Ideally, my car would look like a BT speaker, possibly with a microphone and some controls, to the phone. I don't want a dedicated satnav, I don't want an elaborate in-car entertainment system. The reason is twofold. The first is that all of these in-car systems are pretty dated even after a couple of years. The second is that they tend to be fairly low quality to begin with.
The system in my car that integrates with the phone is a piece of junk. Not only is the microphone system completely useless and the connection procedure so badly implemented it'll fail regularly, but I've recently learned that the system in my car tends to break after a few years. Which has happened in my car. Which makes one of the car's ECUs confused so my dashboard now has a flashing indicator that isn't going to go away until I've spent a pile of cash to either replace the system or rip it out in a manner that isn't documented or supported.
The only thing I want in a car is the simplest for of integration possible, preferably using components I can rip out and replace with something better and a system for mounting my phone without having to buy all manner of silly dodads.
> The first is that all of these in-car systems are pretty dated even after a couple of years.
CarPlay can't really get out of date any more than iOS can get out of date. It's just a software push. The main problem with the stereo in my car is that not everything is in CarPlay, so you have this sort of absurd situation where CarPlay is supposedly just one function of many, when obviously FM radio should just be an app icon in CarPlay, and the audio settings should be an app in CarPlay, and so on.
CarPlay is the OS and the stereo unit also has its own OS, so CarPlay is basically like running an emulated OS on another computer. That's obviously very silly.
It’s a little silly, but it avoids the complexity of the car needing to describe every feature to CarPlay. It’s very hard to create an abstraction that allows for any capability, setting, message to be displayed and interacted with.
For instance, some 4x4’s have 2D inclinometers. Modern trucks have all sorts of crazy optimizations for towing.
Requiring CarPlay to understand and adopt new car-specific features gets crazy.
Making CarPlay a system that runs apps provided by the car is also crazy complex.
I have no doubt we’re heading that direction, but it is such a more complicated system for marginal benefit that it’s not surprising we’re stuck at a plateau where it works for 80% of scenarios.
It needs to get there quick. The golden goose is EV range. If your phone doesn't know when you need to recharge your batteries, Apple Maps and the rest are functionally useless.
Well actually ... just make an app that talks to some API in the car's system. You'll of course have to do it for both phone OSes, but it seems quite doable.
You don't want a bunch of different car API system, you'd have to deal with so many issues like large (ongoing) investment and support from Apple and Google. Maybe you could get support for some things like AC control via Matter but car manufacturers would struggle to get proprietary features supported.
You just need car specific app icons to appear inside of the Apple and Google UIs. Since Cars reach EOL you don't want infotainment system to have to depend on iOS or Android SDKs/APIs since those will change and the cars will stop getting updates. You want a very loose coupling between the car and the mobile device.
To me that means progressive web apps (PWA). All it needs is some type of registry/discovery mechanism (that isn't Cloud based). You make the connection between your car and mobile device, the local app registry is scanned and the PWAs are installed.
The dash screen really should be integrated into the OBD system so you can read codes etc without a seperate code reader. It doesn't seem that hard to do.
I've mentioned it before on here, but the Citroen Oli is a cheap EV (prototype) car that is a) cute as a button, and b) sacrifices a lot of fluff that we have misled ourselves into thinking are requirements. I'm basically the opposite of its target market, but really interested in it.
One of the things that it has done (that your post reminded me of) is that it eliminated the onboard stereo. There is a dock for a phone (I think in this prototype iteration it only supports a single model of iPhone, but I assume that will change?) and there is a dashboard where a dashboard is expected that will integrate with the phone, and there are optional bluetooth speakers and corresponding mount points in the car (so you can take them with you or not have them at all if you like)
This is the closest I've seen to your vision, and it makes sense. Dodge/Jeep do a good job of providing infotainment systems, but no matter how good they are, unless they're outsourced to Apple or Google (who will always be looking for a way to steer customers to their platforms) there's just not really any way for a car company to keep up with the feature velocity of either.
I like this concept for the most part, but I would like the option for it to have built in speakers (and an amp). I'm fine to plug in my phone or pair it with the amp to provide sound.
It looks like a pretty bare bones car, and I like that it doesn't have a screen at all. I suppose if it needs a UI for configuring vehicle settings, I guess this could be done using a phone over bluetooth or wifi. That's about the only thing I use the screen in my vehicle for, everything else is from my phone.
No, I don't see the problem. It seems like the proprietary shaped bluetooth speakers and their mounting points will be more of a problem in 20 years than a simple analog sound input that goes to an amp and speakers. I can plug my iPhone 14 into a 50 year old stereo. I want that level of simplicity and compatibility!
In 20 years it is going to be impossible to find replacements for those bluetooth speakers that fit in the proprietary holders they've designed. If they want to go minimalist and simple, go with analog speakers, that have a simple amp and a simple analog input that I can plug any analog source into (including a bluetooth receiver if I really need a wireless input).
Man I am loving the design & interior of that car. I wonder how you know how fast you're going though? There doesn't seem to be a speedometer anywhere.. Maybe in the little black bar at the top of the dash there's a screen hidden in there? Gotta have one for the legally mandated backup cam anyway.
That's exactly what I bought on my 2012, and I fear I may not be able to get it again if I have to replace the car. I got the lowest-spec stereo that still had Bluetooth. It also has AM/FM/CD which I use quite a bit, but no nav, no integrated streaming, no telematics, no GSM radio that bricks a bunch of features when the GSM network gets decommissioned, none of that.
Reason being, I worked in infotainment testing at the time, and I didn't want my car to remind me of work.
It's been fantastic. Nothing about it feels outdated. My kitchen appliances are from around the same era and likewise, they just work like they always have. There's no maps to expire, no subscriptions to renew, nothing of the sort.
Equally importantly, it doesn't spy on me. There's no EULA to accept when I start the car, no continuous feed of my location being sent to advertisers (unless I take my phone with me, which is my choice each trip).
And no chance of perverts spying on me with the car's cameras. It doesn't have any.
All I've ever wanted is a head unit I can dock my phone into, either as a faceplate or just like it was a cassette, so it plays music and stays charged.
So good news - GM will allow you to dock your phone via bluetooth and let you use the car as simple speaker. So - not a problem for you. Just a problem for those of us that actually like the facilities offered by Android Auto or Carplay - and want to use that instead of the car company's frequently crappy and un-updateable software.
Like how I want a dumb TV with the system of my choice hooked up behind it. You can't trust the TV manufacturer to keep the OS up-to-date, and with TV prices always going down it's inevitable they'll cut corners to increase their profit margins.
Ya, I don't trust smart tvs not to show me ads at some point in the future, or spy on my behavior without telling me, so I don't even give my TVs my wifi password.
I'll update the firmware with a usb stick and use an Apple TV. Apple TVs are more expensive, but I feel less like I'm the product and they're popular enough and with few enough models that any major problems will be widely known.
You're right, game console are more expensive. But both of them are more expensive than the other streaming boxes/sticks that most people buy (roku, chromecast, fire stick).
Having cameras and microphones in TVs seems like a good idea until you remember that the companies that make them are about as trustworthy as a fart after an all-you-can-eat buffet.
It sounds like you've given up completely on what a car infotainment could be because car companies suck at software so bad.
I had an old GMC Canyon through college, and the only thing it had was Aux. After college i bought a model 3 when they first came out and I absolutely love the infotainment system. I love that I can play witcher 3 on my Tesla. My bluetooth always connects. I can unlock my car with my app and it never fails me.
Not the OP, but I have. I’ve driven cars from cheap econoboxes to exotics and all of them have had mediocre infotainment and navigation systems at best.
At some point it will fail. You will not be able to fix it yourself. And if it is even fixable, it will cost you a fortune to fix. Let's talk in another 10 years and a few cars later how you feel about it then.
Tesla's hold their value better than any other car on the market. In 10 years, i'll spend an order of magnitude less on maintainance than every other car on the market.
I do think that navigation which takes into account your car’s battery is a good feature. But ideally there would be a way to expose that to your navigation app.
but you can easily do that with a dedicated navigation app on your phone, which will have more current recharge points, and will also allow you to bring your favorites easily to one car to another (or each driver can has it's own)
This is basically what I have in my 7yo Kia, and I'm definitely happy with it, and hope the same setup will still be available in my next car. Also, physical buttons!
I don't even want the Bluetooth, just put a USB-C hole on the tape deck. That should be a standard size and easily replaceable with aftermarket components anyway.
So many of these cars will sit in junkyards over this flawed tech era in just a few years... Just one change to phone connectors can cause sudden obsolescence of nav and other major components used in so many cars.
We are paying a lot extra for this tech that has a very limited shelf life. Simpler is becoming much better than new at the fastest rate ever. I really don't need my car to be cutting edge any more, because that requires too many damn monthly subscription payments.
When I’ve used CarPlay I’ve been generally impressed with the integration with my phone. However in my Tesla it’s not available. But that said it’s proprietary system is decent, except the music player which is tedious to play specific songs or playlists from. The satnav or gps is pretty good. The best though is that it doesn’t get dated. It continuously updates with revs. This is almost certainly the future across all brands.
>I don't want an elaborate in-car entertainment system. The reason is twofold. The first is that all of these in-car systems are pretty dated even after a couple of years. The second is that they tend to be fairly low quality to begin with.
Third: they are distracting while you should be focussing on the road.
There’s a solution for every case, there are aftermarket adapters that allow you to connect a standard audio system that can be replaced later on if needed be. As for the “simple integration” you cannot go simpler than bluetooth audio, it’s basically a wirelless aux input.
A car is a high-margin item, so the impact of even a handful of consumers choosing not to buy must be huge, right? Whereas, they would need to "monetize" (ugh) many many more units to turn back that lost profit.
