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

Apple, which has been teased by us for not being able to build a car, has been lurking in the auto industry to help car companies "build good cars."

On WWDC 2022, Apple said 98 per cent of US cars support CarPlay, and 79 per cent of US consumers say they will only buy cars that support CarPlay. Apple's market share is close to 60%, which means that most of its users are sticky to efficient car-machine collaboration.

(photo from Mazda) Apple does not have its own car, but it has achieved such a high market share and user stickiness in the automotive field. If Apple makes a push, won't all car companies have to become a "fruit chain"?

Joking, CarPlay is so influential in the automotive industry thanks to Apple's understanding of interaction and multi-device ecology. CarPlay boarding, operating logic is exactly the same as iPhone, low learning cost, and the experience it brings is hardly worth picking on. Everyone loves CarPlay precisely because Apple has solved the shortage of intelligent cars for car companies.

However, the times have changed, and the car companies, who are gradually deepening in the new energy track, have played the banner of de-CarPlay and de-Android Auto, while GM is the forerunner of the traditional American brand camp.

With the launch of Cadillac's "pure electric Escalade" Escalade IQ, The Verge confirmed to General Motors that the Escalade IQ natively does not support Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto, but instead supports its own proprietary car system.

(photo from Cadillac) so where did Escalade IQ's proprietary car system come from? It was built by General Motors using Google's Android Automotive platform and is essentially an Android system.

Not relying on third-party car systems means GM has to give up those users who "buy cars for CarPlay" in the short term. is it really right for GM to do so?

Traditional car companies woke up and Apple CarPlay was in a hurry on April 1, 2023, when General Motors announced that it would phase out Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto from this year and switch to the first-party car system it developed with Google.

In addition to the Cadillac Escalade IQ, GM has eliminated the Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto. Starting with the new Chevrolet Blazer EV, which went on sale this summer, the subsequent new cars will no longer provide the CarPlay and Android Auto, and the phase-out plan will be deployed to fuel vehicles in 2035.

(picture from Cadillac) what? General Motors will have fuel cars in 2035? In fact, GM has previously natively supported third-party engine systems such as the CarPlay, but GM has not given high priority to elimination, which does not mean that GM will still produce fuel vehicles in 2035.

Since iOS and Android users must buy models that support CarPlay and Android Auto, will the value of GM, which currently supports third-party engine systems, increase when it goes to the second-hand market?

If not, it means that these users' insistence is just "talk".

(photo from Cadillac) sure enough, GM's bold decision drew resentment from the outside world, and the direct cancellation of CarPlay and Android Auto would result in users being able to connect to the vehicle only through Bluetooth rather than through the phone's own interconnection feature. on the contrary, it will lead to a barrier in the "communication" between the car and the phone, and some functions may be limited.

However, GM's first-party car phone is built in partnership with Google, and in theory, partners who use Android Auto will be less affected than those who use CarPlay.

In fact, GM is not the only traditional car company to "retire" CarPlay. 2020 models or later models owned by BMW and Ford are no longer built-in CarPlay in the original factory.

On the one hand, it may be that overseas car companies have increased their investment in smart car research and development under the influence of the new power of Chinese car-making, which now has the same availability as third-party products such as CarPlay, and provides more operating space on top of it, so there is no need to continue Apple and Google.

(picture from Cadillac) on the other hand, CarPlay and Android Auto are similar in nature to "screen casting". They can only provide functions such as phone calls, navigation, infotainment, and simple voice assistants, but they are not deeply integrated with cars, so they are more suitable to make up for the lack of intelligence of old and traditional models. But in smart cars, using CarPlay is an "insult" to the first party.

So you see, how many of our domestic cars support CarPlay? Because the car-machine interaction of the domestic new energy forces is mature and easy to use, and there is a perfect software service system, they disdain to look at the transitional products with poor integration ability of the third party.

In the past, car companies would not be intelligent, so it is normal to borrow third-party forces to maintain competitiveness. It can only be said that times have changed, and the competitiveness of the first-party independent car system is growing day by day. The third-party screen car opportunities represented by Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto have gradually lost the favor of car companies, and the first-party independent car is the mainstream direction of new energy vehicles in the future.

(photo from Cadillac) so for these increasingly abandoned third-party car systems, either make smart cockpit solutions to cooperate with car companies, or build their own cars.

Apple car may be the only way out for CarPlay, although Apple said at WWDC that the next-generation CarPlay system will be more deeply bound to vehicle hardware. With the deep integration of electrified architecture and software, CarPlay can also display power, fuel, speed, air conditioning and other working status, and even directly control the vehicle.

At this time, CarPlay is not a car machine, it is Apple's intelligent cockpit, similar to Hongmeng intelligent cockpit, is a vehicle intelligent solution. As long as the car company and Apple cooperate deeply to open the interface, then it is an "Apple car" in a sense.

But obviously, not many car companies are willing to do such a business. The cars of the future are defined by software. If the software is taken care of by Apple, the road for car companies will be narrowed. Apple may not be able to build a real car, but it holds a lot of patents and software, and car companies that value trade secrets must want to do everything themselves.

(picture from Apple) besides, if Apple educates the operating logic of smart cars in the future, then car companies will have to follow Apple. It has been 10 months since the launch of the latest generation of Apple cars, and so far I haven't heard of any car companies using it.

Of course, the most important thing for car companies is profit, and using CarPlay means paying Apple a protection fee and following some of Apple's standards, that is, each car needs to be certified by MFI, while the price of each MFI-certified chip is $3 plus 17% VAT. The more cars companies ship, the more licensing fees they will pay to Apple.

BMW, which could not afford this part of the expenditure, chose to transfer the cost to consumers, becoming the first car company to use the CarPlay subscription model.

It's not cheap. Users can choose to buy it out or pay for it annually. The former costs $300 for optional equipment, while the latter costs $80 a year (free for the first year). Although everyone thinks this is unreasonable, the license fees paid by car companies to Apple each year are not small, unless they build their own first-party cars.

This is a good explanation of why GM chose to re-emphasize on Cadillac Escalade IQ that it does not support CarPlay and Android Auto natively. However, if users have to use it, Xiaotong believes that there is still a certain way to crack it, which is not difficult for some big gods.

Under this big trend, Apple and Google have less and less influence in the automobile field, and may disappear directly in the end. The only hope for the development of CarPlay may be pinned on Apple cars.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:dianchetong233, author: shopkeeper of Tea Governor

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