Cool, then I’m dropping GM from my list of cars that I’ll buy or rent. CarPlay is a must have in 2023, just like a backup camera. Literally nobody wants your shitty car OS thing, it’s guaranteed to be way worse than iOS and Android.
Seems like this ought to be a dealbreaker for many.
GM was never on the list anyway, i’ve tried a couple ones and i was always surprised how much money they want for their cheap ass interior
“It’s unsafe for Apple and Android to prevent us from monopolizing your user data!”
Lots of people gonna be dropping GM. I was a Chevy guy my whole life and I got a Tacoma about a year ago. It’s not even a premium model and the quality and reliability is miles above Chevrolet
When looking for my last vehicle, I still needed a midsize very-light-duty truck for my business (film production), I drove the Chevy midsize truck (Colorado?) first on my checklist of trucks to drive. It was a piece of garbage (and this made me sad because I was [trying to be] open to finding an excellent US-made midsize truck). The sales guy was super-enthusiastic, of course, to the point of pushy obnoxiousness. When he asked me “HOW GREAT IS THIS TRUCK???!!!??” I was like “I wouldn’t complain if someone gave one to me, but I have other trucks to test.”
After test driving four other competitors, I ended up with Honda Ridgeline (which beat out my second favorite from Toyota), that I have now had for 4+ years and absolutely love it - it is a great midsize+ truck. It’s kind of a unicorn in Texas (so many Fords and Dodges), but I saw a ton of them in Arizona and other Western states. Great vehicle, and it has CarPlay. Sadly, it’s in the shop at the moment (I, uh, backed into a bollard, cough) and my rental is a brand-new Dodge Charger which drives like a lead brick on wheels compared to the Ridgeline. Interior finish isn’t bad though…and the UI, while not CarPlay, is polished).
Oh, did GM just step in it this time. Being stupid and removing important features is one thing, but straight-up defamation like this is another.
Google and Apple’s lawyers must be salivating a river right now.
What’s unsafe is having to navigate a giant fischer price interface whenever you want to adjust the A/C
Chevy is still all about knobs, which is the proper way to create car controls. Ford is pretty heavy into a full touch screen control center, which is really annoying as a driver.
GM doesn’t get to sell your data.
Silly me, not thinking of the poor little corporations again
Car manufacturers should get out of the dashboard design business. Just have an API standard for devices to control the car, and a USB port for users to plug in whichever device works best for them. You want a bunch of physical buttons? Cool, go down to AutoZone and buy a button panel that matches your needs. You want a big screen with carplay and a bunch of widgets? Mount your old iPad there.
The regulatory side would be the hard part. Devices would have to meet some safety standards and the car would have to refuse to drive unless an approved dashboard was connected, but it could be done.
Well, there was the DIN standard for radios back in the day….
First sensible comment I’ve seen. Don’t know why so many people want to be forced to use proprietary software, whether GM’s, Apple’s or Google’s to use their car.
But there’s no money in that…
It’s a very thin argument about it being buggy and/or users picking up their phones when that happens. There’s no way they have data to quantify that. I use voice commands exclusively and as others have said the only things I wrestle with are climate and non-integrated functions. It’s way safer to do AA or CarPlay in my experience.
It’s GMs bet to lose here. I would immediately pass on a vehicle without CarPlay. My old Toyota had a horrible interface and I was quoted $300 just to update the map, not even a new radio, literally just a software update. No thank you.
My car is a 2017 and its entertainment system hasn’t been update since then. I don’t want to pay the $250 to upgrade it or whatever the crazy price was.
My personal car (the second, mostly unused car in our family) is from 2016, and it has nav and everything, but it looks like it’s a commodore. It’s also woefully out of date, my house is in the middle of a cornfield according to my car. Literally unusable, and was pretty much right out of the gates even. Doesn’t work very well with my phone, I’m still able to stream Spotify and skip songs or whatever, but guess how I have to control it? The phone hooked to the cord and sitting on my seat.
