The Real Reason Automakers Are Ditching Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
It’s all about your data, information that GM and others say is critical for them to make better cars and improve the owner experience.
It’s been more than a decade now since the debut of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the smartphone-based systems that quickly exploded in popularity due in part to the fact that automaker infotainment interfaces mostly sucked at the time. But more than that, CarPlay and Android Auto made things easy by largely replicating their already familiar user experiences. They also leverage the phone’s data plan for connectivity, don’t require a separate subscription, and seamlessly update as new apps and features become available.
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Most automakers readily jumped on the CarPlay/Android Auto bandwagon and even holdouts like Toyota eventually acquiesced to their power and popularity. But in recent years, a shift away has been underway. EV-only automakers Tesla and Rivian kept CarPlay and Android Auto out of their dashboards from the get-go. For its latest EVs, General Motors decided to do the same and plans to further wean its drivers off the popular platforms in its future vehicles in favor of GM’s own infotainment system and software.
READ MORE: Apple CarPlay Ultra First Look: Taking Over the Entire Dashboard
The prime reason GM and other automakers have been moving away from CarPlay and Android Auto is simple: data. When you enter a navigation destination or select music or other content via CarPlay or Android Auto, the data those platforms gather primarily goes to the tech giants and not the car company. “They don't know how you are using their infotainment system,” said Andrew Hart, CEO of the analyst firm SBD. “That starves car companies, and they lose intelligence that could help them improve their offerings.” The threat looms perhaps even larger with the debut of Apple CarPlay Ultra.
Apple and Google collect valuable data from people who are captive in cars in part to monetize it in various ways. GM now wants to capture that data not so much for turning it into dollars the way the tech giants do—although GM and other car companies have tried that and mostly failed to date—but rather to improve their products and in turn please and retain customers. “You’re seeing pushback against effectively giving up access data to the big tech giants,” Hart said. It’s an approach that could cause a greater ripple effect if GM proves successful.
Trading Android Auto for Android Automotive
While GM is abandoning Android Auto, it isn’t abandoning Google; in fact, it’s teaming up with the tech giant, a partnership that Volvo and others have also embraced. Its latest infotainment backbone relies on Google's Android Automotive operating system that integrates Google apps such as Maps, lets users sign into their Google account to sync features across various devices, and includes Google Play that allows downloading and using dozens of apps.
When asked about axing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a GM spokesperson responded via email: “We took an early bet to advance our own infotainment system knowing that as technology progresses, we can deliver features that go beyond what’s possible with just phone projection.” An example is Dolby Atmos on Amazon Music, the latest app for GM’s built-in infotainment system, and “one of those cool experiences you wouldn’t get with just phone projection,” GM said.
Another is intelligent EV routing so that when a driver enters a destination, the system provides the best route based on real-time info such as state of charge, range, and charging-station availability. GM’s infotainment system also integrates its Super Cruise hands-free highway driving system with Google Maps to show designated Super Cruise routes and how much of the drive will be hands free. “With software updates, customers will see continual enhancements,” GM added. “We’re delivering superior experiences to our customers by tightly integrating hardware, software, and services.”
GM’s Brave Move
Canceling Apple CarPlay and Android Auto comes down to a trade-off between customer appeal and control, according to Hart. “If they want to offer an experience that people are familiar with and enjoy, automakers have to give up control of data and the ecosystem because Apple and Google have mastered that experience,” Hart said. “It’s a brave move going against feedback from consumers, but they no longer want to make that compromise between offering an appealing experience and maintaining control of their data.”
Hart believes GM is making dual bets that CarPlay and Android Auto aren’t as popular as the broader narrative and consumer surveys would indicate, and that it can build an equivalent or even better experience now—despite past evidence to the contrary. “OEMs like Rivian and Tesla who don’t have CarPlay have been able to do that,” Hart said. “But for the most part, it’s been the exception, not the rule.”
Rivian became one of those exceptions by developing all its own software to be able to leverage data to better define the experience for its owners. “It’s been an intentional choice since day one to build all our own electronics in-house and then build the end-to-end software stack that powers these electronics,” said Wassym Bensaid, Rivian's vice president of software development. Not only for infotainment, but throughout the vehicle for everything from vehicle dynamics to energy management to driver assists. “Software is at the center of the experience we provide to customers, and data is at the center of what enables software to run well,” Bensaid added. “The fact that every single interaction in the vehicle is done through software, being able to collect that data allows us to continuously improve the performance.”