And as the shakeup due to EVs begins, even loyal consumers will be considering other makes. My girlfriend bought a car recently. CarPlay was not negotiable for her, very high up on the list.
I thought the whole "integration" thing was bullshit in the first place, but a proprietary GM system?
This marks a return to the days of massively overpriced AM radios. The problem now is the way these systems are physically molded into the car. Back in the day you could put a good radio in. Good luck with that now.
All we really needed for the last 15 years was a recess in every dashboard in which to put our already-giant phones, with a power and audio dock. I can't deny that CarPlay works relatively decently in my experience, but it's not really necessary.
Even worse is the removal of auxiliary jacks from car stereos, another huge regression. So people can't even get a Bluetooth adapter that plugs into it and supplant this GM nonsense.
There is no end to the mania for screwing the consumer. Subscription car features... WTF. Keep your old cars, people.
There are plenty of aftermarket head units for specific cars.
It's not that hard for the manufacturers to make another plastic part.
You shouldn't have to though, now that there is this dual communication standard.
It's getting very hard, since lots of modern cars don't have space behind the dash for a head unit, since their infotainment screen is now not commonly attached to the amp.
If your car has space for a head unit, and a fascia is available, and a steering wheel controls adapter is available, and a backup camera adapter (sometimes eight needed for the cars with "birdseye" view systems), and a climate control adapter, and sometimes a navigation system adapter, you might be able to seamlessly install a headunit. It just might cost a lot.
A hefty bit of reverse re-engineering and quite some pain in the neck. Also you'll do everyone a favour if you vote with your dollar for a car that has dedicated controls for AC and such.
I can't speak directly for these aftermarket infotainment replacements but implementations of aftermarket ECUs for example record CAN bus traffic to build a database of the various node IDs, messages, and values.
I personally love CarPlay. A requirement for my next vehicle is wireless CarPlay, and I will not even begin to consider it if it does not have that. Some people want ventilated seats or a V8. I want CarPlay. I think this is a very silly move by GM that they will quickly reverse.
After having wireless CarPlay, not sure I can ever go back. It’s really nice to get in the car and just go, and everything from my phone is automatically on the dash and controllable with the car’s native controls.
The last thing I want is for my car to be another device with its own subscription, accounts, applications, configuration, etc.
It's a bit of a pain if two people share the car. Even worse if two people share more than one car. There never seems to be an option to force use a specific phone when more than one is possible. They all seem sticky to a phone and it always seems to be the other one.
I guess a good thing about carplay is that when traveling with someone else, they can use their phone to update things like maps, and we're not completely locked out of it until we come to a stop.
I really liked wireless CarPlay when testing the Enyaq and wondered about the multi user situation. Already today Bluetooth always seems to get exactly the wrong phone. In our current setup we just have a phone holder with plug in which we shove the phone. Then it is done. It takes longer to pull the phone out of the pocket than to connect it.
The only downside to CarPlay is that the battery stays at 100% charge. I wish I could limit that to 80%. Especially if we take long drives this degrades the battery unnecessarily.
> The only downside to CarPlay is that the battery stays at 100% charge. I wish I could limit that to 80%. Especially if we take long drives this degrades the battery unnecessarily.
I think that fast charging is just as bad, if not worse.
The batteries used in phones degrade quickest below 20% and above 80% of charge. This is already at room temperature. When the batteries or phone is hot the degradation at those state of charge (SoC) is even worse. In the car when using CarPlay the phone can get really warm, especially if it is in the sunlight which tends to happen easily. When left in the shade it gets hot due to restricted airflow.
Therefore I would like to limit the SoC on my phone to not excessively degrade the battery. I very rarely, if ever, need more than 80% of the design capacity of my iPhone anyway. So I prefer it to last longer.
100% isn't over-charging. It's just not the GP's preferred spot on the battery energy (hours of charge) vs battery lifetime (days/years) curve for daily use.
I do wish phones would provide more control here. I would also take 80% charge many (but not all) days in exchange for my battery life after a year staying higher.
lmgtfy: Its the extremes (0% and 100%) that degrades LiIon the quickest, if you want the longest life ideally you'd keep it 30-70% the whole time, ymmv (and also thresholds).
And it is a pity manufacturers don't support you in doing stop-charging-at-x if you wanted, e.g. a simple thing for software to do, but impossible without rooting on Android.
Its been a feature since at least the S9. Source: Had to 'fix' my girlfriend's phone only charging to 85%. Was a mystery how that setting got randomly enabled, really.
I can't recall for certain if my old S7 had that option but I don't think it did.
Although that's not really a downside of CarPlay itself, and you can also solve that with the Optimized Battery Charging feature, in iOS 13 or later. So just turn that on.
I have it turned on and it helps when charging during the night. It will charge until 80% and then charge until 100% for just in time when it thinks I need it.
But then when I get in my car it will just stay charged at 100% all the time.
My wife and I share a VW Tiguan and this is a constant annoyance. To switch devices you have to go out of CarPlay -> Settings -> Swipe left to the second screen of controls -> Mobile Device Settings -> Select device.
And since the device it initially chooses to connect to sometimes takes 30 seconds or so to be fully connected (during which time you can't make any selections in this menu), you have to sit and wait until it connects the device you don't want to be connected before you can switch to the one you do want. And then you wait about 30 seconds for the correct device to connect.
I have a much older car from 2007 so no Android Auto or Apple Carplay for me but I thought I was supposed to sit there after I start my car for at least half a minute?
Maybe not needed for newer cars?
I start the car and wait for the dashcam to chime. I start driving once it chimes. I have an older Aukey, not hard wired, so it takes about half a minute for it to chime which I thought was perfect timing.
Assuming temps over -20°C and a car newer than 30 years, I think you’re fine to drive away as soon as the engine is stable after starting. That’s probably well under 5 seconds and, unless you’re trying to do an old LeMans race start, isn’t something that I’d consciously wait for.
Because it's an old Kia and there's three menus to click thorough and one confirmation screen. I'd guess 15 is a little long, but on average it takes at least 10 seconds.
Right, this is my main problem with Bluetooth too. It’s much better if you can just plug a cable into the phone you want to use and have it just work (and keep the phone charged too).
You can’t quite do that with any car I’ve been in. CarPlay is close; it would be great if that became an open standard with standard connectors.
We've done this in numerous rental cars. Many variations of the same problem -- it picks the phone it picks. We've had to resort to deleting one phone from the car (and the phone's bluetooth) to get it back on the other phone.
It's inconceivable how the pairings are so bad and there isn't just a button for each phone connected that just works. Even when switching does work, all it takes is one blip and it hops over the other phone.
Again, this is on multiple cars on long road trips where we have at least two people to work on it and literally hours to figure it out. We generally settle on a single phone per car now, because it just isn't worth it.
I ruled cars out of my last purchase that didn’t have CarPlay. I didn’t realize wireless was available now. Having to hook it up is the one major pain. Wireless CarPlay will definitely be a requirement on the next purchase.
If I want to, sure. Otherwise the data port you plug in to for your wired CarPlay is usually a really slow charger. I prefer to use my 12v charger. So I got a MagSafe charger and a wireless CarPlay adapter.
I love CarPlay but I’ve given up on wireless. The idea seems nice, but in practice I have two issues.
First CarPlay just takes a fair amount of power so you’re going to notice it’s effect on battery life.
Second is the audio playback lag. I can’t stand it. It feels like seconds (though maybe it’s not that bad). The interface is ok but hitting pause or play or next track takes noticeable time to happen.
I’ve only ever tried it in my car. Maybe it’s fine in other vehicles. But it’s useless to me. It’s extremely responsive when connected by cable, so I just ended up going back to plugging in.
Wireless CarPlay in my 2022 Kia EV is way less enjoyable than wired CarPlay in my 2005 Toyota with an aftermarket Sony head unit with CarPlay support. Latency is much, much lower in the Toyota and there's never any trouble with switching between my iPhone and my wife's. Whoever's is plugged in wins—the end. As opposed to the Kia where it's always a crapshoot and plagued by endless Bluetooth connectivity issues.
Recommendations? I purchased a device that lets me watch video in the head unit (runs Android and uses CarPlay protocol), and adds wireless CarPlay. However, it's shocking at how slow it is at going into CarPlay mode.
I bought this 2-3 years ago https://cplay2air.com and it has always worked wonderfully. It takes around 5 seconds to connect, which is fine for me since the entertaining system of my car it’s slow to startup anyway (totalling ~10 seconds from turning the key to carplay)
What adapter do you use? My car has a USB A port that accepts a regular iPhone charging cable - takes all of five seconds to connect as I'm getting in the car.
Just rented a car with wireless Android Auto, and while it was convenient when it worked, it occasionally dropped the connection and I had to manually restart it (and sometimes it would refuse to connect). On one day where I was on a road trip, this happened several times.
Also, when I wanted to turn it off temporarily, there's no easy way to do so on either the phone or car. Gotta turn the car off or dive deep into infotainment settings. It looks like neither the auto manufacturers nor Google have thought this through.
The first and only time I tried Android Auto, I asked my wife to look up directions to a place on my phone. It kept saying not to use the phone while driving, and effectively blocked it.
I mean, I get the spirit, but the experience was terrible.
I was using Waze a couple days ago while connected to CarPlay, but at a dead stop with the car in Park. The route selection screen on the phone wouldn't let me choose a particular route (HOV route) but it also wouldn't say why. It just either didn't respond to the input or else the route label flashed but didn't actually activate. The CarPlay screen only included the non-HOV versions of the routes, so I just plain couldn't pick the route I wanted.
I unplugged the phone for two seconds, picked the HOV route, and then plugged it back in, but I was infuriated by it.
This is not a knock on CarPlay, but rather Waze's UX decisions. It requires GPS access to function, it can tell if I'm stopped or not.
