Automotive Ecosystems – GM’s Big Bet.

Good, but it needs to be better.

• A large proportion of the automotive industry thinks that GM has taken leave of its senses by ditching CarPlay in its electric vehicles but the initial feedback is much better than expected although it needs to be a lot better before GM will be able to rid itself of Apple’s shackles.
• It was just over a year ago (see here) that GM announced that its EVs from mid-2024 would no longer support CarPlay and the first vehicle (Chevrolet Blazer) is being tested by reviewers.
• The initial reports on the user experience are far better than I expected, especially as Apple CarPlay is not available on this vehicle.
• According to Apple’s own research, the vast majority of iPhone users will only consider CarPlay-enabled vehicles and it is clear that GM has decided to call Apple’s bluff.
• GM is also not supporting Android Auto, but this is a moot point as the infotainment unit is running Android Automotive and Google’s digital ecosystem services are present on the unit by default.
• This means that there is no need to connect an Android device but for iPhone users which make up 66% of the US smartphone population, this is an issue.
• With wireless CarPlay when one starts one’s vehicle, CarPlay starts and all of the apps are present and are already populated with the user’s accounts.
• This is what GM is up against and its strategy is to deal with setting up the apps using QR codes like one does on a console or a media streaming service like Netflix.
• When one reviewer was given guidance by GM at the time of set-up, the process was pretty painless (see here) but the same was not true of his wife who didn’t have the guidance and got frustrated.
• The good news is that once the reviewer was up and running, he didn’t miss CarPlay very much other than Apple’s podcast app, but he was able to migrate all the shows to Spotify quite easily.
• Furthermore, Google Maps could do more than usual as charging is integrated into the navigation experience and Google Assistant can change the temperature of the vehicle among other things using voice.
• However, if this strategy is going to work, users who are setting up the experience can’t get frustrated because otherwise, they will continue to prefer CarPlay given that one just plugs it in or turns on the vehicle and it just works.
• While humans continue to drive vehicles, the digital services that really matter will be navigation and media consumption as this is what users in vehicles do pretty much all of the time.
• This is why GM has a shot with this as it has Google Maps for navigation which is an excellent experience and many Android options for media consumption.
• That means that if the user experience on its large screen is passable, which by most accounts it appears to be, and it can fix the set-up frustrations, then it might just get by.
• This is crucial because to earn revenues from digital services, it must be digitally relevant in the vehicle and for someone who uses CarPlay all the time, the OEM is clearly digitally irrelevant.
• In the long run, GM is also going to need to boot Google Play from its vehicles.
• This is because while apps and services are distributed via Google Play, there is no way for the OEM to monetise digital services from 3^rd parties.
• RFM Research (see here) has identified that services are the best opportunity by which OEMs can offset lost revenues and profits from lower vehicle shipments but they must control the app store in order to earn the revenue share from 3^rd parties that is currently accruing to Google when Google Play is being used.
• This could be done in future versions of the GM infotainment experience but for now, the focus is to remain digital relevant by any means necessary.
• GM has done better than I thought it would with this, but the key remains to fix the frustrating onboarding experience when one does not have a GM employee to help.
• A glimmer of hope.