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, no one ever mentions Android Auto. GM is dropping support for that too, but almost 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.
