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Patrick George, writing for The Atlantic under the ominous headline “Enjoy CarPlay While You Still Can” (News+ link):
Some automakers have made a point of proclaiming their allegiance to CarPlay, knowing that’s what buyers want. Toyota’s EVs tell CarPlay how much electric range they have left, so that Apple Maps can prompt the driver to stop at a nearby charger on a road trip. But the relationship between Detroit and Silicon Valley can be a tense one. Apple sees tremendous value in expanding its presence in your car: The next step is CarPlay Ultra, which enables your phone to control more of your car. Want to fiddle with the temperature? Ask Siri to do it. It’s an Apple lover’s dream and a car company’s worst nightmare. If that feature catches on, companies will just be makers of rolling shells for tech companies. One executive for the French automaker Renault was reportedly blunt with Apple: “Don’t try to invade our own system.” (Apple declined to comment.)
No matter what car you drive, the glory days of CarPlay may be numbered. For the auto industry, there’s just too much money to be made from creating their own versions.
George’s argument is that GM isn’t an outlier in abandoning CarPlay support, but rather a first mover, and most or all of the other major carmakers will follow. Not because they think they can make better software to provide a better experience than CarPlay offers, but because they’ll seek to gate all such features behind subscriptions.
I don’t doubt that most carmakers are looking at ways to charge subscriptions. I do doubt, however, that they’re going to follow GM’s lead in abandoning CarPlay support. It’s fundamentally a question of betting against the iPhone. That’s proven to be a bad bet, and my money says it’s going to prove to be a disastrous one for GM. There’s plently of room to charge car buyers for subscription offerings while supporting CarPlay. To me, the most telling response to GM’s decision to abandon CarPlay support was from Ford CEO Jim Farley, during an on-stage interview with Joanna Stern in 2023. He laughed. And after laughing, said, “The interior has to be really well done. But in terms of content? We kind of lost that battle 10 years ago. So get real with it, because you’re not going to make a ton of money on content inside the vehicle. It’s going to be safety/security, partial autonomy, and productivity in our eyes. [...] 70 percent of our Ford customers in the U.S. are Apple customers. Why would I go to an Apple customer and say ‘Good luck!’? That doesn’t seem customer centric.”
It’s worth pointing out that when talking about this, almost no one mentions Android Auto. GM is dropping support for that too, but no one cares. The iPhone is the phone for people who care about their phone, and thus, CarPlay is the only car-phone integration that really matters.
Back at WWDC 2022, when they announced what is now CarPlay Ultra, Apple cited a survey claiming that 79 percent of new car buyers consider CarPlay support before making a purchase. Last year, a McKinsey survey showed that one-third of new car buyers simply would not buy a car without CarPlay/Android Auto support. And, if CarPlay were removed from their current cars, 52 percent of drivers would use their phone instead — not their car’s built-in entertainment system.
Automotive vehicles are an interesting market because no carmaker has even close to a monopoly. The worldwide market leader is Toyota, with 11 percent, followed by Volkswagen (6%), Honda (5%), Ford (5%), and Hyundai (5%). If CarPlay is as popular as it seems, market competition should not only keep it broadly supported, but I think will see it return to GM after CEO Mary Barra gets fired for the fiasco she’s steering the company toward.
