish EV route planning app. This official announcement comes less than 24 hours after Rivian signed on with Tesla's North American Charging Standard.
Rivian's Power Play
The acquisition of ABRP is a noteworthy move by Rivian. The app, known for its superior route planning capabilities, offers an edge in EV infrastructure. ABRP's comprehensive data-based insights into consumer behavior can help Rivian expand its charging infrastructure more efficiently.
Rivian's decision to integrate ABRP technology into its vehicles and mobile app may offer a higher level of customization in route calculation, providing advantages that few other services offer. Combined with the recent deal to adopt Tesla's charging standard, this move suggests Rivian is making concerted efforts to offer its customers broad access to charging infrastructure, potentially diluting Tesla's exclusivity in this regard.
Eroding Tesla's Competitive Advantage
With ABRP integrated into its operations, Rivian vehicles will likely be more user-friendly and adaptive, and make range anxiety a thing of the past - a major selling point for potential EV buyers. Plus, with the influx of data obtained from a diverse and active user base, Rivian will be better positioned to address locations that lack or have underperforming chargers — a direct challenge to Tesla's current market dominance.
Despite this acquisition, ABRP will continue as a standalone app for all EV users, ensuring it remains an essential tool for other EV brands and charger networks. While this promises benefits to the broader EV community, it poses a potential threat to Tesla as it allows for more competition and innovation in the market - not that Tesla minds; in fact it encourages competition.
Implications for Tesla
While Rivian's acquisition of ABRP poses a clear threat to Tesla, it also emphasizes the increased competition in an industry that used to have just one player. It's clear that the EV industry is a highly dynamic space, and the competition is only set to intensify. As new developments unfold, one thing remains certain - there will be several battles between Tesla and all EV makers, including Rivian, and the consumer will benefit.
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Winter is here, and temperatures are dropping, so one of the most common Tesla questions is about to resurface.
If you’ve landed here after frantically searching about “smoke” coming from your Tesla while Supercharging, take a deep breath—it’s completely normal.
Tesla Smoking While Charging
If you’re Supercharging in freezing weather—even with preconditioning—you might notice steam rising from your Tesla. But rest assured, your car isn’t smoking.
Your Tesla’s heat pump is hard at work warming both the cabin and battery to keep you comfortable and ensure optimal charging temperatures. Over time, condensation and ice build-up in the heat exchanger coils.
Why Does It Happen?
When you reach a Supercharger with your vehicle, the heat pump is still running hot, but without the cold air from driving to keep the heat exchanger coils cool, the ice and condensation quickly start to evaporate—creating what looks like smoke.
Since this typically happens near the front of the vehicle, where a car would traditionally have an engine, new vehicle owners can be startled by the discovery. However, rest assured that it’s just water vapor and it’s completely normal in cold weather.
In fact, this behavior can be experienced in any EV with a heat pump in cold climates. So, if you saw steam coming out of your vehicle and panicked, don’t worry—you’re not alone.
Now that you know what’s happening, go ahead and Supercharge with confidence.
Tesla made a lot of improvements in the 2024 Holiday Update, including more than 15 undocumented improvements that were included in the release. One of these was a stealthy performance improvement to the YouTube app.
Several people have mentioned they’ve seen improved performance on YouTube since this year’s Holiday Update - and there’s an interesting reason why.
YouTube Improvements
The improved YouTube performance in Tesla vehicles comes from an unexpected source—Tesla actually rolled back support for YouTube’s newer AV1 video encoding. Instead, vehicles now default to the older VP9 encoding standard.
While AV1 is highly efficient in terms of bandwidth, it requires considerably more processing power to decode and display videos. VP9, on the other hand, is less computationally demanding but uses more bandwidth to achieve the same video quality. This trade-off means smoother playback and better overall performance, even if it comes at the cost of slightly higher data usage.
Intel Inside
The VP9 video codec that the YouTube app is now using is much easier to decode, making it less taxing on the vehicle’s processor. This change is particularly beneficial for Tesla vehicles with Intel processors, which previously struggled to stream video at just 720p. When using AV1, these vehicles often experienced stuttering, sometimes forcing the YouTube app to automatically downgrade playback to 480p.
With this update, Intel-based Teslas should now be able to stream at 1080p smoothly. Streaming at 1440p is also possible, although occasional stutters still occur as the system keeps up with the decoding process.
Intel-based vehicles are the big winners with this change, but this appears to affect AMD Ryzen-based infotainment units as well, providing even smoother playback.
Chromium Web App
Tesla’s Theater apps aren’t native applications; instead, they run as chromeless web apps, leveraging the open-source browser built into Teslas known as Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome). Although this works quite well, there is a severe limitation - Chromium hardware acceleration isn’t supported on Linux, the operating system Tesla uses for their OS.
As a result, Tesla vehicles rely on software decoding instead of hardware decoding, which would otherwise handle video playback far more efficiently. A potential solution could be for Tesla to transition away from Chromium-based web apps in favor of a Mozilla Firefox-based browser, as Firefox does support hardware acceleration on Linux. This switch could also open the door to better streaming performance and the possibility of expanding Tesla’s in-car entertainment options.
However, Tesla’s choice of Chromium likely stems from Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements for streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, which rely on DRM-enabled playback. Firefox on Linux has had inconsistent support for DRM due to codec availability and variations in operating system versions.
We’re hopeful that Tesla will either adopt Firefox or develop a fully native application to improve video streaming, rather than continuing with the current web-based Tesla Theater. This shift could also pave the way for additional in-car applications built on Tesla’s native Linux environment—perhaps even reviving the long-rumored Tesla App Store.
Regardless, this update is a welcome improvement, particularly for YouTube, which remains one of the most widely used Theater Mode apps due to its accessibility, free content, and mix of short and long-form videos. It remains to be seen whether similar improvements are made for Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming platforms.
If you’ve noticed improved performance in Theater Mode, now you know why.