Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Goodbye, CarPlay.

Yes, the American auto giant General Motors doesn't want to marry Apple. They officially announced last week that GM's electric cars will abandon Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto in turn from this summer and use only their own in-car software systems.

(GM announces abandonment of CarPlay in the future) GM said in a statement, "as a result of our strategic choice, we will bypass the car projection system, namely Apple Carplay and Google Android Auto. However, Apple and Android mobile phone users can still use hands-free phones, voice messaging and music playback functions through car Bluetooth."

In other words, GM's electric car owners will no longer be able to connect their mobile phones to their cars and directly display them to the central control via CarPlay or Android Auto. Their mobile phone and car connection experience will return to the pre-Carplay Bluetooth connection.

However, future GM owners can still find and use maps, Spotify, Audible and many other Internet services on the central control screen, but on GM's own platform, Ultifi. The platform integrates a number of Google services, including Google Maps, Google Assistant and so on. Relatively speaking, GM's move hit Apple far more than Google.

Moreover, instead of giving up CarPlay and Android Auto across the board, GM will give up CarPlay and Android Auto in turn in the next few years. Specifically, the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV launched this summer will be the first electric car that does not support CarPlay, and the subsequent 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV, 2024 Cadillac Celestiq and 2024 GMC Sierra EV will not support Carplay.

But this year's 2024 GMC Hummer EV, 2024 Cadillac LYRIQ, 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV and 2024 Chevrolet Bolt EV will also support CarPlay. In addition, GM's current internal combustion engine models will not be affected and will still support CarPlay and Android Auto.

It was confirmed two years ago that GM became the first major automaker to abandon CarPlay. Although the news of their abandonment of CarPlay may seem abrupt, in fact, the decision was made two years ago.

General Motors, founded in 1908, is the largest automaker by sales in the United States. Last year was the trough of the u.s. car market, when total car sales fell 8%, the weakest in more than a decade, but gm's u.s. sales rose 2.5% against the market, to 2.273 million vehicles, and reclaimed the top spot from Toyota. But last year the company's global sales fell 5.7 per cent to 5.94 million vehicles.

As early as the beginning of 2021, General Motors officially announced its future strategy of fully transforming electric vehicles, with plans to completely phase out internal combustion engine cars and trucks by 2035. In the same year, GM announced a future revenue strategy that plans to double its annual revenue to $280 billion by 2030.

How to double revenue while phasing out diesel locomotives? According to the diversification plan of GM CEO Mary Barra, which took office in 2014, GM will comprehensively transform its electric cars and trucks, investing $35 billion to launch 30 electric models in 2025, surpassing Tesla to become the leader of the US electric car market.

Over the past two years, GM has expanded rapidly in the field of electric vehicles and has climbed to the second place in the market. GM already ranked second in the market with 20670 electric vehicles sold in the United States in the first quarter of this year, thanks to hot sales of the Chevrolet Bolt, nearly twice as many as Ford, which ranked third, with 10866 vehicles in the same period, according to market research firm Motorintelligence.com.

However, these traditional car companies are still a long way from Tesla, the leader in the electric car industry. Tesla sold 161000 vehicles in the United States in the quarter, nearly eight times that of General Motors. In addition, trams still accounted for only 7.2% of total new car sales in the United States in the quarter, up from 5.8% in the same period last year, but it indicates that trams still have a lot of room for growth in the future.

GM, on the other hand, is also planning to aggressively expand software and services revenue, which will grow by nearly 50% a year by 2030. Compared with the automotive hardware business, the software and service business can bring higher profit margins. GM generated $2 billion in revenue from subscription services in 2022. Therefore, rejecting CarPlay is an important decision for GM to diversify its business in the future.

(GM's own vehicle platform Ultifi) GM launched its own in-car interface platform CUE for Cadillac-branded models as early as 2011, but the user experience was a disaster. But GM has not given up on the ambition of its in-car software platform. After the launch of a new revenue strategy in 2021, they officially launched a new platform, Ultifi, which is planned to be installed on electric cars and diesel locomotives from 2023. This coincides with the time when GM gave up the CarPlay.

GM said it plans to build the Ultifi platform into an open platform and share revenue with developers and providers of third-party applications and services. Scott Miller, the company's vice president of in-car software, said at the time that Ultifi was a major milestone in GM's software strategy and that we would not give up our platform for free.

(the new CarPlay makes automakers a supporting role.) the new CarPlay makes it difficult for automakers. Although GM has its own software platform, it doesn't mean they can't support CarPlay at the same time. The traditional car giant's decision to abandon CarPlay altogether may be directly related to the new Carplay features released by Apple last year.

At the WWDC conference in June last year, Apple unveiled a huge updated version of CarPlay. Compared with the previous version, the new version of CarPlay not only supports all in-car screens, but also adapts to different screens of different models. In theory, the new version of CarPlay has cleared the technical hurdle and is compatible with all car companies.

What is even more surprising is that the new version of CarPlay has almost replaced the position of the car companies and occupied the car screen. Like using iPhone, users can customize the speed, speed, oil temperature and many other display methods of the car. They can also display many components of the iPhone on the car screen, and even adjust air conditioning, seats and many other functions on the CarPlay.

