Not to mention, isn’t CarPlay just an interface for the phone to be able to connect to so the screen can display the software operating on the phone?

Near zero cost to GM, tons of convenience for GM’s customers. I can only imagine GM wants customers’ data or subscription fees, and Apple will not allow that. And this is a business that got bailed out by US taxpayers, and is explicitly too big to fail.

It’s a cost to GM because they can’t nickel and dime their customers with subscription fees if customers can use the phone service they already have.

Weird how the inability to gouge is now seen as a "cost".

We've been struggling with this one for a while on the "open source app store" side of the conversation.

Opportunity cost

problem is (from GM's perspective), with CarPlay, Apple takes over the UX of the car...the Apple logo is the first and last thing people see when driving

GM doesn't want Apple or Google taking over the UX of the car, because then GM is eventually just another FoxConn

and sure, there's a money thing...they want revshare from Spotify and every other app they can position in the UI

CarPlay and Android Auto will be gone as fast as car makers can make it happen

> the Apple logo is the first and last thing people see when driving

This isn’t how it works in my Dodge. There is a Dodge logo / startup screen first, then a “don’t use screen while driving sign that I am forced to accept every time” and then it shows me CarPlay.

Same in my BMW. The last thing I see is also a BMW logo across all my dash screens.

Same on my Audi, Volkswagen, and Fords here to. I'm not sure I understand this fear at all. I know carplay and the car are different systems.

Same as my current circa-2017 GM car, which shows a home screen with buttons or blank screen with the time. There is no Apple OR GM logo.

In many vehicles, CarPlay and Android Auto appear within a panel on the overall interface, they don't have to take over the whole UI.

All vehicles.

Apple announced the total UI takeover option (though I’m not sure if it works today) but no car maker supports it on a shipping vehicle.

Many have announced interest but at this point we don’t know if it will ever be available, even if only on some kind of ultra-luxury car.

There’s always the aftermarket. If CarPlay stops being a standard option, that is the first thing I will do with a new car: replace the AV

As cars move away from traditional DIN stuff and more towards multiple screens with no physical “radio” on the dash in the classic sense… is that still an option?

It’s there’s a market, there will likely be a way. That’s one of capitalism’s strengths.

Maybe not for an EV.

The head units are so integrated and specific to vehicles now that I doubt that a third party unit would work and provide all that you need from it. The most you might get is a secondary screen that displayed CarPlay/AndroidAuto but then connected to the car via Bluetooth which is a serious downgrade.

I drive a 2021 Toyota RAV4. The CarPlay interface takes over the whole screen. It also does so in every rental or borrowed car I’ve ever driven.

Yes, in older designs with the smaller screens it does need to take over. EVs are moving to larger screens where there is room to place CarPlay into one section of the screen and keep other areas “native”.

Typically, you see the logo before you get into the actual car. I would say you can tell by the shape, but some brands share too much in the looks department (cough Kia/Hyundai).

Kia and Hyundai are effectively the same company.

I assume Kia is South Korea’s lower end offering, Hyundai is their mid tier offering, and Genesis is their luxury offering.

Nowadays Kia and Hyundai target different segments, but quality is about the same. Kia also does more region-specific models, like the Ceed in Europe and the Telluride in US, while Hyundai seems to have a more global strategy where they choose what to sell from a portfolio of global models.

> CarPlay and Android Auto will be gone as fast as car makers can make it happen

This will also be an opportunity for other car manufacturers to differentiate themselves: “We still support CarPlay”

> This will also be an opportunity for other car manufacturers to differentiate themselves: “We still support CarPlay”

but I doubt CarPlay will even end up as the lowest-common-denominator...one of GM or Mercedes or whoever will try to get their system good enough that they can license it to other car companies...so CarOS or whatever will be the default if your car brand doesn't have a bespoke experience

I like Android Auto and use it all the time, but I can't fault GM for not wanting to be treated as just another OEM...FoxConn does all the hard work for Apple on the hardware side and isn't even allowed to put their name on the product...the ultimate replaceable cog

Apple might have been received better by car makers if it hadn't threatened to be developing their own vehicle...now all the car makers see them as a competitive threat

Cars and small electronic devices are not comparable.

GM is only doing this because they see an avenue to charge recurring fees, which smartphones obviated.

I don’t think it’ll work anyway. BMW has been stubborn on CarPay integration by not supporting it or asking a hefty price for “CarPlay preparation” (which is, as far as I’m concerned, mostly installing a WiFi antenna on the head unit), all because it would have cannibalized their revenue from map updates and other remote services (e.g. real-time traffic information). But in the end, BMW gave up and CarPlay is included in all models by default starting 2022 or 2023, don’t remember exactly.