Shifting from Dollars to Data
Unlike other automakers, monetization of data was never a priority for Rivian, Bensaid insisted. “Our focus has been to create a data architecture that allows us to improve the vehicle and improve the software that powers the experience in the vehicle,” Bensaid said. According to Hart, other automakers are following suit and shifting away from monetizing vehicle data to creating a better experience for car owners—and better cars. “About six or seven years ago there was a big hype cycle around data monetization,” Hart said. “A lot of car companies set up teams focused on monetizing data, and we saw a lot of quite naked types of selling of data—efforts to approach insurers or retailers and say, ‘Look, we’ve got this treasure trove of data.’”
But there was blowback from consumers and government regulators when the New York Times revealed last year that GM’s OnStar Smart Driver app, which was billed as an onboard driving coach, was sharing data with owners’ insurers without their consent—and causing their premiums to spike. GM quickly pulled the plug on Smart Driver, and later the FTC banned the company “from disclosing consumers’ sensitive geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies” for five years.
So far, the pure monetary value of the data they have been collecting hasn’t lived up to expectations, primarily because most car companies don’t have the technical competency to properly profit from it in the manner of tech giants, according to Hart. While the business case is clear in areas such as insurance, GM’s experience has tempered those expectations, and parsing and putting all that data collection to use has been challenging, to put it mildly.
Given the myriad issues, data mining and monetization strategies have largely been put on hold. “They’re not really prioritizing it, and there’s no big expectations that data is going to be a cash cow,” Hart said. “The emphasis has shifted toward how they can leverage data internally to help improve their processes, efficiencies, warranty, and customer service—areas they feel there are much more direct and quantifiable returns.”
Apple and Google Want to Be Hands-Off
While the automotive sector remains a relatively small slice of Apple and Google’s massive businesses, it continues to remain important to the tech giants, despite the ongoing challenges of working with car companies and their suppliers, and the growing shift away from CarPlay and Android Auto. “Apple wants to be relatively hands-off and say, ‘Here's an SDK. Just follow these instructions,’” Hart said. “That's not the way car companies are used to working with partners and suppliers.”
It’s part of the reason why Apple CarPlay Ultra, which was first introduced almost three years ago, has only recently launched, and only in Aston Martin vehicles for now. (You can read all about CarPlay Ultra in our First Look.) Apple said in a statementthat CarPlay Ultra “is available with new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the U.S. and Canada, and will be available for existing models that feature the brand’s next-generation infotainment system through a software update in the coming weeks,” and that Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis have committed to CarPlay Ultra. “It’s taken longer because of the complexities and long development cycles within automotive, coupled with a unique hybrid approach that they’ve proposed with CarPlay [Ultra],” While Apple experienced firsthand how hard (and expensive) building cars can be and ultimately ended up killing its Project Titan car development project as a result, Hart doesn’t see Apple stepping away from automotive, and Ultra proves that. “It’s too important with too many hours spent by their customers in the car for them to just give up completely and see their CarPlay numbers dwindle,” Hart added.
Meanwhile, Google has hedged its bets in automotive through its self-driving Waymo subsidiary and its Android Automotive OS and related apps that have made inroads with not only GM but several other automakers, as well, including BMW, Ford, Honda, Nissan, and Google pioneer Volvo. “Time spent in cars isn’t really going away, and so having a strong offering there is still quite important for Google,” Hart said.
While who ultimately gets access to all the data in the meantime, and how it’s distributed between the tech giants and automakers is still being ironed out (there is some sharing going on at present, according to Hart), GM, for one, is starting to draw some hard data lines in the sand. The company recently stopped its dealers from installing third-party Apple CarPlay upgrade kits for its EVs, saying it “could affect critical safety features” in the vehicles.
Regardless of how it shakes out between them, one thing’s for sure: How the data you provide while operating your car is being used is something every vehicle owner should be mindful of—now and in the future.
