GM Says It’s Ditching Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for Your Safety::undefined
GM says Apple and Android have access to a ton of data on consumer habits in their vehicles that those systems don’t share with the auto manufacturer, so they’re ditching those systems in favour of their own that gives them direct access to all that user data under the guise of a safety change.
And don’t forget that GM is now in full control of which features become available in different models of car. No more pesky Apple or Google giving users new features for free; GM gets to plan the obsolescence now, and charge subscription fees for features and updates.
And they get to rake it in on both ends, charging their “partners” for access to the app ecosystem and prominent UI placement, the same way TV makers do (I have a dedicated IHeartRadio button on my TV remote, and I guarantee you it’s not because any TV users ever asked for that). They might not be doing it yet, but it is the natural direction.
Of course they will still face competition from dashboard phone mounts, which I suspect a lot of users will prefer in the end.
Yup. Back to charging users for the “nav package” and subscriptions for updates. No more pesky Google Maps with their constant-updated content
Yes of course GM only has its customers’ data’s best interests at heart i’m sure…
“Consumer habits.” What does that even mean in the context of a car? If we are talking about CarPlay/AA and not a replacement of the underlying automotive OS, it’s literally just a phone. Apple and Google can track what their users do with their phones. They can’t see how a user interacts with the car, beyond maybe inferring driving habits from speed and location?
GM is full of shit, there’s no need for them to be privy to how I use my phone, I already get enough of that shit from Apple.
Mozilla investigated the type of stuff car manufacturers collect, including things like “genetic information” and “sexual activity.” GM just wants greater access to these types of things. Since they can’t seem to build cars that people want, they have to resort to dystopia means such as this in order to raise revenue.
I’m ditching ever considering them for a vehicle purchase for my own sanity.
Fucking OEM infotainment systems are bullshit and I will never buy a car ever again that doesn’t support CarPlay and Android Auto.
It doesn’t even really need that.
All we actually need is a Bluetooth receiver, maybe a FM radio for backup.
I would be 100% fine with that. If I want my car to have a screen, I’ll stick my phone to the dashboard somewhere.
My current car has a regular double DIN head unit in it, which I can take out and replace at will (or just replace with a big 3D printed pocket for all I care). I am dreading ever having to purchase a newer car, because I know it’s going to be wall-to-wall integrated proprietary electronic bullshit blaring in my face and nagging for subscriptions all the time and it’ll be impossible to disable or remove.
I have a car with the bullshit.
The built-in Bluetooth is laggy, and this on what was a high end car at the time.
Glad I got it for less than half of new price.
People ask me why I have so many motorcycles. Lots of reasons, really.
But I think I just decided on a new one. All of my motorcycles have no bullshit. A full manual riding experience; one engine, two wheels, the road, you. End of list. Two of them are fancy enough that they include a clock. That’s the full extent of rider distraction features.
Two of them are fancy enough that they include a clock.
Man after my own heart!
I have one of those, it’s a nearly 30 year old motorcycle, engineered in the 80’s. Still gets 30mpg all day long. Gets more if I’m easy on the throttle and doing longer trips. But the clock is rarely right (battery is often dead cause I’m lazy).
My only complaint is bloody carbs. Uggh. Those things are 19th century black magic (and I grew up working on engines with carbs, so I understand, but loathe them). Fuel injection was a game changer for automotive reliability. Fortunately you can buy add-on FI for most car engines, and it just works.
Android Auto / Car Play Nav systems are the best though. Although the stock one has a HUD on mine.
Good choice. We have a 2023 Suburban for work, robot didn’t seal our passenger door correctly, steering wheel misaligned from factory, they installed a broken door panel on the rear passenger second row door, electrical gremlins make the auto mirrors adjust randomly, backup system sees ghosts. Absolute embarrassing they ask $80,000 for this. We got it brand new with zero miles.
I considered the Suburban but ultimately chose the Ford Expedition Max. I’m glad I did, I couldn’t be happier with it. Android Auto is on all the time. No issues whatsoever. Got it new in '21.
Tbh I was already no longer considering them. My previous car was GM and got junked before 10 years were up. Now I’m driving a Nissan still going strong (edit: on year 10 right now), haven’t even had any major problem yet (knock on wood). By year 7, the GM had a replacement engine, clutch and starter. And I was living with the fuel gauge not resetting to zero properly when it started so having no idea how much fuel was in the tank until the low fuel light came on.