I have a BMW and my Apple CarPlay kept doing this to me where it would disconnect and then take like 30+ seconds to reconnect itself. When I looked for support, the stuff I read was unclear whether it was a CarPlay issue or an issue with the BMW software, but eventually it did fix itself and I rarely have an issue with it anymore (and when I do, it's more of a "blip" than a full disconnect).
I’m guessing that Google is willing to do a revenue share with GM from the data. And apple doesn’t do that. So some dork at GM figured they can increase revenue with their own special system.
GM has a history of stupid decisions trying to get service revenue from cars. I remember on Star and it was so dumb that they wanted me to lay $40/month for concierge service or something.
They still have onStar and push it despite all reason. I drove a 2023 chevy bolt recently, and couldn’t figure out how to get the nav software to render a map.
All the buttons in the UI just initiated phone calls with someone (something?), so I hung up and switched to carplay.
It is a shame that the onboard nav is busted. My old BMW EV has extremely good range predictions, etc., and my phone does not even attempt such things.
I’m not switching to Google’s ecosystem, so I guess I’ll just never buy a GM moving forward.
GM is expecting $20-25 billion in annual subscription revenue by 2030. Dropping CarPlay and Android Auto will definitely lose them many sales. They are betting the lost sales will be less than the new subscription revenue.
I’ve got an idea for GM cars: lock passengers inside after every trip unless they pay $5. Instant revenue. I can’t believe they haven’t considered this.
I genuinely wonder how they justify that figure. They could maybe justify a subscription if they offered a significant service, but they are by definition going to deliver a worse experience than CarPlay/Android Auto - simply due to it not being your own smartphone.
Why would anyone buy an expensive car which is designed to last a decade while it has essential pre-installed features locked behind a subscription? If they want recurring revenue that badly, they should just lease it out.
The figure is utterly ridiculous. They truly expect to generate a revenue stream 2x the size of Spotify or AirPods? Apple as a whole only makes 21B a year from all services, and they run everything from cloud storage, to synchronization, to an App Store with a wild profit margin from fees.
Of course, all American auto makers have wildly unrealistic plans for electric vehicle adoption in the next 5 years, too -- i think one of them is predicting $600B of revenue from EVs before 2030, when they currently only make a few million a year. Their finance departments must have some good drugs in the water coolers.
What's more ludicrous is that they expect to generate a revenue stream 1/6th the size of their entire automotive enterprise. You'll pay $300/mo for a car payment, and $40/mo for OnStar Audio, and $10/mo will be earned from selling your data and showing ads on your nav system.
> Apple as a whole only makes 21B a year from all services, and they run everything from cloud storage, to synchronization, to an App Store with a wild profit margin from fees.
Correct on "wild profit margin", but your numbers are wrong according to FY22 10-K filing[1]:
Every feature on the car will be a subscription... Heated Seats, Fast Charging, Nav, everything
Of course they will be "free" for the first 3-5 years of ownership, the free is non-transferable to a new owner... and you will be able to get the GM+ All Access Plan to "unlock your car's full potential for only $500 a year".....
This is not a GM thing, this is the dream of all Auto Makers..
You may "buy" the car, but you are not "buying" the software that runs the car...
One of the benefits of "economy" cars. More reliable than the high-end models and they can't pull this crap because it would lose them money as their customer base can't afford it.
This is why I'm really skeptical of mandating EVs without consumer protection because this seems to be the point where automakers are seeing dollar signs and can force buyers into higher price brackets.
I think attempting to solve a problem that is created by government regulations by creating more government regulations is crazy...
There should be no EV mandate, then there would not need to be consumer protections as the market would do what is does best and allow manufacturers to compete on the merits of the vehicles not by the government choosing what we should be allowed to drive.
I think there are already too many regulations on the manufacture of cars.
Federally, all of them. I dont think it is a role for the federal government. The only plausible authority it the continued in proper use of the commerce clause to justify all federal action.
At the state level I think the only regulations should be those around direct safety concerns (like air bags, lights, etc). Efficiency or other non-safety related regulations should be disallowed. Further safety regulations should be limited safe operations for other drivers sharing the road, not passenger protection (outside of regulations on truth in advertising, product defect)... passenger protection should be a market dynamic, coupled with greater tort reform to be able to hold liable manufacturers for their marketing claims.
Yeah I think they’re fever dreaming at those recurring revenue projections. Ditching the phone integrations will have them selecting for buyers who don’t care about the Infotainment Experience (ugh), either because they just want the basics, or they can’t afford to be picky or whatever. Then they imagine that these buyers—who didn’t care enough about the big screen in the dash to include it in their buying decision—will pay hundreds of dollars each year to rent an off-brand version of those same features.
Someone over there has fond memories of OnStar, and is desperate to relive their glory days.
You say fever dream, I say business consultant getting paid big bucks to present and run focus groups for an idea that doesn’t pass the smell test.
Seriously though, car company made infotainment systems are the biggest reason they shouldn’t be trusted with more life or death software like self driving. They’re all atrocious.
GM previously attempted to force an additional upfront 3 year OnStar purchase on top of the vehicle purchase on some Buick/GMC/Cadillacs. They walked it mostly back, but they still rolled that stupid-ass idea out.
This sounds a little like designing their cars to only work with a proprietary formulation of gasoline and “expecting” to automatically capture all the revenue that third party gas stations are making right now.
Consumers aren’t stupid enough to think they should be paying subscription fees to GM for infotainment features when they have other, often free, options.
I think this makes a ton of business sense. They're only doing this on EV's, which have to be charged, and are likely concerned your car infotainment system is going to become a platform people buy things on they don't want to miss out on. Tesla has done it and because of this they have the best infotainment system in the industry. Frankly from what I can tell as well this is just editorialization, I don't think GM considers it a blunder and it seems like the smart move in my opinion (although it would have been smarter to start 10 years ago like Tesla did).
Do I think there a plausible business case for subscription infotainment systems? Sure. Do I think there's a plausible business case for subscription infotainment systems that includes ditching Apple CarPlay and Android Auto so as to force people into buying a GM subscription? Well, no, not really.
Tesla got away with not supporting CarPlay because they were one of the very few options available if you wanted an electric car. Rivian got away with it (for now, at least) because they were your only option if you wanted a high-end electric truck. Their customers were willing to sacrifice CarPlay because they had no real choice. Yes, Tesla's UI is nice-ish. That doesn't mean Tesla drivers don't want CarPlay support. Tons of them do, and it comes up regularly on online forums.
If you look at infotainment systems like BMW's latest iDrive iterations and Mercedes-Benz's MBUX, it's quite clear that they've improved a great deal in the past few years, lack of physical buttons aside. I'd hope that GM manages to do the same. Things have gotten better and the alternative to using CarPlay is no longer living with a nightmarish hellscape of a UI put together by sadistic designers --or maybe just traumatized ones, tormented by someone who forced them to ship terrible infotainment systems for years.
Despite that, consumers still love CarPlay and/or Android Auto and expect it to be available on their cars, with limited exceptions. Most people get in their cars, connect directly to CarPlay/Android Auto, and get on with their drive. When they have to use the native infotainment system, they do so with less frustration. But how many people do you think are just using a Bluetooth connection for their phone instead of CarPlay when it's right there? The answer is likely very, very few.
GM is betting that they'll get its customers to accept not having it like Tesla and Rivian customers have to. That's a hell of a gamble when everyone else will be shipping their own expanded line of EV models at the same time and price points as GM.
Not to be that guy but I don't think this is the case at all; cars cost ~25k and last a lot longer than your phone. Further your car will still work with your phone, although it may require a bit more setup when you first buy the car to install the apps you want. The big hurdle I see is that they'll have to develop an infotainment system that's on feature parity with your phone, which will be quite difficult and will take years; it's taken a decade for Tesla's system to get where it is today and convincing Netflix and other developers to get on was difficult
A lot of dealerships make more money on service than on sales. Extra money from subscriptions aren’t nothing when looked at like that. Average car service costs are what, 500-700/year over a long span of years?
EVs are turning the service business on their head. It looks like the only real service on the Bolt is tire rotations and a cabin air filter change for example.
I have a Nissan LEAF. In 8.5 years, my expenses have included replacing wiper blades twice, cabin air filter twice, filling the washer fluid bottle several times and I’ve looked at the tires and brakes, rotating tires once.
It’s been crazy nice. (As the family wrench-turner, even my wife’s CR-V, which is generally low maintenance, has felt like an inconvenient pig for maintenance demands by comparison.)
The pads are about 2/3 worn on the rear (very small pads) and 1/2 worn on the front. Of course, they'll eventually need changing, but regen braking takes a large amount of the deceleration energy.
Wheel bearings on modern cars are incredibly long-lived. I don't think I've changed one in over 30 years on our family cars.
> Wheel bearings on modern cars are incredibly long-lived. I don't think I've changed one in over 30 years on our family cars.
Depends on the car. I had a POS Chevy uplander and had to replace them 3 times. Angry because my Mazda was the same age, same milage and on its original set so i asked the GM mechanic why..
He told me the design. I'm going to guess the Uplander has the cheapest ones available?
But like you, I thought the same thing.. is "bearings" really a thing these days and apparently it is??
I'm never going to buy another "domestic" car again, and this whole "infotainment" mess we see here reinforces my decision.
Regenerative braking is very, very good at slowing the vehicle without brake pad involvement, so the brake pads are actually not used that much, unless you actively apply brakes with sudden/aggressive stops.
Regen breaking.. similar to how manual transmission cars can transfer some stopping power from the brakes to the engine.. regen breaking changes the electric motor into a generator and this consumes power slowing the car down.
These actions cause the brakes to last a LOT longer. I've never driven an EV but the manual transmission cars i have had needed far fewer brake jobs.
I have never heard of someone needing to change wheel bearings in my 30+ years being alive in the US. And my family has driving 5 or 6 cars to 250k+ miles.
