The last thing I want is for my car to be another device with its own subscription, accounts, applications, configuration, etc.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I can't recall for certain if my old S7 had that option but I don't think it did.

But then when I get in my car it will just stay charged at 100% all the time.

I think that fast charging is just as bad, if not worse.

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.

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.

Also, I find google maps navigation to drain quite a bit. Don’t you wanna charge?

On a longer trip I’ll pull my phone out of my pocket and put it on the Qi charger, but around town I’ve never seen much drain

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.

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.

I mean, I get the spirit, but the experience was terrible.

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.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-mot...

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.

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.

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.

Someone over there has fond memories of OnStar, and is desperate to relive their glory days.

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.

No more $3k package to add heated seats, just upgrade OnStar to OnStarPrime+ for $49.95/mo!

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.

Correct on "wild profit margin", but your numbers are wrong according to FY22 10-K filing[1]:

  Services Revenue       = $78.129B
  Services Cost of Sales = $22.075B
  Services Gross Margin  = 71.7% ($56.054B)

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...

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.

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.

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.

We'll see how that pans out.

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.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/gm-makes-1500-onstar-subscript...

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.

Their spokesperson says all their cars come with 8 years of free service!

Unless they’re lying to their customers revenue won’t stop ramping until 2032 or so.

Presumably the SEC filings and investor facing statements they are making are in error instead.

/s

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.

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.

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.

Toyota and others actually bother with QA which costs a bit.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Rotating them around the halfway mark (at ~5 years in my case) accomplishes that. Anything else seems like more work than benefit to me.

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.

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 supplants this GM nonsense.

There is no end to the mania for screwing the consumer. Subscription car features... WTF. Keep your old cars, people.

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.

For most modern cars, it's a pipe dream.

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.

4.8% of the overall vehicle market.

I quoted the OP who said "as the shakeup due to EVs begins, even loyal consumers will be considering other makes" implying that people who buy more and more EVs will not buy a GM due to lack of Carplay. I replied that EV buyers seem to not care as the brand (Tesla) with 2/3 of the EV market does NOT do Carplay and it seems to not have a negative effect on EV sales for said brand.

I neither endorsed Tesla nor Carplay-less cars nor pretended 100% of people buy EVs. So why do you call me out for "living in a bubble"?

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.

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.

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.

Profit.

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.

How does it make sense to keep making cars bigger and bigger? It doesn't for us, but sure as shit does for them.

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.

Sort of a spherical cows optimization.

GM is going to discover that cars are now phone accessories for most people, not the other way around.

They would definitely benefit from convincing people to pay for 50%+ profit margin software as a service subscriptions.

See: https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/how-much-profit-do-c...

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.

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).

But still I'd really want it to support CarPlay, because I use Apple Music and Overcast the most when I'm in my car.

I also prefer the way Apple Maps pronounces the street names over here (phjone lang set to english) compared to the utter butchering Google Maps does.

I will literally not buy a car without CarPlay. I am sure I am not alone.

From GM's latest 10-K filing[1], quickly distilling the past 3 years of consolidated income statements down to its Automotive ex. GM Financial stream:

  | (US$ Millions)    | 2022    | 2021    | 2020    |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | Revenue           | 143,975 | 113,590 | 108,673 |
  | Cost of Sales     | 126,892 | 100,544 |  97,539 |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | Adj Gross Profit  |  17,083 |  13,046 |  11,134 |
  | Adj Gross Margin  |   11.9% |   11.5% |   10.2% |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | SG&A              |  10,667 |   8,554 |   7,038 |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | Adj EBITDA        |   6,416 |   4,492 |   4,096 |
  | Adj EBITDA %      |    7.4% |    7.5% |    6.5% |

  | (US$ Millions)    | 2022    | 2021    | 2020    |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | Revenue           | 148,980 | 126,150 | 115,894 |
  | Cost of Sales     | 134,397 | 114,651 | 112,752 |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | Adj Gross Profit  |  14,583 |  11,499 |   3,142 |
  | Adj Gross Margin  |    9.8% |    9.1% |    2.7% |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | SG&A              |  10,888 |  11,915 |  10,193 |
  |-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
  | Adj EBITDA        |   3,695 |   (416) | (7,051) |
  | Adj EBITDA %      |    2.5% |  (3.3%) |  (6.1%) |

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.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000146785823...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/37996/00000379962300...

[3] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2022/article/automotive-dealers...

[4] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/article/automotive-dealers...

[5] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000146785823...

[6] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000146785823...

[7] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...

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?

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.