This experience has been so much better that it will take a lot to get me to consider an American brand over a Japanese one.
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This feels like something a C-suite came up with to carve out extra profit and had some bean counters crunch the numbers on, fluffed them up a bit and then had the company roll with it on his idea.
I’m usually disappointed by consumer apathy, but from everyone I talk to who has a car with a screen, if they have CarPlay/Android Auto they couldn’t do without it, and if they don’t have it it’s the biggest thing they wish they had.
I’ve ridden with a friend who has it and uses it a lot, and I can understand the attraction for users who like to be connected while driving. The speech to text stuff actually worked pretty well. I don’t feel desire for it myself, but for me its absence is at most a minor inconvenience.
It does seem like it could mostly be replaced by a software app though, plus some kind of dash mount for a phone.
Fwiw there are aftermarket options do add it through USB.
The hardware would have to support video input via USB though. I think if we’re talking about car electronics, more than likely those addons use wired Android Auto and are really meant for cars that don’t support it wirelessly.
Unless, of course, you’re talking about some aftermarket head units as well in which case all bets are off.
What they mean is that you have zero reason to pay GM $20 a month for their substandard, unsecure garbage navigation and cloud services, and that’s not allowed.
“We are dropping carplay and android auto because mobile phones distract the driver”
But the dashboard looks like this
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Yes, let’s trust a corporate that’s doing things for our safety out of the kindness of their heart.
Like Google
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it doesnt really matter why they do it as long as it increases security imho
maybe they do it to sell more cars because their cars are deemed safer than competitors? so what? less people dying and getting injured is a good thing
There’s no way a real human being older than 12 actually believes the things you just typed.
The mental gymnastics to attribute phone projection vs some in house app to deaths is crazy. The only thing this will protect is their own bottom line
This is going to cripple them in the market. Removing features does nothing to make a vehicle more attractive to the average idiot. Maybe GM thinks they can get away with it because the demand for cars exceeds the supply right now, I don’t know.
They are going back to the days of a $100 proprietary hdmi cable and annual maps subscription with ads for your own safety
They see how much money Google and Apple are making selling your data and want a bigger cut so they need to make it so they’re the only source of data extraction then your data is more valuable.
As they mention in the article, tesla and rivian are doing quite well and both have opted not to integrate with phone mirroring options. So it’s a gamble, but they may think they can get away with it. Like you say, the high demand may be giving them the confidence to try.
Tesla and Rivian are both newer electric-only manufacturers, though (unless there’s something I don’t know about Rivian). Their market is quite different from stodgy old GM’s.
And their software integrated into their cars is much better and receives OTAs (as a Rivian owner). However also as a Rivian owner: I’d prefer car play/AA.
This isn’t much different than smart TVs pushing their shitty outdated apps on you versus using something like a Roku or Firestick which is third party and updated regularly. This is a classic GM move of taking the exact wrong action on something and expecting great results. This is why they keep going bankrupt.
I have an older Roku tv. I recently got a nice roku streambar and hooked it up to the older Roku tv.
The tv displayed a popup with a message along the lines of “Oh hey, we see you connected a newer Roku device. No worries. Well just use it instead of the older built in one and you’ll never know the difference.”
More of this please.
They’re probably still marketing to boomers, maybe an ok play in the short term, but that target audience is probably not going to prop them up forever
Lmao. Shortly followed by their own systems that are subscription based.
Even if they manage to get big players like Spotify to develop apps for them, a lot of people - at least on the Android side - have smaller, niche apps for audiobooks and podcasts that would never bother to port their apps to GM services. Heck, even Apple Music and YouTube Music wouldn’t bother. I smell an upcoming BOGO deal on their overstocked dealerships, just before they get another bailout check.
Also, what will that look like 10 years from now when “popular app of 2024” is dead and gone, and new thing has no reason to build an app for a 10 year old car. Theres a reason why people like these mirroring systems to much, let the device that is likely to be replaced every 2 or so years and get regular updates handle the software.
I said it above, but it’s worth repeating that they’re doing the exact same thing that TV manufacturers do with their shitty stores filled with outdated apps versus regularly updated third-party solutions like Roku and Firestick. Shit like this means developers have to spread themselves thin to maintain multiple different versions rather than focusing on one, which usually results in the niche versions getting neglected or quickly slapped together.