They may well be more or less production limited on the EVs (not saying that they are, pointing at the possibility).
If it actually works good people might not care in the medium term. Generally the problem people have with the automaker systems is that they sucked, not that they weren't CarPlay.
Yea except now that CarPlay exists, my definition of “not sucks” includes working flawlessly with my iPhone. Obviously apple ensured that the only way this could succeed is through CarPlay, but that’s not my fight, it’s GMs.
> Generally the problem people have with the automaker systems is that they sucked, not that they weren't CarPlay.
I think that's part of it, but definitely not the entire story. People have a lot of their life on their phone, so the tighter the integration between their phone and other products, the more appealing the experience with that product is. No matter how good the automaker system is, if it's not basically your phone with a different screen, it's going to feel like an awkward disconnect, especially when there are plenty of alternative cars that do offer that seamless experience.
> Generally the problem people have with the automaker systems is that they sucked, not that they weren't CarPlay.
I’m with vineyardmike. The problem was they sucked before CarPlay.
Now that I’ve had a taste of controlling everything my way with my apps based on my preferences in a way I’m used to, I’m not going back.
The best you could offer is perfect integration with my phone and the apps I use. But that will never happen, and at that point I might as well use CarPlay anyway.
Cars need their own system for fallback but it’s a cost center. Don’t try to make it your primary selling point, you can’t win.
I agree it's totally perplexing. GM doesn't have a moat, all of their vehicles have competition.
Could this just be a bluff/negotiation tactic or something?
It seems so perplexing to remove these features, rather than giving the option for Android auto and car play along with their own android platform. If their own system has better native functionality, people will see this as a selling point. If not, they're free to ignore it.
Cars are not TVs. It's a major purchase that somebody will be using for years, so people will pay attention to this kind of detail. Surely they know this?
> If their own system has better native functionality, people will see this as a selling point. If not, they're free to ignore it.
This implicitly assumes that the manufacturer's direct cost of integrating/supporting such features, and indirect opportunity costs of not deploying an alternative replacement, are both effectively $0.
They are probably trying to emulate Teslas product strategy
Tesla doesn't offer android or iPhone carplay. Instead they try to offer a software experience superior to those. It does Spotify, gps, etc but also manages the car itself.
Depending on what the user is doing it makes sense. If the user mostly wanted their phone for music and directions, you can build that stuff in house and have it turn out okay. If the user wants carplay for much more than that, then it's not good.
My Tesla's lack of Android Auto is one of its biggest drawbacks. Even for navigation it is bad, as I'm forced to use the inferior Tesla map app (which unlike say Waze can't compute directions considering carpool lanes). You also end up with a lack of synchronized directions history to your phone.
IMO, the only upside to the customer is avoiding plugging a phone in. The phone experience is otherwise generally better across the board.
(On a latter note, I consider the Tesla UI good for a car, but bad overall. Climate app also generally sucks).
GM had decades to make a high quality in-car entertainment system on par with Teslas and failed. CarPlay and Android Auto was supposed to save us from that.
Yes, from what I’ve seen, Ford sells their vehicles at cost and uses that line of business as a funnel to generates profits from via financing.
Some higher trim models have a decent margin, but many lower trims are sold at a loss, resulting in essentially no profit from manufacturing.
Moreover, EVs are shaping up to be a financial disaster for carmakers. Tesla is essentially the only company to turn a profit on EVs, with the likes of Ford etc. hemorrhaging billions every year, with no end in sight. EVs simply aren’t shaping up to be a viable business without supplemental revenue streams.
Tesla has premium/luxury pricing and the clout. I'm not sure if your "average Joe" brand of car can make EVs work in their current state. There's a limit how much someone will pay for a Toyota or a Ford, less so for a Tesla or BMW.
The idea that Tesla has high margin because their final assembly is not as perfect as BMW is complete nonsense. They have high margin because of advanced manufacturing, vertical integration, cheap battery supply and so on.
Also, the evidence for Tesla having much worse quality (the reports) shows that they are only marginally worse then everybody else. Nowwhere near far enough to make a 30% margin difference.
Simple. Money. OnStar costs between $25-50 per month. Say the car lasts 15 years, that's $4500-$9000 over the life of the car, and this is all at an extremely high profit margin.
Even if some people won't buy the car if it doesn't have Carplay, it's worth it because of how profitable selling services is, because people don't do the mental math on the cost.
It makes sense because they can create and roll out their own system. Hell, make it subscription-based, with a premium tier. They don't give a fuck, people will still buy their big ass SUVs and pick-up trucks.
How does it make sense to keep making cars bigger and bigger? It doesn't for us, but sure as shit does for them.
Probably their own app store, inline with Google Play. And also forcing you to login on their gear, so your paid apps are available, and thus they can better track you / monetize you.
No, not really. Manufacturers make about 5%. Dealers make about 1-2%. People assume the margins are much higher because it's an expensive product, so there's a big gap between perception and reality.
Whatever the profit margin of an individual car is, the car manufacturing business is not a high profit margin business. GM/Toyota/Honda/Ford show 5%, to maybe 10% profit margins.
They would definitely benefit from convincing people to pay for 50%+ profit margin software as a service subscriptions.
The most sold EV brand in the US with about 2/3 of market share doesn't allow CarPlay either.
Now don't get me wrong, I want my Apple Carplay too. I wouldn't want to buy a car without it.
But the argument that "as the shakeup due to EVs begins, even loyal consumers will be considering other makes" I just don't see happen in real life today. Most EV buyers chose a Tesla. No CarPlay or Android Auto in that one.
GM is keeping Android Auto and Apppe Car Play in their ICE vehicles.
Comparing their decision to remove it from their future EVs and buyer decisions with Tesla is a better comparison than comparing it with 95.2% of the other market which will still retain it.
I think Tesla is pretty far ahead of its competition today people are ok to overlook the lack of apple carplay. but when others do catch up (if, say, Ford EV somehow become as good as Teslas) then i suspect ppl won't be so forgiving.
There are at least two major underlying markets at play here: manufacturer-dealer and dealer-consumer.
Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics research paints a colorful picture of market dynamics from 2007-2019[3] where post-GFC increase in domestic competition and the rising cost of manufacturing forced dealers to "innovate" as a way of offsetting new car sales margin decline, which set the stage for 2019-2022[4] where manufacturers largely internalized an outsized supply chain squeeze while dealers gouged the shit out of consumers. So when you say "high-margin", I think you're looking in the wrong bucket.
Then there's GM Financial segment sitting on a $65.322B retail finance receivables portfolio[5] of which 27.2% are sub-680 FICO consumers, and carrying $96.854B of debt[6]...nevermind rising interest rates, increasing layoffs, and a looming credit crunch. Remarks like:
>> In 2021, GM Financial redeemed $1.5 billion in aggregate principal amount of 5.20% senior notes due in 2023. The redemption resulted in a $105 million loss on the early extinguishment of debt.
...buried in page 76 of the fine print suggests internal bleeding damage control.
> How does this business decision make sense?
It doesn't make sense because you're thinking about it from the perspective of consumer optionality based on today's trend, not as a publicly traded business balls deep in competition looking forward.
Considering GM's top 2 selling vehicles are trucks[7] (Silverado = 33.8% of 2022 Chevy units sold; Sierra = 46.7% of 2022 GMC units sold)---and speculating on the retention quality of consumers who would readily classify CarPlay integration as "not negotiable", choosing to overweight an accessory feature that X competitors may also offer over other characteristics/intangibles salient to GM products---I begin to question both the net value prop and opportunity costs being wholesale handed over to Apple.
At least Android Auto is a shitshow. Does not do screen sharing and you can only use apps approved by Google. I don't listen to music on my phone and i use a different navigation SW. And on top of that, Android Auto requires permissions to everything, refusing to start if permissions are not granted.
I really see no useful case for Android Auto and investing money in it during car development is a waste of money and developer time IMHO.
No car manufacturer is going to allow an infotainment system with apps that aren’t heavily vetted. There is too much of a liability and some things are completely illegal to have in view of the driver like video.
Even older cars are careful, like my last car that would not even allow you to pair your phone to radio over Bluetooth while the car was not in park.
Personally, I wont ever connect my phone to my car at all (if my next car doesn't have an aux port I'll install one myself), but I have to assume that GM is doing this because their own software siphons more data off of our devices than even carplay or andriod auto does.
> "GM is looking to monetize more software and services within its vehicles and is taking a page out of Tesla’s playbook,"
Since they're only doing this because they want to take even more of your money after you've already spent a small fortune buying their vehicle, consumers pushing back against this is a good idea even if you don't have strong feelings about what software your car uses.
> As part of the agreement an automaker would have to enter with Google, Porsche said certain pieces of data must be collected and transmitted back to Mountain View, California. Stuff like vehicle speed, throttle position, coolant and oil temp, engine revs—basically Google wants a complete OBD2 dump whenever someone activates Android Auto.
> Google, for its part, disputes some of our source's assertions. Liz Markman, a Google spokesperson for Android Auto, said in a statement that Google does not collect some of the data listed by Porsche, such as throttle position and coolant temp. She declined to provide a full list of what data is collected, but emphasized that Android Auto users must opt in to share any information upon their first connection of their phone to a car. She said some of that data is used for safety (restricting typing and allowing only voice input when the car is not in "park," for example) and some is to used to optimize the app's user experience.
So seems like Android Auto requires at least some data from the car, as of 2015. Porsche ended up adding it in 2022, though, so maybe they stopped fighting that battle.
I'm not sure which I want less - the phone company getting data from my car, or the car company getting data from the phone.
Its a shame that OBD2 information would be shared with Google, but not the driver. I would like to see performance data on my car in real time that is more comprehensive than what is displayed on the dash. Also, restricting typing and voice input only are two of the biggest annoyances I have with carplay. It would be easier to let me stop at a light and type or pinch and zoom for maps, but the car monitor is very, very limited compared with using an iPad. If they remove these features, I'll just get a computer stand with place it over the monitor in my next car.
