GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe

Really in retrospect nothing has changed from the days double-din was standard apart from some extra steps. Does anyone know if there are projects that reverse engineer these misc integrations for various manufacturers? Is it all just CAN bus or something proprietary?

On the other hand I will only buy a car where the car is a BT audio unit and control head and nothing else. Everything more than that sucks.

Like, I get that it's a great solution in a lot of cars. But I don't think it's universally true that "no one" wants to use the built in system - I definitely do.

>>just so they can sell subscriptions for seat heaters and music players.

Yes, that is absolutely horrendous trend that I hope we manage to stop - but I suspect we won't, the genie is out of the bottle now so to speak.

In fact I feel the opposite you say: car play has been an excuse for some automakers for subpar infotainment.

That being said removing it completely is madness, because people like you are millions and want it.

I can completely understand why vehicle manufacturers are so wary. Just look at the history of how Apple, Google, etc companies have behaved when it comes to “partnerships”. Look at the App Store. Look at what Google did to supposedly open source Android.

It begins with some generous offer of allowing access to the UX/platform in exchange for innocent sounding things like control over user data/login. It ends with the platform completely taken over, GM being held to ransom, and no in-house systems or staff left to revert back to their own solution.

I am convinced all of these things are unsafe. I refuse to take calls when driving over bluetooth; distracting yourself with a conversation when you're supposed to be driving is reckless and I think this is doubly true when it's a phone conversation (in which the other participant can't watch the road and know when to stop talking.)

Even music while driving is a nuisance. Nobody talks about the role of music in car accidents because almost everybody likes it, but it contributes to distracted driving and in some cases reckless driving. It encourages people to continue driving when they are mentally fatigued (take note of how many people say music "helps" them during long drives.)

GPS navigation on a screen is a bad idea too; your eyes cannot read a screen and watch the road at the same time. Pure voice navigation giving brief commands and updates is sufficient and relatively safe. Car integration isn't necessary at all; a phone placed in the center console with the volume turned up and the screen turned off gets the job done. If you need to make adjustments or read a text or take a call, pull over.

In my opinion we should have a "no-tether" law: once you buy a product you should be able to use (and upgrade) it as advertised even if you break all ties with the original vendor. This means that other vendors can supply parts and services. This law could hold for many product categories, including cars and smartphones.

I bought a new model release BMW which halfway through the 2nd or 3rd year of the models life, they shipped a slightly different head unit. From that point, only the owners with the new head unit get the newest OS/features. Imagine if next year when iOS 18 comes out, we learn that only iPhone 15s made after March 2024 were eligible, and no iPhone 14 or earlier was, lol.

Beyond that, the OTA updates tend to not work and require you to go to the dealer. No one quite knows the rhyme or reason.

To expand on your point, both Google and Apple are rumored to be getting into the business of manufacturing cars (e.g. Waymo and the rumored Apple Car). So GM may be looking toward the future where their infotainment systems are owned by rival car manufacturers.

Bzzt.

What I want is what I have: there's a $10 bluetooth receiver hooked to the car audio input jack, and a $10 phone holder on top of the dash, and a $10 USB charger plugged into the 12V. If phones routinely came with headphone jacks, I could skip the bluetooth intermediate.

So: when I start the car, whatever phone I have paired reconnects with the bluetooth receiver and plays what I want through the dumb speaker system. If I want to run a map app, I do that. If I want to make a call, I can do that. The phone is in charge of muting the music when a call comes in. It's very good at that.

If I change software on my phone, the new things work in the car. If I want to replace the phone with something not tied to Google or Apple, I can.

The car can't report its location, can't be remotely immobilized, can't show me advertising. No new subscription. No bugs in the car system to exploit; no bugs in the car system to brick the system. Easily and cheaply replaceable parts.

I don't understand why any driver would want more integration than this. Somebody suggested that the car should tell the mapping system when I've clicked the turn signal on or off, but if you need that level of detailed support when driving, I think maybe you shouldn't be driving while distracted by a mapping system at all.

As we progress into the future, there needs to be a major pushback on the software upsell practices of companies, especially for cars. Cars need to be reliable, and dependable. My desktop PC has been running for 11 years now, with the power on (with only minor hardware & OS updates), the only thing that has been a constant threat to it's reliability is the drive by software makers to milk me out of my money for updates.... They often push updates under the premise that they are for security, but now most updates are to insert ads and up-sell schemes into the apps and OS.

