GM seems to be working under an assumption (assertion) that people want an infotainment system that is highly integrated with the vehicle, understands the battery, can control the climate and do myriad other things that contribute to the comfort and drivability of your vehicle.

This is true to some extent and the built-in systems do serve a purpose, but this is not what Apple CarPlay and Android Auto have ever been.

“In a statement shared with MacRumors last year, GM said its software strategy is ‘driven by the benefits of having a system that allows for greater integration with the larger GM ecosystem and vehicles.’ In other words, the automaker wants to control the entire in-vehicle experience, which is both a reasonable and a risky decision.”

-MacRumors, November 5th, 2024 (Link)

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are not about integrating with the vehicle, they’re about integrating with your life. People don’t take the decision on what sort of phone they want to carry around lightly. Your phone holds your identity, your calendar, your music, your contacts, everything you need to run your life day-to-day. It might indicate what sort of personality you have. It’s a portal to the Internet at large. It’s a camera. It documents your life. People don’t want to leave that behind when they get behind the wheel of a car.

GM makes a half-assed attempt to connect to ecosystems that are not GM’s. Sure, you can bluetooth your phone and listen to your music, but just try navigating your playlists and albums in a sane way using what looks like an 80’s era WYSE terminal (more on that in a later post.) Try answering a call on an iPhone. How do you even do that? The UX leaves something to be desired. The manual indicates you can have the car read a text to you and respond with voice, but I’ll be damned if I’ve seen it attempt to do that in my EV (2024 Silverado EV. Someone enlighten me.)

GM needs to come to terms with the fact that consumers want it both ways, and many other EV manufacturers have supported this notion. My VW ID.4 has its own infotainment system, and I use it occasionally when I want to plan a trip with charging stops on it. But I use Apple CarPlay most of the time. CarPlay and Android Auto are apps that allow us to bring one of the most fundamental parts of our lifes in 2025 with us when we do one of the other more fundamental parts of our lives: driving.

My phone knows what’s on my calendar on a given day. If I have an appointment outside my house, it tells me when it’s time to leave. When I engage CarPlay, it automatically puts my destination on the map when I get in the car. When I get a call or text I can see the avatar of the person on the screen and instantly decide what to do without having to squint and try to read their name for crying out loud. This is just one example of how a phone integrates with our lives in a way that GM’s software can never do.

GM wants us to leave a little part of our soul behind when we drive one of their EV’s, and replace some of it with a cold, ugly, poorly-designed, impersonal piece of software.