This must vary with manufacturer. The CarPlay in my vehicle never restricts input. I can even manipulate the CarPlay with my Apple Watch, which feels much more dangerous than using a phone. Not sure why that’s a thing.
This doesn't surprise me. My observation with Google product teams partnering is that they start from the assumption that the price of working with them is whatever data they want.
Pushback = "Fine, we won't do a deal"
Felt like watching railroads negotiate with local government.
I doubt very seriously that Apple lost any sales and there were third party apps like Mapquest that offered real time directions before the Maps app had them at all.
6 years (and all the money) seems a decent trade off for strategic autonomy, and cutting a foot off Google-on-iPhone.
I.e. why lock down permissions if Google would get location data from every phone through Google Maps anyway.
Furthermore, it decreases the value of Google Maps by depriving them of traffic data (something that really only works at scale when the maps user base is "most people").
Oh dear... I never thought it was that bad... Well, one more reason to stick with simple USB or Bluetooth connections for calls and music in cars and never even remotely touch Android Auto or something similar. If it is a piece of hardware, I want to own it. No subscriptions, no phoning home for ehatever reason (as a functional requirement for said hardware or legal reason, well, not much choice here). If someone needs and wants OBD data from my cars, they'll have to plug in I guess. And I don't have any issue with garages doing it for diagnostics. Over the air, through my phone, to Google, just for me to stream music? No way!
All I hope now is, that your plain old Bluetooth connection doesn't do anything like that... If it wasn't for economic reasons (read: dreadfully bad MPG), my 40 year old Range Rover would propably be my daily driver one day, good luck getting tracking data out of that car!
If that's the case, how are 3rd-party head units allowed to use AA? I know for an absolute fact that mine recieves exactly zero data from the car outside a simple +12v signal that tells the radio to turn on/off. Do aftermarket radios exist that require a CAN connection? If so, how could they even be certain the radio even 'understands' the flavour of CAN being used by the car? How about more modern cars that have their CAN systems near-completely locked down?
I would imagine that Google's negotiations with, say, Pioneer are different than theirs with GM.
If Google (or Apple) thinks that having it onboard is gonna be worth some data sharing, or whatever else they want, to the manufacturer they're gonna push for that even if they have different terms for aftermarket equipment. "Just buy an aftermarket radio" isn't really a good marketing campaign for an auto manufacturer to make up for a lack of the integration, after all.
Well, that and the fact that no manufacturer ships a double-DIN hole in the dash any more, so it's pretty much impossible to get an aftermarket head unit. That said, there was one Chinese Android-based unit that was made for the 3rd-gen Mazda 3, replacement screen on the dash and everything.
Not to disagree, but as I recall it, the big problem with modular head units was that people would just break into cars and steal them. Having your car radio stolen was fairly common when I was a kid.
Lol, you believe apple actually cares about your privacy?
No mainstream phone does, want a true privacy-respecting and usable phone? Buy a pixel and install grapheneOS on it.
Wouldn't it be great if cars would just send the car data out to phones?
People already have a very well configured device hooked up to all kind of extras with them in their pocket. I don't really known what Android Auto or CarPlay offer but my weak understanding is it's mostly a dumb screen & display... Maybe a microphone? If hvac & lighting & other auxiliary systems were also controllable some really pleasant well integrated experiences could be made.
And also the people riding in the back would have a much easier time being able to DJ.
Alas any and all data integrations imply they will almost immediately be used for a the worst ends. The old EU funded Webinos IoT system had a really neat pro-user model, and they had some OK car based demoes too before they closed up. There's just so little places where trust can even start today, & comparatively webinos was such a solid trustful/trustable go.
Android Automotive sounds it is it's own infotainment. I guess I'm more interested in getting the data out to users, to consume & use in different creative ways.
I thought webinos was so cool because it was a really interesting platform for exposing capabilites to users, who could then give different apps & services access. It was both a competent IoT platform, & one that effectively through encryption basically sent all data over VPN to the user, who then figured out what to do with it.
So far my experience with Android Automotive has been a deal breaker. I rented a Polestar for a week and it felt like I was driving an android phone. Absolutely not interested.
Car manufacturers don't want to get muscled out of "their" own market. It's like ISPs not being willing to be a dumb pipe and instead trying to upsell a dozen other services (bundled TV/phone subscriptions, ad blocking, etc).
They don't have to stop the crappy behavior because where are you going to go? Most addresses in the US have no more than one reasonable ISP available (some have zero). I'm just hoping that all the other car manufacturers don't rally around GM and announce they're all doing the same thing to try to capture/generate subscription revenue from their low-margin products.
> CarPlay and AndroidAuto don’t give the car any access to the phone data
Perhaps that's changed. There have been warnings about using AndroidAuto and CarPlay with rental cars for years. Now that cars are increasingly collecting data and sending it home themselves, any info your personal car has collected from your phone or usage can be sent back too.
> In addition, the forensic artifacts acquired in each analysis area show that the forensic artifacts obtainable in IVI systems using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are not limited to the internal storage in a mobile device. As such, a digital forensic examination of various elements constituting the IVI system is a useful addition to vehicle forensics. An increasing number of people are using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and more vehicles and manufacturers are sup-porting these systems. The proposed forensic methodology and the acquired artifacts can be applied as an important basis for future vehicle crime investigations.
> There’s no worry about CarPlay revealing any of your information to later car renters
And the NIH study just says there has not been any research done on the issue yet.
The issue isn't with Android Auto/CarPlay, but the legacy Bluetooth features that give the car access to your phonebook and SMS logs. You need to make sure to decline those when connecting your phone.
My assumption is they are doing this because they don’t want to hand over control over the final experience to tech companies who will build a moat and lock them out.
And so they’ll hand it over to Google who will let GM have as much control over the user experience as they want as long as the pipeline of user data keeps flowing.
Detaching the entertainment system from the car and making it just a dumb touchscreen and speakers must have really grinded the gears of auto makers.
I can now upgrade my entire entertainment system, GPS, phone, etc. by replacing a phone. They’d prefer you get another car when your system is feeling old.
I don’t even understand why my 2020 car had an optional GPS add-on for thousands of dollars.
Android Auto / CarPlay is one of my favourite evolutions in cars. It could have gone so much worse for the consumer.
It get even weird when you consider that many of the security issues carmakers have faced have been exactly because their entertainment systems was so tightly integrated into the cars other systems. Honestly it never made sense that the info-tainment system could access the CAN bus on a car, so I'm not sure I'd ever trust carmakers to do this right anyway.
I live in Japan, and Apple and Google maps really don’t cut it here. I paid for a dedicated GPS unit in my car, and the benefits are:
* Location on the map is represented far more accurately
* Knows which way I am pointed and can give accurate directions as soon as I start navigation, while sometimes with my phone I need to move a bit for it to know which way I’m oriented
* Works in tunnels
* Tends to stick to main roads while Apple and Google maps are far too aggressive sending me down side roads or crossing over 2 lanes of traffic.
* Don’t need to pause navigation or mess around with my phone when getting in and out of the car for breaks
* Has detailed information about the services/stores/restaurants available at each rest stop along the highway, and distances to each stop
* Detailed information about lane closures, temporary speed limit reductions due to weather, chain restrictions, etc
* Displays accurate representations of street signs and 3d renderings of off ramps
* Displays landmarks at intersections (e.g. turn right before the ramen shop on the right)
* Much more customizable interface. I can choose whether I want it to display gas stations, convenience stores, parking, etc. on the map. How many prompts before a turn. I can enable or disable various features like split-screen turn guidance, etc.
I have used both CarPlay and the built-in GPS, and overwhelmingly prefer the built-in GPS. So I disagree that it is just for people who “don’t know better”.
Cheaper to have everything wrapped up in one vendor sometimes than having a third party install and service gps.
My guess at least. I don't really know.
However unrelated to this computer vendors I've noticed charge a ton for more data and memory relative to buying from part stores. So perhaps maybe just taking suckers for a ride.
Built-in GPS has telemetry access and can be much more precise - e.g. in tunnels.
15 years ago, drove a BMW 1 series that was more precise. Today, driving a Volvo XC90, it gets confused in an underground garage and doesn't reset using GPS signal fast enough.
Phone GPS can have L1 L2 L5 these days. There’s unlikely to be much of an advantage. Phone GPS also has traffic data. And you’ve got multiple apps that compete and keep evolving unlike most car systems.
The standalone GPS have a place but I suspect they’re a tiny minority for in-car usage compared to phones.
I just bought a 12 year old car with very low mileage. I got the centre dash replaced with a 7" Android head unit. To me, it pretty much makes it much the same as a new car in terms of entertainment and navigation and will continue to be new each time the app changes.
It actually played out differently than I thought. I thought that CarPlay and Android Auto would not be backward compatible with older versions, forcing you to upgrade your car along with your phone.
I'm surprised it didn't work that way. I still don't understand why.
Why wouldn’t it? I can use AirPlay from a first gen iPad from 2010 with a Roku stick sold in 2022. I can also print from an old iPad to a brand new AirPrint compatible printer.
Car infotainment systems are terrible. That's the reason why everyone wants CarPlay and Android Auto. It's kind of like going back to flip phones after using smartphones for years.
Even if the infotainment is good today, GM is basically saying “trust me bro, 10 years from now maps on this decade old hardware are going to be so good you’ll want to pay a subscription for it.” I was thinking an Equinox EV would be my next car, but now I’m looking at gas vehicles and thinking I’ll give EVs a while longer to sort out which manufacturers earn a reputation for EV reliability, longevity, and good software.