Included on my 2022 model.

> And this is a business that got bailed out by US taxpayers, and is explicitly too big to fail.

Isn’t this just the gift that just keeps on giving?

Not only that but wireless CarPlay. I recently picked up a '23 RAV4 and I didn't think it would matter but the difference is noticeable. At least in this model it's connected before I'm even out of my garage.

I don’t understand why this can’t be an OTA update? Maybe with slightly less functionality but why can’t it just Bluetooth CarPlay?

It's done over an adhoc wifi network, not bluetooth.

As far as I understand it, it still uses Bluetooth to establish the connection, but the rest is done over Wifi (someone can feel free to correct me if not).

That's correct. Bluetooth for initial handshake type stuff, then ad-hoc wifi for pushing the video/data stream.

As others have said, it uses WiFi (set up via Bluetooth).

Bluetooth doesn't support the data rates necessary to deliver the data for CarPlay. As for the "maybe with slightly less functionality" would you take no display? You're basically talking about Siri Eyes Free where you'd have a button to activate Siri on your steering wheel, but wouldn't get much functionality. But I'm guessing you want the navigation to be displayed on your screen, not just a bluetooth audio connection with a Siri button.

Basically, the 1-2Mbps of Bluetooth really isn't enough to drive a display with any decent resolution and I'm guessing that real-world data rates are a bit less than spec with so much stuff in the 2.4GHz band. Microsoft notes that you need 1.5Mbps for 1024x768 and I'm guessing most car displays are better than that today (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remo...).

Maybe you'd argue that you'd take 5 FPS and semi-reliability, but I just don't think they want to implement something that's just kinda crappy. Apple doesn't want you going around saying, "wireless CarPlay is garbage." Yes, you might understand a retrofit to a car that doesn't really have the capability, but 99% of people won't. It's not that it's impossible as much as something likely to be way more pain than it's worth. Even if you want it and would be ok with the trade-off, that's not always how products work. Heck, if they did implement it and it didn't work, would you end up using tech support for it? That costs money. Would you post online where your problem-solving becomes interpreted as "Apple sucks" even if you don't mean it that way?

Worse, car manufactures might (and car dealers definitely would) start promising these models as supporting wireless CarPlay. Maybe Apple could deal with official marketing materials, but dealers will say almost anything to sell a car. People would be duped into buying these cars and then complain to Apple that their product sucks. People would be asking online "is this real wireless CarPlay or the fake kind?" The absolute headache!

You can buy an adapter that will plug into the USB port if you want wireless CarPlay: https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/27/carplay-wireless-carplay-adap.... Basically, the information goes from your phone to the adapter (via Bluetooth-setup-WiFi) and then the adapter just sends it over USB. That's way less headache for Apple and probably a better experience since it actually supports the right data rates. I haven't used one of these so you should read up if you want to buy one (or try it out and return it if it doesn't work for you), but this seems like a much better alternative than trying to jam CarPlay over Bluetooth (without WiFi).

I use one of the wireless CarPlay adapters. Works fine. Only real downside is like I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the audio does have a bit of a delay similarly to Bluetooth audio playback (as in, if I skip to next song or pause using either the screen or my steering wheel controls, it takes maybe a half second or one second longer than when I just have it plugged in for wired CarPlay).

Not the only reason, but was definitely one reason that contributed to the decision to cancel my Model 3 order and go with a Kia EV6 instead.

I said my next car would have to have CarPlay but the Tesla software in my Y is good enough to live without it. I rent a lot of cars with CarPlay, and like it, but now that the Tesla software supports both Apple Music and Spotify, I’m good. That said, I wouldn’t buy a car that supported Google Carwhatever but not Apple CarPlay.

As far as i know the tesla car has its own spotify account. So this only works, if you’re the only one driving your car. In my family up to five people drive a car - I don’t think i want one spotify-account used by five people.

This was only the case in Europe. US cars instead come with a Slacker account, and you need to associate your Spotify account to access it, same with Apple Music.

Not sure if the associations are per-user or per-car, though. I believe there was work to move them along with some other settings to your "user profile" and would go with you across cars.

It's not the same Spotify account you login to your phone with, or it only supports logging into one account?

It used to be that way, now you can set a spotify account per driving profile

That was the case a few years ago—now you just associate your personal Spotify account with your Tesla driver profile. It auto-switches to the right one based on the driver, which works great!

