General Motors Doubles Down on Removing CarPlay
General Motors began phasing out support for CarPlay in its electric vehicles back in 2023, leading to complaints from iPhone users, but the company has no plans to back down.
In fact, GM is going further and plans to remove CarPlay from all future gas vehicles, too. In an interview with The Verge, GM CEO Mary Barra said that the company opted to prioritize its platform for EVs, but the change will eventually expand across the entire GM portfolio.
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GM Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson suggested that GM’s decision to embrace its own system is a “very Jobsian approach to things” that he likened to phasing out the disk drive.
I would just be laughing at this except I worry about getting stuck with a GM rental car.
Someone should investigate whether Mary Barra is a mole planted at GM by Ford.
Allow me to summarize this: Mary really wants to sell services, or have recurring revenue from partnerships and deals with companies in services to earn money over the lifespan of the vehicle. She cites how disorienting it is to jump in and out of CarPlay, but that’s hardly a hurdle that justifies the development work they’re putting into not supporting CarPlay and Android Auto projection systems.
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The only salient point he raises is that there are features of the car that do not currently integrate with CarPlay, or CarPlay Ultra. It can’t do anything with Super Cruise. Apple, as far as I know, has no real plans for integrating Maps on a phone with any kind of assisted driving, or autonomous technology. I hope that they are working on something for that.
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I do think Mary Barra would love to cut a deal with Apple to have Apple Music as an app on their own platform. Apple currently offers Apple Music apps for Tesla and Rivian and neither has ever supported CarPlay, because it is far more important to Apple to get the recurring services revenue than it is for them to use Apple Music as some kind of wedge issue for car shoppers.
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I’m not going to sign up for a GM federated ID that stores my login credentials in their cloud. I’m not going to individually sign into apps in the car like Google Maps with my Google ID that I use for way more than just navigation.
Previously:
- Testing CarPlay Ultra
- CarPlay in iOS 26
- General Motors to Phase Out CarPlay
- The Enshittification of All Things
Update (2025-10-24): See also: Mac Power Users.
My interest in buying new cars is already at an all-time low. Now GM products are crossed off the list.
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The main benefit for me is that I carry the state with me. Podcasts, for example, will pick up where I left off. Text messages read/unread state will update accordingly, and so on.
Update (2025-10-29): Andrew J. Hawkins:
But today, the company is clarifying that this won’t happen overnight.
“We are not making any changes to existing vehicles,” Malorie Lucich, a spokesperson for GM, said in a statement. “If your car supports Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, that will continue. Both will remain available in all GM gas-powered vehicles for the foreseeable future.
Update (2025-10-31): John Gruber (Mastodon):
If GM goes through with this abandonment of CarPlay, I don’t see how they’ll continue to sell any vehicles to rental agencies. I would never rent a car without CarPlay, and I would never consider signing up for a GM cloud service just to drive a rental car.
I hope so. I worry that all the rental agencies will just keep buying them and customers won’t have a choice.
Update (2025-11-03): Patrick George:
Although GM is the largest automaker that is ditching CarPlay, other car brands are also locking features behind a paywall. Toyota has some navigation tools that require a subscription, but CarPlay does about the same thing at no cost. I own an older Mazda with a remote-start feature that works every time I hit a button on my key fob; on my newer electric Kia, I have to pay up to $200 a year if I want to unlock that service. (I haven’t yet; in fact, study after study shows that consumers are broadly skeptical of more subscription features.)
Some automakers have made a point of proclaiming their allegiance to CarPlay, knowing that’s what buyers want. Toyota’s EVs tell CarPlay how much electric range they have left, so that Apple Maps can prompt the driver to stop at a nearby charger on a road trip. But the relationship between Detroit and Silicon Valley can be a tense one.
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No matter what car you drive, the glory days of CarPlay may be numbered.
Update (2025-11-12): Chris Adamson:
One thing I don’t notice people talking about is how nice it is for CarPlay to be consistent across auto brands. We have a Ford and a Toyota, and our kid has a Honda. It really helps when maps, messages, music, podcasts, and notifications all work the same regardless of which vehicle we’re using.
I cannot imagine going back to a pre-CarPlay era. I like bringing my music collection seamlessly into my car, having Maps and Messages at my disposal, and not needing to sync anything with a different system. I wish I could replace Siri with something even borderline functional, though.
CarPlay Ultra, on the other hand, has not moved the needle for me, at least based on early reviews. The problem CarPlay solves is that it augments the infotainment system with the same environment I am used to elsewhere while still letting the rest of the car feel normal. CarPlay Ultra attempts to replace the entire dashboard, which has not so far been a problem I want solved. I worry that this could be a step too far for some automakers, too, and I hope it does not nudge more of them toward abandoning CarPlay in favour of a parasitic relationship with customers’ bank accounts.
I don’t like CarPlay Ultra, either. I’ve been concerned since it was announced that Apple would eventually force us to use it instead of regular CarPlay or that it would cause a rift with the automakers.