It’s a major benefit of CarPlay that you can get new map technology on a new phone. Would Apple Maps of today with its vector data and 3D buildings run on a phone from 2013? Is there any reason to think that whatever system is going into the 2023 Blazer EV won’t be a bad joke by 2033? The maps on my phone will probably be pulling in Apple’s lidar scans for very precise local road data.
I’m talking about the Equinox EV which is a different car on a different platform (BEV3 vs D2XX), so I don’t think you can make that comparison until the car actually exists and people can give it a closer inspection and drive it for a while.
I’ll give you the Korean competitors, but what Japanese competitor are you impressed by? The BZ4X/Solterra? MX-30? The Prologue which is a BEV3 car with a Honda sticker on it?
Unfortunately the Niro / Kona suffer from slow charging and the Ioniq 5 / EV6 are in a higher price segment.
Alas, the MME is also expensive and difficult to get. Though I appreciate their commitment to continued CarPlay support, presumably including the next-gen dashboardy version.
In the meantime I'm probably going to wait things out in a Corolla hatchback or something. Equinox EV might've been in the sweet spot, but to spend $30-40k on it to just be squeezed for software subscriptions that probably won't even be good, ugh.
Though on second thought, I wonder if Chevrolet ditching CarPlay in the Blazer necessarily means that the Prologue won't have it. I don't know if they're borrowing the car software and aren't in a position to add that type of feature, but it's also possible someone at Honda wrote CarPlay into their software requirements and GM is still stuck implementing it.
Bigger car than I want though. It's too bad Honda didn't decide to make an Equinox clone instead, the Prologue is 100% better looking than the Blazer.
Actually there wasn’t. Cars were supporting the iPod protocol for a couple of years before the iPhone came out - meaning you could see the song that was playing, change to the next track or playlist from the head unit.
The iPhone still supports that protocol. I could navigate through my podcast player (Overcast) from the head unit of my old car
Possibly I misremember, but I’m pretty sure hands-free phone calls in cars via Bluetooth were a thing before the iPhone existed. (Looking it up... Yeah, around 2001, apparently.)
Even if the infotainment OS was better than my phone’s OS, I’d still prefer to connect my phone.
It’s because I already have all the apps and data there. I don’t want to retype addresses into the car, I want to click them in my email or calendar. And I don’t want to set up my emails in my car’s OS, especially not one that has a lucrative contract with Google.
This is exactly my feeling. It’s great of they think they can produce really great software and if so I may use it for some things. For the rest I want to use the apps I am used to where my data is already stored and my personalized settings are stored. I also is a couple of CarPlay apps that I know GM cannot recreate and it would not have my subscribed feeds anyway
Are you sure about this? I seem to remember connecting my iPhone to a rental car and realizing that it had transferred my contact list into the car somehow.
I don't want CarPlay or Android Auto. It's one more thing I have to fiddle with. One more thing to fight while someone beside me or behind me becomes impatient.
Bluetooth is meh. I would rather have an aux cord. From the days when we connected systems by physically connecting systems.
I am in the car to drive, a delightful escape from interacting with a phone.
Android auto and car play are both really bad user experiences. They are just better than what most car companies can build, which is a very low bar.
Here's the android auto experience: Take my phone out of my pocket (not that easy when you are already sitting...), turn on bluetooth (I often have it off because it grabs my headphones etc when I don't want it to) and connecting it to usb (where'd the damn cable go? An apple using family member swapped it out for a lightning cable, and tossed the usb c cable in the back, or on the floor...)
Every now and then it won't connect anyway - or the usb cable is defective (it lives on the car floor so it has a short life), or the usb slot in the car (especially a rental) is defective.
A passenger might have a higher priority bluetooth device and it steals the connection.
When I get to my destination I forget my phone in the car because it is in my pocket most of the time - but not if you are going to use android auto!
If GM manages to do as well or better than Tesla on their infotainment system it would be a win. Unlikely for a dinosaur company like GM, but if they are using an android product there's a fighting chance.
The majority of the problems you listed here are not possible with Wireless Apple CarPlay or Wireless Android Auto, which are the latest incarnations of the product. Adapters exist for many vehicles that don’t support the wireless versions as well.
You may want to make sure you’re familiar with the latest incarnation of the two products before you blame them for issues that have been solved.
the wireless versions bring their own tradeoffs and connection issues. transferring control from one phone to another is not a seamless experience in any vehicle I've been in. automatically connecting to my phone (and locking me out of google maps on the phone) is not desired every single time I turn on my car. I doubt GP would be satisfied with those either. wireless android auto uses a lot of battery, so typically I end up plugging my phone in anyway (although personally, I never end up forgetting the device).
that said, I don't agree that it's a "really bad user experience". it meets or exceeds 95% of my expectations for an infotainment integration, and I trust google to keep it working 5-8 years down the line much more than I trust the software dev team of my car's manufacturer. the only thing that really pisses me off is how google voice assistant uses zero "common sense" when interpreting street addresses and song names. no, I don't want to navigate to a similar street name 1000 miles away. I want to navigate to my parents' house, same as the last 50 times...
I even have only wired CarPlay and haven’t had any of the problems more than once or twice. For connection failures, I had to de-lint the Lightning port (easy to forget when you charge wirelessly) and I’ve forgotten the phone in the car when something interrupted my routine.
What issues are you having with CarPlay? I've had it freeze two or three times, but I think that might have been my phone independently of CarPlay. Other than that the only thing I'd like changed is that my car's head unit was even dumber. I don't it to ask me if I want to display CarPlay. Just automatically do it! It needs to fully embrace that it's just a docking station for phones.
So entirely different experience for me. So 5 years ago I travel to California. Out of all the cars I picked a crappy GM car when there were better cars to pick from the rental lot, why, because I had my iPhone with navigation.
Every time I rented cars since I would always make sure it had apple CarPlay so I could drive any with a familiar experience.
Now today, my car has wireless CarPlay. My experience goes like this, I get in my car, turn it on, my head unit loads apple CarPlay instantly and I have Waze running which I like for speed camera notifications on new roads and my music and playlists instantly accessible.
It’s seamless, instant and I don’t touch my phone it stays in my pocket.
I would never consider a car with out either android auto or CarPlay. It’s mandatory for me and yes I miss out of heads up display of directions, but then I don’t have to pay an additional subscription to traffic info, or pay an update fee for new maps.
Same for me. I had gotten rentals with CarPlay before, and I considered it pretty neat but kind of a hassle to have to plug the phone in and find a good place to set it and get the wires situated. Now I own a car with wireless CarPlay and I just never take the phone out of my pocket and it automatically connects and continues the music where it left off and has my google maps ready to go. The car’s infotainment system is passable but not stellar for either maps or music, and I basically never even see it.
I won’t buy another car without wireless CarPlay. Or maybe android auto if it’s also good; I haven’t tried it in years. But I want nothing to do with a car manufacturer’s crappy outdated infotainment systems ever again.
Edit: one fundamental problem with what GM is attempting is that the software embedded in a car is on an extremely slow development cycle and is never upgraded in any significant way. If they want to impress me, they need to keep the CarPlay/Android connection technology and then sell me a super slick GM device that connects to that and is better than my phone. I would gladly buy that, and possibly even pay for some subscription services, but it has to be separate from the vehicle that realistically gets upgraded only when I replace my car every 10 years. A 10 year upgrade cycle for the type of software we are talking about is pathetic.
Depends on the car. For instance some BMWs will offer the hud now, but not all. And for the maps in the dials that’s only Apple Maps and no other nav software. So yeah it’s not perfect at all, but I’ll still take this over a cars standard navigation system
I'm guessing you didn't drive an early ford with the windows experience. my favorite was driving a rental car where a popup popped up over my speedometer while driving. there was no "touch", so I couldn't press the "OK" button, and there were no buttons on the steering wheel I could ever find to press it either (there were in later model ford cars).
I ended up having to power the car off to get the dialog to go away, but in the meantime, drove in the right lane because I had no idea if I was speeding or not, and couldn't imagine trying to explain that to a cop if I were pulled over.
Honestly, it seems incredibly easy to explain to a cop.
Show them the dashboard, and ask if they can issue a fixit ticket to the rental car company, or if they know how to report it to the automotive recall people.
All of these things feel like things that if you owned a car with either of these systems you would just develop a habit of dealing with.
I don't personally own a car but every time I rent one I know to grab a USB cable and to grab my phone out of my pocket to hook it up. That happens rare enough for it to be a habit for me, I can't imagine that being a serious issue for anyone who owns a car.
Any "hassle" (which I am not convinced actually exists) is outweighed by my music, my voice assistant, maps settings, etc etc etc all being reflected through CarPlay.
Never had any of your problems in 5 years of wireless car play on a BMW and now a FORD also. You describe defective USBs, cables, not having BL turned on, the fact that you forget your phone inside the car and other stuff totally unrelated to CarPlay or AndroidAuto for that matter. Seems to me you're just a bit messy overall, something neither of the 2 can't push an update for.
> turn on bluetooth (I often have it off because it grabs my headphones etc when I don't want it to)
Why would you turn on bluetooth? Haven't we all been collectively griping about every iteration of bluetooth for the last couple decades?? I do leave bluetooth on on my iphone (because I've gotten rid of peripherals that don't play nicely) but have bluetooth disabled in my cars. My Honda pops up an useless modal if your phone is paired with bluetooth and then you plug in the lightning cable for CarPlay, something about "HEY I'M DISCONNECTING FROM BLUETOOTH <OK> ".
> A passenger might have a higher priority bluetooth device and it steals the connection.
This is also why I wish I could disable wireless CarPlay in my one car that supports it; I want only the phone that's plugged in to be doing CarPlay.
>A passenger might have a higher priority bluetooth device and it steals the connection.
I have the opposite problem on Android auto.
When I connect my phone (by USB cable) and start Android auto for navigation it also wants to use my phone for music too.
The problem is that my daughter doesn't like my music and I haven't found a way of using navigation from my phone together with music from hers...
