After word got out that GM intends to phase out Apple CarPlay to install a built-in Google-powered infotainment experience on its future EVs that allows more customer data to be tracked and subscriptions to be charged, vehicle buyers are considering Ford, Toyota, and other makers who offer CarPlay.
Jamie L. Lareau And Phoebe Wall Howard for Detroit Free Press:
Will Lindley says he is ready to make the family’s next ride an electric vehicle and had hoped to buy it from General Motors. After all, his wife has been happy with her 2016 Cadillac SRX. But when they heard that GM intends to phase out Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on its future EVs, that was a deal breaker.
Lindley and others want the option the technology offers, which is to project their iPhone’s screen onto their vehicle’s infotainment display for everything from accessing contacts to apps. Instead, GM will offer a built-in Google-powered infotainment experience on its future EVs that offers versions of Google Maps, Google Assistant, Spotify, and more.
So, Lindley said, now he’s considering the all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E built by GM’s crosstown rival.
Ford spokesman Alan Hall told the Detroit Free Press. “We continue to offer Apple Carplay and Android Auto because customers love the capability that enables easy access and control of their smartphone apps, especially our EV customers.”
Lindley said, “Both of our cars work with CarPlay. The navigation is there, all the contacts for our phone are there, so if CarPlay is not an option, we’re going to go elsewhere.”
MacDailyNews Take: If GM sticks to this stupidity, it deserves its fate.
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This cannot be happening. I’ve always owned Chevy’s but I’m not going to buy anything that doesn’t have CarPlay. I can’t believe Chevy is this dumb.
Come to the Ford side-
“The Ford is what gives a Gentleman his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
Ok, Ben. Or is it Yoda?…
It surely wasn’t Toyoda speaking.
Dammit, beat me to it!!
🙂
When you consider 1) the penetration of the cellular smartphone in our culture, 2) the huge proportion of our society who use (and strongly identify with their) iPhones, and 3) the importance to smartphone owners to be able to integrate the iPhone into their automobile’s local network, it immediately seems contrary to logic that a major automobile manufacturer would willingly cripple its competition by not offering CarPlay integration.
The only rational I can think of is that GM must believe that by “forcing” car owners to accept Android and the increased access the Android system will give GM to this captive audience’s social beliefs and buying behavior, will become a valuable product that they can leverage, and ultimately reward their shareholders.
For the facts mentioned in the first paragraph, I think their plan will backfire, and they will be forced to undo their decision.
Or possibly Google has a traffic control/ vehicle management software GM is helping develop.
“All your decisions are belong to us” or something like that…
If all the cars can be linked together, perhaps to even be controlled as one… Picard Season 3 Episode 9 would want us that is very Borg-like…
They plan on resistance being FEUDAL….
“If all the cars can be linked together, perhaps to even be controlled as one”
didn’t they make a movie about that…wait, it was people.
Was this decision made by the same person who used to work at Anheuser-Busch?
Good thing I’m a Michelob Ultra drinker!!
-wait….shit!
Guess it’s back to Shiner Bock, Guinness Stout, Sam Adams Lager, Diamond Bear Porter and all the other high-carb (meaning delicious…) brews I miss.
Such anger in you people. I just don’t get it. How does the Bud Light campaign hurt you exactly? That said, it’s pretty bad beer. You actually drink it? Come to my country, we’ll get you a proper one.
Hurt? How about insult.
Here’s a question, how is it supposed to HELP sell beer to working class men (mainly) by using a woman insulting, sex-appropriating failed comedian? Men who drink these types of beer looooove women and not some fake ‘beyond women’ attention whore with no true sex appeal.
Understand? No??
Enjoy your Truly…
Bean-counter driven. Somebody made a powerpoint deck showing the subscription revenue from this decision, and $$ flashed before their eyes, but they left out the pesky variable of sales falling off a cliff.
I never consider GM/Chevy anyway
The truth comes out. The desire to support made in America by an American company isn’t as important as some anti-Cook posters here have whined about for the last decade. Software you haven’t even seen is enough to get your panties in a twist and make you avoid even considering a product from one of the last cornerstones of US manufacturing. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
There is nothing special about Carplay or Apple Maps or whatever that Apple has which can’t be delivered better by a well designed integrated software platform. You don’t have to buy the Google stuff. Most everyone with a brain already moved on from Apple Maps. The Music and Podcast apps truly suck. Why do you believe the Apple crapware is the ultimate?
Speaking of how terrible (insert auto brand name here) is from your outdated info…. You can pry my Corvette’s steering wheel from my cold dead hands. No car, imported or otherwise, does what it can do for less than twice the price. It runs circles around Ford GTs and Vipers which have been priced like supercars but have horrible reliability. GM hit that one outta the park, yes even on the interior materials this time around. Friend’s Cadillac V-spec is also a rocket ship. GM builds fine vehicles, just not for Korean prices. Of course, you can break into any Hyundai in 30’seconds, but you get what you pay for.
If all you can do is be a stupid brand hater or cheerleader, then your points aren’t valid. Seems to be only label pasters and alt right hate mongers left on this beleaguered site though so brainwashed behavior should be expected.
Only pitiful morons buy EVs.
Why Americans Aren’t Buying EVs
But don’t worry, the Biden administration (which only exists due to ballot harvesting in a handful of inner cities) won’t take this as a lesson on why government control of the economy doesn’t work – rather, we’re certain they’ll see it as a prompt to shell out more taxpayer purchasing power as “incentives” to fundamentally alter the course of the notoriously low-margin, capital intensive, auto business – and then blame Donald Trump when their plans don’t work out.
Let’s Blame Trump for the cat fights the mouse.
blah, blah, blah
GM = Google Mode. No thanks. The dark side isn’t for me.
Anti-Woke means anti-diversity and anti-cancel culture so the anti-Woke crowd should patronize GM’s anti-diversity and cancel culture products.
oh well, the shine is wearing off the apple.
GM builds garbage, and so does Ford for that matter! Don’t get me started on Chrysler/Fiat!
GM builds as good of cars as any other mainstream maker. If it has the wherewithal to reproduce the capabilities of CarPlay without paying the Apple tax, why wouldn’t they? Stop pretending Carplay was so great. It isn’t.
And don’t begin to pretend that Apple Maps is equivalent to Google Maps.
If Apple wants to be relevant in mass market automobiles or software, they need to be affordable and a lot better than the half assed software they develop today.
So go ahead and buy your POS automobile based on superficial stuff that you may be able to revise later, via aftermarket software or hardware. Same as it ever was.
The car has become the accessory to the iPhone.