At a time when Apple's car has been slow to make progress, the CarPlay carries Apple's ambitions to expand in the automotive field. The new version of CarPlay means that the iPhone and automotive hardware systems will be more and more deeply integrated, and the future cockpit experience of car users will also be dominated by Apple.

Apple believes that car companies have a future only if they choose to work with themselves, and they don't have much choice. At the launch of the new CarPlay, Apple said 98 per cent of new cars in the US already support Carplay. "this is a must-have feature for new cars on the market, and 79 per cent of US car buyers say they will only choose models that support Carplay (note: the premise here should be iPhone users)."

But GM clearly doesn't think so. Software and services are an important part of GM's plan to double its revenue by 2030. GM currently earns $2 billion a year from in-car subscriptions and plans to grow to $25 billion a year by 2030. But this service revenue plan is clearly difficult to be compatible with Apple's Carplay.

Users will ignore GM's own software and services if they choose CarPlay in the cockpit and use iPhone's software and services on the on-board screen. In other words, the big car screen built by GM will become the display of Apple's Carplay. As Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a research note on the new Carplay, "We believe that [the new Carplay] will eventually lead Apple to use the car platform to provide its own services."

(Apple's official partners do not have GM and BMW.) it is worth noting that when the WWDC released the new CarPlay in 2022, Apple announced that it would include American brands such as Ford and Lincoln, European brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche and Volvo, and Japanese brands such as Nissan, Honda, Acura and Infiniti, but not GM, BMW and Toyota.

The partnership between BMW and Apple is delicate. They were the first car companies to support Apple's CarKey technology, making it easy for the iPhone to unlock cars, but BMW chose a wait-and-see attitude in the face of the new version of Carplay, which dominates the in-car experience. However, BMW did not completely rule out the possibility of supporting the new Carplay in its official statement, saying only that it needed to continue the evaluation.

Maybe that's why other automakers are hesitant. It has been 10 months since Apple released a new version of the Carplay, but there has been no obvious collaboration; traditionally, Apple will announce the latest developments of the CarPlay at the WWDC in June this year. And GM taking the lead in abandoning CarPlay will obviously have a big impact on the future strategic decisions of other auto companies.

According to an analysis by industry analyst AutoForecast, the new CarPlay will make difficult decisions for automakers to build and sell cars, but they also want to build and sell software. Embracing Apple's new CarPlay means handing over more data and giving up their revenue ambitions for software and services.

The new forces collectively boycotted Apple's hesitant attitude towards the CarPlay compared with the traditional car companies, while the electric car companies collectively boycotted the Apple CarPlay. Whether they are American electric car companies such as Tesla and Rivian, or domestic new forces such as Lai Xiaopeng ideal, they all choose to develop their own intelligent cockpit platform.

Since the iPhone accounts for more than 50% of the US market, American car owners may have a higher demand for the CarPlay than the Chinese market, but nine years after the launch of the CarPlay, electric car leader Tesla has never had a plan to support CarPlay, at least never publicly admitted it.

Perhaps Musk himself played a role in his aversion to Apple, which he has always seen as a potential competitor in the future. In 2014, Apple poached a number of engineers from Tesla to work on its own secret car-building project, and an angry Musk mocked Apple as Tesla's grave, meaning that only those who were eliminated by Tesla would go to Apple.

In 2018, when Tesla was in financial trouble and short selling was at a low ebb, Musk had hoped to sell the company to Apple, but Cook refused to meet him, making Musk feel humiliated. (note: the story comes from Musk's own description, and Cook said he didn't know about it.)

However, Tesla is not boycotting everything about Apple. In May last year, a Tesla user complained on Twitter that the Bluetooth connection limited the sound quality of the car music service, and hoped that Tesla would support Airplay to support lossless streaming music. Musk responded that Tesla would consider (Airplay) and other improvements to the audio experience. Six months later, Tesla's car system finally integrated Apple's music service. But support for Carplay never seemed to be on Mr Musk's list.

Rivian, another American new power automaker, also refused to support CarPlay. Their decision also raised questions from some users. In a recent interview with the US media, Rivian founder RJ Scaringe explained why they rejected Apple's Carplay from beginning to end.

Scarlinch explained that Rivian rejected CarPlay because it wanted to dominate the in-car software experience, rather than handing control to a giant like Apple. " We have done a lot of things, whether it's music or maps, to make sure we are the best platform in the industry. But only by controlling the system can we fully control the user experience, instead of ceding control over an important part of the consumer experience. "

He added that Rivian will update its in-car software regularly in the future, but this can only be done if you are in control of the software platform. "only if you control the software layer can you continuously improve it. Rivian launches software updates, adds new features, solves problems and listens to user feedback every few weeks. Our head of software development has been on the Reddit forum to learn about user feedback and interact with them."

(GM has been criticized for giving up the CarPlay.) GM gave up the CarPlay in order to control the car software platform, develop its own software and services, and expand its own revenue sources. It does not want its smart screen to become an extension of Apple's iPhone and become the display screen of Apple's software and services. Of course, this choice also carries risks.

GM has faced a lot of criticism on social networking sites and technology media after it announced that it would abandon Carplay in the future. If according to Apple's user survey data, up to 79% of iPhone owners will only choose new cars that support Carplay, then GM's future electric vehicles will lose a huge potential user base.

But it seems that GM CEO Bora does not believe in the attractiveness of CarPlay, at least Tesla's hot sales give her enough confidence.

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