I generally end up using the built in navigator rather than my phone (which isn't as good as Google maps) to let my daughter control the music over bluetooth.
* Turn on car
* My music starts playing
* Screen shows Google Maps, following location
* If it's a longer trip, I'll pull phone out of pocket and place on magnetic mount that also charges it
This is even with a 3rd-party CarPlay screen! This device sends audio to the car via the car's Bluetooth, so my steering wheel controls still work. Only real downside is the wireless CarPlay audio lag (~2s).
I get in my car, plug it in, and it's ready to roll. No need to deal with Bluetooth or the like, it just works. I'm fine with plugging a phone in when I get in, rather than having it in my pocket and possibly falling out without me knowing about it.
I too like CarPlay and see no need for a wireless version. I like to charge my phone.
My only gripe is there should be an option to turn off Wi-Fi when you plug into the car. Every time I get in the car, start a song, drive away, 30 seconds of silence while it realizes I can’t get to my Wi-Fi, song is back on. Why would they not have an option to just use cellular in CarPlay mode which is what 99.9% of people do?
I had a similar problem, and solved it with a Shortcut which disables wifi whenever CarPlay is connected, and another to re-enable it when disconnected. Real easy since Shortcuts has built-in triggers for CarPlay.
Click on the Automation tab at the bottom, and at least for me, the "CarPlay" section (with an example "When CarPlay connects") is at the bottom of the second grouping of suggested automations.
The two vehicles that I have w/ wireless carplay have wireless charging, so just slip my phone in the center console and it charges if I want to charge while driving.
With wireless, no one is stopping you from having a charging cable.
Majority of trips are less < 10 minutes I don't have to take my phone out of my pocket.
At least for Android Auto this was necessary before the wireless version became popular. Data over the cable but audio was still done via Bluetooth. At least in my "older" car.
I got my first GM vehicle when I got a Volt Gen2. It is very good and that surprised me as I had always had somewhat negative opinions about GM. I’m starting to shop around for a full EV now and had been interested in the Chevy Blazer and Equinox EVS. With this recent announcement, all that is out the window. I would have been a natural customer for GM but now I’ll be looking at Ford, Hyundai, VW, or any of several other manufacturers who will allow me to connect my phone to my car. I am more loyal to my phone than I am to my car.
I'm in the same boat but GM converted me with the Bolt instead, driving experience and build quality really surprised me. Although, this announcement has completely killed what little brand loyalty the Bolt had began to kindle.
The better option is: remove infotainment completely and _require_ a smartphone for anything other than FM/AM radio.
* Support an open protocol for rendering images/video/animations on the screen. Sorta like... you know, CarPlay.
* Have controls for what events are allowed to be sent to the connected device. Don't want your phone to know your Throttle Position? Turn that shit off. Don't want your phone to know whether it's dark/light outside? Turn that on/off too.
Sure, if you live somewhere with constant cellular connection or you're not sharing a vehicle with someone else. What really irks me is when a connected device is required to do something trivial. My dad's 2021 GMC truck recently got an OTA update that removed the built in map. I discovered this when I was driving in the country and came upon construction with closed roads. I tried to pull up the map and look for a road that would go around and I couldn't, that feature is gone. I would have had to stop, pair my phone with the head unit and then fire up CarPlay and open Google maps - none of which I wanted to do since it just wasn't necessary. Not to mention there was no guarantee after pairing that I would be able to use Maps due to shoddy coverage in the area I was in. Graceful fallbacks used to be a thing but it feels like today if you don't have a connection then everything is just dead and your SOL. The world's population doesn't all live in modern connected cities. Why is it anytime I go off-road I become a QA tester? Kind of sick of it.
Pretty crazy that 5 years ago, many cars went with an offline first approach to maps. You had to manually update the map database every year. I don’t even see that business model ever returning. Companies have figured out there’s way more money in running a map service. Ftr, teslas stream map tiles and if your car loses connectivity, you’re not going to see anything
> You had to manually update the map database every year.
Now you have the added bonus of gambling on whether or not the maps are actually updated. My SO wanted to update the maps in their Jeep since all the exit numbers around us had changed. Not only did the install take hours, the exit numbers were still the old ones. Hooray!
Jeep just threw up their hands because the license key had been used; total racket.
But the point is, this is something that used to work out of the box (nav systems came with preloaded offline maps) and now needs extra steps, or doesn’t work at all.
The new online way of doing things is mostly better for most people, but it’s not universally better.
It is not theoretically required, but most (all?) phones don't cache all the map tiles between the origin and destination. You'd have to proactively download all the map regions you think you might need.
You're a car manufacturer, you suck at software. Right now, it's mainly a cost center for you. There are two options that may be preferable:
1. Bail out of infotainment and let others deal with the software, that way at least you aren't paying for this. If you go for an open source/standard, maybe you can commoditize your complement.
2. Monetize it somehow, with the (dis)advantage of owning your stack as much as possible.
OP suggests (1). GM is choosing (2). Either makes a bit more sense for car manufacturers than the current situation, if they don't worry too much about losing customers while they make the transition, and if they can do (2) without sucking too much.
Another thing to note is that when AV cars arrive, the user (former driver) will have a lot more time for infotainment. It's possible that differentiation will more strongly select for these types of features. So again you have the options of bailing out/doing it yourself. The current situation: Letting Google/Apple own much of the stack is the worst for you, since these companies may prefer their own cars (there are persistent rumors of an Apple car, Google is known for Waymo).
Probably because software will be the most important criterion for choosing a car and you as a manufacturer won't be replaced by Google and Apple (who both develop their own cars). However, you suck at developing software and people are already using Google and Apple, so you will get replaced by Google and Apple anyway.
Are they actually paying? As far as I know, the power in this relationship is the other way around, with the car manufacturer having to pay (to programmers) to build protocol support on their end. Note also what I wrote about AV cars (EDIT: that was an edit a minute or so after, so you may have not noticed).
Anyone else much prefer just mounting your phone on the dash, instead of a separate carplay system? Bonus points if the mount has wireless charging. This way there’s no new UI to learn, and you never are stuck using a subpar carplay-variant UI (looking at you, Gaia)
I'm finding myself in the odd position of desiring an older car to not put up with the bullshit. I don't need OnStar, I don't need lane assist, I don't need self driving. I don't need my fucking car to brake for me when it thinks I'm in danger. Just let me drive. Now they're trying to monetize heated seats and connecting my phone. It never ends. I don't need cars as a service. I just need a car.
The joy of seeing car bro gearheads with their LS swaps get humiliated by normies in Teslas wasn't worth it. Take me back.
Yep, that's why I drive a 20 year old truck. Interestingly, I've driven 60k+ miles in this truck (and others like it) and maybe 1-2k in all other vehicles, including those with auto breaking/etc. The only times I've been in incidents where auto breaking was needed was when I had it. No clue why, perhaps something about all the features lulled me into a false sense of security where I took my eyes off the road for much longer than I would in my truck.
Nope, for me using a phone is a much worse experience.
1) Small screen hard to read with ageing eyes from that distance, or to operate touch controls precisely. This alone is a deal breaker, anything that requires more focus or concentration is A safety hazard and a no go.
2) unsightly charging cables hanging around.
3) no backing camera support. Also a safety hazard.
4) no handsfree support i.e control volume, skip songs without looking or lifting hands from the steering wheel
> 3) no backing camera support. Also a safety hazard.
You wouldn't even want the phone to show the backup camera; you said it's too small for your eyes. The car has to be able to show the backup camera in the console anyway.
> 4) no handsfree support i.e control volume, skip songs without looking or lifting hands from the steering wheel
I have disabled bluetooth in my cars because it's a worse experience than wired CarPlay, but if I had to, I could just go back to it and my cars support controlling the music from the physical car controls (including the ones on the steering wheel), just like when it's connected by CarPlay. This has worked for ~15 years at least.
> Small screen hard to read with ageing eyes from that distance, or to operate touch controls precisely. This alone is a deal breaker, anything that requires more focus or concentration is A safety hazard and a no go.
I could see this being an issue for some eyes. For me though the phone's touch screen is actually far easier to operate due to its location next to the steering wheel/driver's side support column. Rather than hovering my hand in the air at full reach to interact with a central unit, I keep my hand braced against either the wheel or the handle on the column and have full support when interacting with the phone.
> unsightly charging cables hanging around.
Guilty as charged. I did wire the cable to my wireless charger behind the trim in an appealing way, but my new phone doesn't even support wireless charging so I have a dangling wire now.
> no backing camera support.
My vehicle doesn't have a camera, but I've never really needed it. It comes from the time when the rear windows were large enough to clearly see everything going on out the back. This is before regulations shifted to make the rear columns massive, block all your visibility, and force you to use the camera rather than your own sense and intuition. If I had a tiny child I might reconsider.
> no handsfree support i.e control volume, skip songs without looking or lifting hands from the steering wheel
I installed a device (USA Spec BT45-TOY) that allows my phone's bluetooth to connect to the stock head unit with full support for steering wheel controls. All the magic of bluetooth with 0 LCD screens shining at me (so long as my phone screen is off).
For long trios that's what I do. I wear headphones to listen to music and audio books so I don't disturb my family. There's no way to tell Android Auto to only use my headphones, despite it being asked.
I’m rocking a 4.7” screen but still have no problems with size. I prefer a small screen with just the critical information right in my prime field of view versus a large screen with a bunch of junk on it that I have to turn my head to look at.
I suppose it’s fine if you don’t mind the voice control. I hate it so I prefer to not text and just drive. When conditions permit I dedicate my full focus to the phone/messaging.
This is how I ended up with a Honda over a Toyota. At the time Toyota did not offer Apple Play. While I would have preferred a Toyota … that was a deal killer.