I miss the old days, because even though you could buy new hardware, you rarely needed to... Now, with each update, I'm worried about my PC being bricked and heavy downtime without any real technical support available, because there are so many different greedy brands of companies making tons of devices that they regularly drop updates for. Something has to change about the software-driven economy, or I'm planning to just go entirely "off grid" for the most part in my retirement from being a developer and consumer myself.

It's probably kinda the same story with great mechanical and industrial engineers, which is why approximately nobody finds GM cars exciting.

I mean, GM doesn’t seem to have a reputation for building the best, most reliable vehicles as it is — even just looking at domestics (factor in imports, and there’s no comparison). Every time I shop for a vehicle, it’s crazy how GMs are almost universally lower rated than all other vehicles.

I mean, maybe they have cost on their side, but they better hope that and brand loyalty is all they need.

Maybe this was once not a major factor, and maybe it’s still not for some. But I’d say the number of people that don’t care about CarPlay or Android Auto is shrinking.

Navigation is easily controlled with the iDrive knob. Previous destinations are sorted in reverse chronological order. New destinations are easy to enter. Adding destinations works as expected (insert/append). When the fuel gauge reaches 1/8 of a tank the car prompts to add a gas station on the route which can be accepted with a single button press of the main iDrive knob. When a trip is in progress I can search on the route by category for points of interest like rest stops. It picks up traffic information over AM radio and uses that information when routing.

Similarly pleasant experience when operating the radio/built in mp3 player. Everything can be done with iDrive but there are also dedicated buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard.

Climate control is managed by physical knobs.

Bluetooth calling is supported but Bluetooth audio (music) is not.

Overall an excellent experience. It's obviously dated and a little slow but completely serviceable even today. The system is completely self-contained so it does need map updates from time to time. OTA updates, even on wifi would be nice.

From a design perspective I have no complaints at all, it is well integrated with the car and otherwise stays out of the way. A helpful tool.

they did call it as it is. it's in the article:

> In addition to potentially buying things from GM or GM’s partners through their car’s infotainment system, GM is also looking at subscription services that would be managed through the same interface. GM’s chief digital officer, Edward Kummer, told Reuters as much when the decision to drop CarPlay and Android Auto was announced. Automakers see subscriptions as huge new source of income to be tapped, with GM alone hoping to make as much as $25 billion per year just off subscriptions by 2030.

On the other hand, it happens more often when switching between a built-in car app (like the 360 cameras app) and the Carplay app, which probably implicates the car's software more?

In any case, it is pretty annoying. It sometimes happens at really inopportune times, which can be a distracting safety hazard just from the loss of connectivity/functionality alone (i.e. not even considering needing to touch the phone, which is illegal while driving in many US states.)

That's probably a feature and not a bug to them, since it damages the value or desirability of used vehicles.

Ack. From my experience, connection issues with Car Play are 100% due to the shitty software on the car's side and never on phone's side.

I regularly have connection problems (i.e. black screen in Car Play when entering the car - a Fiat with UConnect 5). They can _always_ be resolved by rebooting the cars's entertainment system. _Never_ by rebooting the phone.

There's no "likely" about it: they've publicly said that they intend to be making $25B/yr in subscription revenue from this.

iPhones are always faster than the infotainment systems in cars due to development cycles and cost.

Now my iPhone is eight years newer than the one that was already better than my car. So it’s obviously faster. Apple has delivered numerous new features in those eight years, the car never received a single update. That wasn’t even an ability on the car.

As John Gruber is a fan of saying, the phone eats everything. You can’t compete with it. It has better specs, it gets updated more often, it’s more customized to the user. It has better connectivity (I’m not paying $30 a month or whatever to give my car cellular service).

It has the apps I want to use, not the ones who gave the car company a payoff. If I have to get a rental car on a vacation, all my same stuff is right there.

GM will suffer. I’m curious how long it takes them to reverse this. Just one year? Or more? I’m willing to bet a nontrivial number of people just flat walk out of dealerships when they hear the car they’re looking at doesn’t have CarPlay (or Android Auto).

Nothing about “Operating systems will be upgraded. Apps will come and go. Maps will update.” says “The system will keep working flawlessly.” - if anything, the system will accumulate flaws.

There's a whole weird gray market for Chinese-manufactured "computers on a stick" that reverse-engineered the CarPlay protocol and use it to display a custom computer/Android interface in your car. You can do things like stream Netflix, use Chrome, install any Android app, play games, etc.

I'm not recommending it as it seems both sketchy and unsafe, but it's a funny niche that exists. For some reason, they are usually marketed on AliExpress as a "Car AI Box" but of course have nothing to do with AI.