Supporting Apple Music isn’t enough. For instance, I use Overcast as my podcast player and it has excellent Carplay support.

I won’t buy a car that doesn’t support CarPlay.

I have a Model 3 right now and like it well enough I guess, but I think next time I get a car my ideal is to get a non-Tesla EV that has CarPlay. My hope was that Tesla has pushed the industry enough to start making competitive EVs so that I don't have to get another Tesla. And I think I would prefer using CarPlay. I've used it a couple times in rental cars and really liked it. The screens are smaller and less nice than Tesla's, but the navigation on Tesla kind of sucks compared to Apple and Google and I think that's more valuable to me.

Tesla is the gold standard for in car infotainment. I wouldn’t trust GM or even google to be as good at software as Tesla without them establishing a track record first.

The Model 3’s system is one of the few out there that can actually compete with/replace CarPlay.

Agreed, but I have my gripes with the system. We waited a long time for Apple Music to come to the infotainment - and even then it's slow, you cannot adjust to a higher music quality, you can't download playlists to local storage, I need to login every month, etc.

Additionally, my 2019 Model 3's infotainment is noticeably slower than a 2023's. I'd hate to be limited by compute in a car that I'll probably replace in 8 years. If it's my phone, the replacement time is much shorter (and much more affordable!).

It would not stop me from buying another Tesla. The infotainment is generally fantastic (as is the rest of the car). But CarPlay would make the music and podcast experience so much better.

Tesla started shipping the new AMD based MCU3 at the end of 2021. MCU2 in previously Model 3s is an Intel Atom architecture.

Previously Tesla offered MCU1 to MCU2 paid upgrades for Model S/X owners. It seems unlikely that Tesla will offer anything similar for MCU2 to MCU3 but not impossible that it could be done as a 3rd party retrofit. The connectors and physical dimensions are different so it’s not trivial.

It _is_ excellent, but it is annoyingly ignorant of integrating with phones. If you have an Android phone you can send and receive texts, but no other notifications come in and nothing else is projected there either. If you have an iPhone, it works _sometimes_ but I am rarely able to reply to messages using voice successfully. I wish it better extended into my phone, but it's largely because of Apple's rules, which I guess aren't Tesla's fault—but are a side-effect of not using carplay.

While annoying, my real gripe is what this says about their development process. If you can’t get these things right, how can I trust that you will get the safety critical software right?

> you can’t get these things right, how can I trust that you will get the safety critical software right

Does any major car manufacturer routinely nail their infotainment systems?

Yeah… I honestly think that altho the Tesla infotainment system isn’t perfect, if we’re gonna judge the safety competency of car companies based on how good their in-house infotainment is, Tesla’s would be far and above the best (until the Apple car comes out or something…).

Infotainment is so horribly universally bad that Apple CarPlay and the Android equivalent came into being.

No, but other manufacturers are much more conservative about how they market their software (e.g., naming it ‘driver assist’ vs ‘autopilot’). It’s an obvious and explicit declaration that their software should not be relied on to be the main mitigation in safety-critical scenarios.

Model 3's system is better than other cars I've owned, but not as good as what I think CarPlay can be. The only advantage of my Model 3 vs the rental cars I've used with CarPlay was that Model 3's screen is bigger and nicer and so the maps look nicer and I can have music info/controls on screen at the same time as maps. But both Apple and Google navigation is a lot better than Tesla's navigation. I also use Apple Music and was initially excited about getting integration into Tesla, but I continue to just use it through my phone instead so it ended up not mattering. The one thing I hate about Tesla's system is the semi-frequent UI changes. A moving car with a touch screen is not the place where I want to have to re-learn some aspect of a UI after I get a system update.

The UI updates essentially once a year to keep up the with massive influx of features that are being added, and keep those features accessible and organized on the available screen real estate.

Basically with Tesla you get the latest model year car software on an ongoing basis, and it’s revolutionary from an owner’s perspective.

The alternative is needing to trade in/buy a whole new model year car to get to enjoy whatever new feature, which is how it always used to work, and is so scammy.

If you don’t want the latest software, you can always choose not the install it, but you would be seriously limiting the performance, comfort, safety and entertainment value of your car.

Most cars don’t get faster, safer, and cheaper to operate after you buy them, but Tesla’s do. The obvious trade-off to getting the latest model year’s software and features is getting the latest model year’s UI as well.

This definitely rules out GM for me.

