Customers consider Toyota, Ford vehicles after GM announces Apple CarPlay phaseout
Will Lindley says he is ready to make the family’s next ride an electric vehicle and had hoped to buy it from General Motors. After all, his wife has been happy with her 2016 Cadillac SRX. But when they heard that GM intends to phase out Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on its future EVs, that was a deal breaker.
Lindley and others want the option the technology offers, which is to project their iPhone’s screen onto their vehicle’s infotainment display for everything from accessing contacts to apps. Instead, GM will offer a built-in Google-powered infotainment experience on its future EVs that offers versions of Google Maps, Google Assistant, Spotify, and more.
So, Lindley said, now he’s considering the all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E built by GM’s crosstown rival.
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‘Huge blunder’
One high-profile influencer — tech writer Walt Mossberg — shared on his LinkedIn professional page an April 4 article from The Verge headlined, “Everybody hates GM’s decision to kill Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for its EVs.”
Mossberg introduced the article by saying, “I think this is a huge blunder, which puts greed over consumer choice. I wouldn’t buy a car without Car Play and I bet millions of others feel the same.”
Some say GM wants to create new revenue streams by selling subscriptions to certain features on the GM-built infotainment systems, plus gather data on how consumers use their EVs.
“GM is looking to monetize more software and services within its vehicles and is taking a page out of Tesla’s playbook,” Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities, told the Free Press.
jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.