Here's a random example video of what they look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrFHjrYnoDE

Boom - error free code!

I have my issues with CarPlay but the OEM software is hot garbage by comparison.

https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/start/what_automo...

My car dash should be the “dumb TV” to my phone’s “streaming box”.

Or perhaps they were grouping in AA under the covers.

I own a VW EV and use Android Auto with it. It's great. I would not have bought the car if it didn't support that. The real miracle is how well Android Auto/Car Play integrate with the car itself - speakers, microphones, steering wheel controls, heads-up display for directions - it all feels like a native experience.

Elon refusing to put a HUD in the tesla's is one of the reasons why he shouldn't be the CEO of anything, let alone a car company.

I've had a Toyota for four years now with all physical switches, but the complexity and number of controls is absolutely mind bogging large. I can't operate these physical switches without looking at inscrutable, small labels in awkward places. A centralized screen which allows clear view of the road at the same time is much safer than stalks with arrays of switches that have 4+ settings. At least when I'm operating it.

There's also physical buttons for app switching, for volume controls, voice input, accepting or hanging up calls, and for next/previous music tracks, and in practice those cover enough everyday functionality that I rarely even need to use the selector knob. I feel like I get the benefit of CarPlay (seamless access to my phone's capabilities) with all the niceties of tactile controls too.

For what it's worth, if Google Maps isn't what you like, you can use any other maps app with real-time directions; Apple Maps (obviously) works fantastically well on iPhones (and in suitably large cities), and you can also pick others like Waze, OSM, TomTom, etc.

We previously had a car that required the in-car nav to be updated at the dealer annually, as part of their service package. It felt like a quaint thing to have to do. I guess the alternative is that the car has some connectivity so it can download updates by itself?

Further, how are they going to handle rental fleets? Do they think people will fork over $20 on top of a rental fee just to use their junk service?

Everyone knows they lost that battle

> drivers will be less likely to use their phone for what they’re trying to do

If you’re trying to claim safety, saying that your thing that no one has seen that was developed by a company that doesn’t know what they’re doing and probably runs way too slow is safer than the thing the customer is already used to seems like a stretch.

For safety you want people not to do it in the first place. But that’s not an argument for making them use your software is it?

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This is just so incredibly blatantly self-serving. It’s like a two-year-old telling you they won’t ruin their dinner by eating five more cookies. They couldn’t even come up with a plausible reason?

I’m with you. I don’t need to pay for a cellular connection for my car. I don’t need to pay $200 a year for map updates. I don’t need to pay $20 a month for SiriusXM when I already have a streaming subscription on my phone.

Nothing they want to sell us is something we want. Maybe that’s what they should fix first.

IF a someone was able to make something better than CarPlay or Android Auto then you don’t need to cut them off. People will choose to use your better system even with AA/CP available.

IF.

"Alan Wexler, GM’s senior VP of innovation and growth, said previously the automaker’s own internal research indicates that most new vehicle owners would be willing to pay up to $135 per month for various subscription-based apps and features for their vehicle."

Rivian has said they might add it later, but they didn’t seem to think it was enough of a priority over everything else they were doing. That’s somewhat understandable.

If I was in the market for a car, they would both be a no-go though because of that. I like CarPlay too much.

Or are you using wireless? I don’t know if other vehicles are better but the only times I’ve gotten to try wireless CarPlay the lag drove me nuts. If I plugged it in instead it was great.

That's what they think their research shows.

They are so far gone it's astonishing

Regardless of GM's ulterior motives here (follow the money), they're not wrong.

CarPlay stinks. It indeed has caused me distracted driving while I execute a complex task such as, oh I don't know, choose a song/playlist. The worst offender by far is Amazon Music, which is nearly unusable, though Apple isn't too far behind. The mapping apps are just as bad and getting worse. Want to report a hazard etc. in Apple Maps? You have to tap a chevron and wait for a fold-out menu to appear, it's like 3 taps deep. By this point you have passed the hazard and become one yourself as you fight these terrible UIs designed by... you guessed it, "the best ux design teams in the world".

And yes 90% of it are the apps but at its heart CarPlay is just display mirroring.

The UX of most CarPlay apps is downright TERRIBLE.

The thing with media controls is, that you can use those only when it's safe to do so. You're not gonna change the radio channel or music-playlist while going through a busy intersection. But many of the functions car manufacturers are moving from actual buttons to their touch-screens, aren't that time flexible.

Pixel 4a needed a specific cable which did not work with a Pixel 6a. No cable worked so I now use a Motorola wireless connector and it works well with both phones.