They’ll probably just form android auto or something and roll their own. So you can still probably use android apps.
I would be surprised if the tablet itself isn’t already running Android. It has to run something, and it definitely isn’t iOS.
As if I needed another reason to not buy a GM.
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GM is seriously so fucking trash. Everyone I have ever known with a GM product had seriously regretted it within 6 months.
I’ve put 160,000 miles on my Impala. I’ve had to replace a vent solonoid once, took like 10 minutes in the driveway. Also had an evap solonoid go bad. Other than that it’s been oil, brakes, and tires. 8 years on and still my daily driver.
Just like every other brand, you have to know which models, years, bodystyles, powertrains, etc have excessive issues and avoid them, then hope you don’t get the 1/100 that’s a lemon.
I own a 2001 pickup and the transmission went once. Other than that no major repairs in the 15 years I’ve owned it.
Thousands of broken sun shells in that era
Currently, this a dealbreaker for me. As in I won’t buy a vehicle that does this, or charges me a subscription fee for a built in feature like heated seats.
There really needs to be a standardised open protocol rather than Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to use a non-Apple/Google app for my in-car infotainment. Apple and Google just want our data.
Let Android Auto and CarPlay be options in a competing market, rather than zero choice and just having to use whatever your phone provides.
There are aftermarket options to support screen mirroring over usb, so I think it is possible. Is anyone else putting in the work to compete with Google and Apple? I’ve been watching as Google ads integration to various cars - as an example they didn’t show turn by turn directions on the screen behind the steering wheel a while ago, and added it on Honda at some point. These features take investment, and perhaps the OSS options aren’t keeping up?
There needs to be a lot more to it than just screen monitoring, it needs to recognise touch inputs, high-fidelity, low-latency audio (both ways), and importantly the car needs to be able to send information back to the device (is the handbrake on, are the headlights on, etc). That requires integration from the carmaker.
Open source solutions at the moment cannot be used with in-car infotainment, because of that requirement that the car needs to send information to the device. I think there should be an open protocol for this that all cars implement.
the car needs to be able to send information back to the device (is the handbrake on, are the headlights on, etc).
I use Android Auto every single day, and I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about. I also used it on rental vehicles for years when I was traveling for work, so it’s not that my current daily driver is just old. I have never seen information sent from the vehicle to my phone, and certainly never needed it.
Zooming out a bit, why would my vehicle need to send data to my phone? Even your examples (handbrake, headlights), are those actually necessary? Of course not.
I use android auto every day too, and it absolutely does those things.
When you turn your headlights on (I.e.when it’s dark) the android auto display goes from light mode (so you can see it even in blaring sunshine and wearing sunglasses) to dark mode (so it doesn’t blind you when it’s dark). It doesn’t do this via magic, it does it because the car sends that information to your phone.
Android auto also will not let you perform some functions while driving. It does this by detecting your handbrake. This is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions.
There’s also more minor things like the car telling the phone whether it’s RHD or LHD and altering the UI accordingly.
So respectfully, you are wrong. Not only is it useful, but it’s sometimes a legal requirement. And Android Auto already uses data sent by the car.
That’s why alternative solutions don’t exist.
Imagine if we had a functioning Congress that could respond to these (and other) new tech advances with real standards that move technology forward safely and responsibly.
What a world we could have.
I don’t want to even rent a car without CarPlay. Good luck with that GM.
there is a strong demographic of us which hate that shit. knobs and switches gang
CarPlay exists fine with knobs and switches. It’s just a solid integration for playing audio and having a solid GPS view with Apple Maps/Google Maps/Waze. It doesn’t inherently require giving up knobs and switches.
Some are better than others. You can control CarPlay without touching the screen in Mazdas for example.
I don’t think you’re using the word “strong” correctly.
Anyway, all you have to do is just NOT plug your phone onto the car.
I just want to buy a 90’s car without a stupid iPad bolted to the dashboard, an electronically actuated parking brake, or hundreds of worthless, permanently enabled nannies keeping me from doing what I want to with my own car and making repairs hundreds more expensive than they should be.
I have a 2019 car, manual transmission, knobs and switches for climate and heated seats, and a touch screen for carplay. It’s the best.
I love the ones that pop up as soon as you start driving that say “keep your eyes on the road!” 🤦♂️
My 07 Accord is all old school. I installed a bt adapter and I’m happy as fuck.