Agreed. There is no way I would consider one without CarPlay. It has become too much a part of the driving experience.

yeah this move just guaranteed i will never buy a GM car from now on!

Back in 2017, I didnt buy a toyota for the first time because they didn't offer carplay. I refuse to be stuck with a subpar experience for the 10 years I normally keep a vehicle. Absolutely ridiculous to not support both CarPlay and Android Auto.

That's where I'm at. Our 2016 Toyota has their horrible Entune system, and however much I like everything else about it, that thing irritates me every time I look at it.

Good news for both of you: I rented a 2022 Corolla and it supported both CarPlay and Android Auto. Toyota gave in!

Well they got about 4 years before I need another car, unfortunately for them my new minimum requirements are going to also include EV. VW id.4 is my current leader.

Might be worth swapping out the head unit. Best Buy will sell you a Sony unit with installation for $250 for example.

I've thought about that. I'd want one that supports the backup camera and all that. Do you know offhand if those exist at reasonable prices?

The last time I replaced a unit was in 2012, but I think what you would be looking for is a head unit that accepts camera input , a wiring harness for the head unit to the car's wiring, a reverse camera adapter if the car doesn't use the standard yellow RCA-esque connector (apparently toyota uses several different connectors), and a interface adapter if you want to retain the use of the steering wheel controls which in total would probably be <$500 depending on parts. I remember Crutchfield's "will it fit" tools and advisors being pretty helpful.

Looking around a bit, apparently there's also a neat though slightly more expensive product called the datalink maestro rr or rr2 that does the camera and head unit interfacing part while retaining additional features.

https://youtu.be/AkWzSXFJYTo

Toyota themselves have started offering upgrades of older models to support CarPlay or Android Auto. Costs about $200.

They probably see how well Tesla/Rivian sell and they do not have carplay. I guess you are limited to what you can do with a carplay/andriod auto implementation. However, I prefer carplay vs any other (including tesla's) implementation. I'm sure there is an aspect to increased complexity as well.

Well I have good news for you: you won't need to change your phone! Because they aren't supporting Android Auto either.

The reactions in this thread are interesting, because they seem to imply that this is the final straw that has convinced us to not buy Chevrolets and Buicks, as opposed to the last 30+ years of of their products being generally terrible.

But the hope was that their new EV lineup would change things, and pull people back.

The Lyriq looks really nice

Personally, I LOVE my (2019) Volt. FWIW, it also has AA/Car Play.

First they kill the Volt -- IMHO the best PHEV on the market when I bought it -- now they kill a vastly superior interface to anything I've ever used in a car.

Sorry GM, you might just have lost a (stockholding, for now, at least) customer.

It's been hard to predict the quality of electric vehicles based on the same brand's ICE/hybrid vehicles.

For example, Toyota is head and shoulders better than the competition at ICE and hybrids, but they're arguably last in EVs. In fact, Consumer Reports says the Chevy Bolt is currently the best EV[1].

1. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/rankings/electric-vehicl...

Sort of. I know Tesla owners who've bought Bolts as secondary cars but would not otherwise be caught dead in a GM car. There are people who buy Corvettes who wouldn't consider another GM car. I avoid American cars at all costs but was still considering a Bolt before this news.

If I needed a full-size truck, I'd consider a GM (alongside Toyota and Ford). Without CarPlay, I'll buy one of the other brands.

If I wanted a near-supercar, I'd consider a Corvette. Without CarPlay, I'll buy a Cayman S or something else instead. The Corvette might be measurably better in most performance metrics, but if I can't use the apps I'm accustomed to using, I won't buy it.

The rest of the GM line-up? Yeah, pretty uninspiring.

My household has 3 EV Chevy cars - Volt, Bolt, Spark. Buying another Chevy EV at some point was certainly a possibility.

I even use Android, and don't personally care that much about Apple support, and I'm still unhappy about this and it's making me less interested in Chevy for the next car.

It's not mentioned in the headline, but GM also intends to phase out Android Auto, so this is not specific to iPhones.

>General Motors plans to phase out widely-used Apple CarPlay and Android Auto technologies that allow drivers to bypass a vehicle's infotainment systems, shifting instead to built-in infotainment systems developed with Google for future electric vehicles.

Exactly. I’ve long joked that buying a Buick in the modern era is a sign of severe brain trauma. Even the economic argument doesn’t make sense when you consider the reliability.

That's a very 80s view of GM.

Did you know there are CarPlay apps on the play store? That’s how I access CarPlay in my car.