An inside look at General Motors’ massive gamble in ditching CarPlay

A little over a year ago, General Motors made what may well turn out to be one of its biggest gambles in many years: dropping support for CarPlay for all future EVs.

To most of us, the decision seemed insane, likely to result in a huge number of lost sales – but a new report suggests that the company felt it had little choice …

GM’s decision to ditch CarPlay support

When GM made the announcement, there was no mystery as to its goal: Instead of letting customers use Apple services and iPhone apps, the company hoped to generate subscription revenue for its own infotainment services.

The mystery was how the company could possible imagine the move would work out well for it. Apple said as long ago as 2021 that 79% of US car buyers “only consider CarPlay-capable vehicles” when making their purchasing decisions. We ran our own poll, and got exactly the same result.

Things didn’t get any better when GM launched its first post-CarPlay vehicle, the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV. Reviews of its own infotainment system were … not kind.

The infotainment display completely melted down, stuck in an infinite loop of shutting off, turning on, displaying a map centered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and turning back off again. It did this until we pulled off the freeway and restarted the car. All was well after the reset, but an hour later, it happened again.

GM found it hard to work with Apple

A lengthy Bloomberg piece sheds a little light on the company’s reasoning. One factor was that GM found it difficult to work with Apple, which it says didn’t respect the car-maker’s automotive expertise.

Apple didn’t even seem especially open to feedback on areas CarPlay could improve. A former top GM exec remembers teammates recommending a tweak based on their insights about how screens could be interruptive. “One of the Apple engineers said, ‘Look, our system is better. Why can’t you just do what we say to do?’ ” this exec recalls, requesting anonymity to avoid professional retaliation. “There wasn’t even any consideration of our decades of experience with driver distraction.” 

However, that seems to have been mutual, with GM failing to appreciate the depth of Apple’s UI expertise.

In a meeting with Greg Joswiak, now Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, one exec tried to impress upon him GM’s deep automotive expertise as if to suggest Apple was out of its depth, emphasizing the complexity of cars and how they can require four years to develop […] Joswiak replied, “How long do you think it takes us to build an iPhone?”

The new CarPlay interface was key

GM was particularly worried about Apple’s plans for the new CarPlay to take over the car’s entire dash, in what the company calls “a new instrument cluster experience.”

Apple no longer merely wanted to project a copy of iOS onto the infotainment screen; it wanted the iPhone to oversee the mission-critical cluster behind the steering wheel. This stuff was sacrosanct in Detroit. GM’s Wexler says the next-gen CarPlay, which GM learned of before the announcement, was a “major factor” in its ensuing decision to divorce Apple. 

But ultimately it’s about money

Fundamentally, however, this is about GM eyeing subscription revenue.

There’s promise with Super Cruise, a service that enables hands-free driving on freeways. The feature comes with an initial $2,500 price tag, and after three years it costs $25 per month. The company also offers subscriptions for extra safety features, internet connectivity and remote car access, and it envisions premium bespoke apps for specific models, such as trail services for 4×4 off-roaders.

How it will persuade people to pay for add-on services when it can’t even get the basic infotainment system working properly remains to be seen. One frustrated 2024 Chevy Blazer EV owner who experienced the crashes described in reviews said that his car ended up spending a month back at the dealership while they fixed it – and he isn’t optimistic that it won’t happen again.

“If my nav screen bricks again,” he says, “I can at least make it useful by suction-cupping my iPhone to it.”

9to5Mac’s Take

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: This is an incredibly dumb move.

Car makers may have expertise in a lot of areas, but infotainment UIs is definitely not one of them. The whole reason for the popularity of CarPlay is precisely because iPhone owners prefer Apple’s UI to those created by car companies.

The subscription revenue generated through GM’s own services will be utterly dwarfed by the value of the sales they will lose to companies who continue to offer CarPlay. The question is not whether GM will make a U-turn on this absurd policy, only how long it will take before doing so.

Photo: Chevrolet