Because GM wants to charge subscriptions for all kinds of software features and don’t want any competition. They are mainly looking at this as their maps vs the phone’s maps. They are ignoring all of the other reasons on why people choose AndroidAuto and CarPlay. That is often as much about personalization as anything else.
It's not like it stops people from just using their phone in a standalone way, which is what I do even with CarPlay. Bluetooth and I don't get along, and I was prompted to activate Siri and all kinds of other stuff that I have disabled on my phone when I tried it. No thanks, it works fine on its own.
They were not greedy Big IT. Instead the defined Bluetooth as standard. The Result? My iPhone can talk with me in my Audi A4 (B8,2008). And even music because refit Bluetooth. And? Because the screen is set back in the center console (luckily no touch) I can place my phone there and use it for navigation.
Need for CarPlay? 0
Need for Android Auto? 0
:)
Carmakers should tell Apple and Google that they should come again with a free of charge standard remote protocol. SPICE or something similar. And carmakers with repeating fees? Don’t buy.
I'm very on-board with the phone-in-cradle-plus-bluetooth setup. That said, there is something ergonomically appealing about taking the display that the car designers put in a useful (and usable) place and projecting the phone through that.
Phones in cradles / perched on bits of the dash car sometimes be a bit awkward to interact with or set up (depends on the car though).
Any pointers to how much Apple and Google charge the carmakers? Considering a car giant made this deeply unpopular decision, I was sure it should be easy to find. But I’ve had no luck so far.
I haven't truly felt the need for Android Auto or Car play in mine, but then it's my first vehicle in a long time so I'm not married to either. The navigation is mostly okay and I can send locations from my phone to the screen. I can use Alexa to play music from a bunch of sources. I wish they had more internal media applications, but it's fine as a first attempt. Maps seemed to be mostly cached (other than the satellite view) as I can use them offline.
Would I turn down AA/Car play? No. But it's not a need for me. And I'm not even sure how they'd scale to the giant center console and lovely dashboard display.
It’s not clear yet if Rivian is really doing this on principle or if they are trying to get subscription fees like GM or if they just have a lot to deal with right now and don’t want to bother with it.
Many car manufacturers actually want you to pay for apple CarPlay / android auto now via a subscription. I won't be buying cars that ditch CarPlay or require a subscription for it. I'd sooner buy a dumb car and fit the necessary components for CarPlay myself.
As noted in other comments, the standard infotainment systems in cars are so poor. Why would I opt for them in place of CarPlay / Android Auto? This is just greed. Plain and simple.
An example of a well thought-out dashboard is the Mercedes dashboard [1]. One screen spans the entire view of the driver replacing the speedometer, etc. Another screen spans the middle dashboard replacing the radio. The screens are not iPad like proportions that jut out. In fact, it is designed to seem like it is just one screen spanning from left to right. And it is well-proportioned.
I mentioned this before in an a previous post in April[2]. Car Dashboard designers are not good at software innovation. But they are good at positioning buttons into the right places. or move stuff around here and there. It's what they do. Like moving radio controls onto the steering wheel. In the case of Mercedes, they move the maps feature right into the driver's view. And they offer it in different formats, like text view, Augmented reality camera view, or map view. The same goes for radio content.
Hate to say it, but the flexibility the Mercedes dashboard offers makes it a more superior option compared to the built-in CarPlay and Android Auto that is also. I rarely use this superior option (or whenever I don't feel like connecting my phone by wire) because I am satisfied with CarPlay, and less satisfied with Android Auto (it crashes satellite view map).
Dashboard designers want more of the OS apps to be configurable and stretchable across the interface they install.
There is a problem with using CarPlay on an EV, and that is battery preheating. In a Tesla, Rivian, Mercedes, etc. EV, if you plan your route using the built-in satnav, the car will preheat the battery for charging which is extremely important when you are on a road trip.
Unless CarPlay includes a new interface for these kind of things, I would not be able to consider using CarPlay on a EV I am afraid.
This is truly a foolish idea. Do they not see how their customers use their car? And carplay?
Will definitely hurt GM sales, big time, and probably take several years to undo the damage. The innovation and speed to launch new services on carplay dwarfs whatever GM can do on its own, even with google, given the slowness of OEM software development and testing.
> The impact has not been felt yet. GM's Cusinato said reservations for the new Blazer EV have not diminished in the last few weeks and continue to grow.
This statement would still be true if just one person per week makes a reservation.
Oh wow. Obviously this was a dumb idea when announced (I think I posted "No they're not" here) but until reading this I had no idea Tesla did not support phones and that had been GMs inspiration.
The ship has sailed for car makers in terms of software. They lost the trust and what we are seeing are futile attempts. The only way they could win back control if some conglomerates would back some internally vetted Linux-like platform with industry third party/community support as a viable third alternative in addition to providing CarPlay/Android Auto. No single car maker can do this alone. I know it's unrealistic to expect this but there is no other option.
I wish at least Android Automotive would be developed with an AOSP-like model.
I believe on my 7-8 year old vehicle, the fancy NAV system with larger touch screen was a $700 option. It is, of course, almost completely useless. I don't want to go through its hokey menu system to enter an address or attempt to use its horrendous voice assistant. Even when new I probably only used this once or twice since the iPhone ~4 was so much better at the time.
A UI that is an extension of the phone makes the most sense.
PS
I have two data points. My wife's car is slightly newer and a different brand but equally horrendous in different ways.
I do have some sympathy for GM — as much as the public might want it, continuing down the current path is certainly ceding a fair amount of control over their customer base to two large third parties.
Except that in this case GM is still using Android Automotive the kernel (not to be confused with Android Auto, the user feature they plan to disable; thanks Google marketing for two easily confused brand names here). GM is still ceding a fair amount of control to Google and Google apps even if apparently Google is promising GM far more user data sharing.
(Which leaves me somewhat wondering how much Google is paying GM to eliminate Apple CarPlay from the picture? Apple seems the only company inconvenienced here. Most of the inconvenience is born by the users of a loss of key user-facing features.)
BNW tried to make money off of carplayby a subscription model. It back fire so much within a year they folded and dropped that plan. This will repeat in GM’s move.
I guess I'm a Luddite. I drive old (but still nice!) cars for security reasons, and they typically have only basic radios+bluetooth (or I add bluetooth or Avantree Roadtrip) and lighter plug chargers, so I can run audio through the car speakers. I don't care that much about nav except when I'm traveling, and then a Garmin GPS stuck on the dash works out pretty well.
Short term, this is stupid. GM pulled out too quickly, and without a superior drop-in replacement. Long-term, this is smart. GM will gain complete control of the software stack, and they won't be bullied into anything. Tesla knows this. Others like Rivian know it too.
> Long-term, this is smart. GM will gain complete control of the software stack…
CarPlay (I’m not familiar with Android Auto) doesn’t require that GM cede any control over their software stack. As Wikipedia puts it, it just “enables a car radio or head unit to be a display and a controller for an iOS device”.
What GM wants is to charge you $30/month for services, since phones have mostly killed their OnStar cash cow. What they’re going to learn is the extent to which “doesn’t work with my phone” is going to be a deciding factor for vehicle purchases.
At least in some markets (I think Japan may be one) there are laws mandating interaction via voice after a very small number of taps to prevent drivers from constantly looking at and poking at the screen.
I find it incredible that GM (or Rivian, or anyone else trying this) will be able to develop something that works as well as carplay/android auto and maintain it for the life of the vehicle. Phone manufacturers are known for better software departments than car makers and they routinely fail miserably at this. Even Microsoft has failed at embedded a number of times despite knowing how to maintain software over time. It takes a lot more resources and talent than people assume. It took Tesla 15 years, a headquarters in Palo Alto, and tens of billions of dollars to get to the point where maybe they have a chance to pull it off. I don't see these competitors getting ready to invest those kinds of resources.
I want my next car (probably an EV) to be just the best physical thing it can be and as much of the interface to be CarPlay powered like they showed in a WWDC before where even the speedometer was powered and rendered by Apple.
Infotainment systems are increasingly inseparable from the car, with vital controls moving into them. Not sure how an aftermarket head unit can compete.
Yeah if I cared that much about this, I'd likely just mount an iPad on my dash. (Understood it's not as nice as CarPlay or the integrated car controls)
Since when has a car company ever created workable software?
The screens still lag, and the in-car integration systems are so garbage that they found it worthwhile to farm them out to tech companies.
And CarPlay/Android Auto aren't much better; Google employees are specifically hired based on their expertise of data structures and algorithms so they have zero excuse for the abysmal quality of the software they turn out.
If this is what tens of millions in salaries buys I'm suddenly a lot less disappointed in the fact that AI can do a better job.
This is indicative of a larger malaise in American capitalism where MBAs have infiltrated all levels of organizations and burn an asset to "optimize" some internal business metric.
It really isn't whether CarPlay or Android is better. The fact that it is a choice that the auto manufacturer would make at all and b) it wouldn't listen to their customer base.
If I was on the GM board or a major shareholder, I would have huge questions about leadership.
When the EPA rules that consumers cannot own lithium batteries because you won't handle or dispose of them properly, then car manufacturers must have infrastructure in place that remotely monitors and manages the battery assets, i.e. hazardous waste.
They are all working towards the inevitable future when you sign up for personal EV transportation using a monthly subscription just like your phones...
The system in my car that integrates with the phone is a piece of junk. Not only is the microphone system completely useless and the connection procedure so badly implemented it'll fail regularly, but I've recently learned that the system in my car tends to break after a few years. Which has happened in my car. Which makes one of the car's ECUs confused so my dashboard now has a flashing indicator that isn't going to go away until I've spent a pile of cash to either replace the system or rip it out in a manner that isn't documented or supported.
The only thing I want in a car is the simplest for of integration possible, preferably using components I can rip out and replace with something better and a system for mounting my phone without having to buy all manner of silly dodads.