My wife’s car, I don’t even think I’ve ever used the navigation. I’m not even really sure how her radio works come to think of it, because it just switches to Android Auto when I start it, and whatever I was doing on my phone, well it’s right there. Spotify starts up, and on the way we go. Don’t even look at it most of the time, if I’m being honest. Super unsafe for sure, the proprietary solution is for sure better (/s)
I’ve a Mazda with Android Auto that doesn’t use a touch screen. It’s all controlled with a joystick/knob/button setup that is actually really nice. I wish my Nissan had a similar setup all the time.
In the Mazda I know how many physical interactions will get me the result I want, it takes barely more than a glance at the screen to know what’s up. With the touch interface I have to put my eyes on the screen to confirm that the car didn’t bounce when I went to tap a “button” and/or confirm that the tap was actually registered. I know that GM has to know that Android Auto supports non touchscreen interactions. If they’re concerned about how unsafe touchscreens are, just add a knob to the center console that doubles as a 4-way joystick like Mazda has and all those concerns go away. It’s really that simple and it IS miles better than using touch for everything.
I have a 2016 with no android auto support, and my biggest pet peave is that the infotainment system is absolutely the worst I’ve seen.
I’ve been planning a long project of replacing it with a customized tablet, but I’m afraid whatever I land on won’t integrate that push wheel control well, because it’s just so damn nice
My Mazda is a 2016 CX-5. It was a limited option in 2016, but it was an option, and it only cost me $400 to purchase the upgraded head unit and have it installed by my Mazda dealership. I don’t know what model yours is, but 2016 is the year that you can actually look into the option depending. It was going to run me more than $400 to do my own AA solution with the risks of losing the steering wheel or knob controls, so $400 for the upgrade that retains all of that without any hacky workarounds was a godsend.
I bought mine used, so I didn’t really have the option to upgrade anything but the tires. The head unit has some pretty bad pressure cracking in the screen, so really it would be a full replace regardless. I used a open sourced hack at one point to add AA to the default software, which worked for a while, but I started having issues with it freezing and hard-resetting while I was driving and using google maps on it, so I had to take it off (i think AA made an update that broke the hack)
I’m not the original owner of my Mazda either, I had the upgrade done well after the original sale of that vehicle. I had also looked into the software modding scene but decided that an official upgrade costing only $400 wasn’t worth the potential headaches of hacky homebrew updates I had to service myself.
Yeah, I do enjoy jumping into my wife’s Mazda every now and then, for just this reason. Touch screens requires too much attention be diverted away from the critical task of driving, as people need to look at the screen for the purpose of aiming a finger at a control on it.
The steering wheel controls for my Ford’s Sync are good for volume, music back/forward, and phone calls, but that’s it. It’s the reason I still need to use a voice assistant while driving. I really hate using the touch screen except at the start or end of journey.
Like, could I just have the aux jack back please? I can frig with my phone before I put the car in drive and just push audio through the speakers, I don’t need to be able to sort through my playlists or make calls from the steering wheel, I’m distracted enough by billboards, for chrissakes. The only thing I like about my phone being connected to my car is that I can skip forward and back, that’s it.
Yeah what’s up with that?! My new car comes with a host of connection possibilities, but lacks a simple jack. I still use that 5th gen iPod, is it too much to ask for a connector?
And with proper software support, the aux jack can do some limited pause/forward/back!
I do really like Android Auto, but the reliability of the Aux connection is something I very sorely miss.
So I’m assuming that means that they’re admitting that they put a safety hazard in all those prior cars and are assuming liability for every accident where infotainment systems may have been involved, right?
I don’t think that’s how it works, and is a pretty toxic and non-constructive way to look at this.
If they’re going to lie to pretend they can’t include it because it’s unsafe when every single person on the planet knows with 100% certainty that it’s because they want their own cash/data hungry alternative instead, then putting said “unsafe” thing in their vehicles should absolutely expose them to liability.
There absolutely is not a theoretical possibility that “safety” was a genuine consideration in any way in this decision.
The fact that cars have touch screens and capacitive surfaces are what makes them unsafe. Physical buttons work with apple car play and android auto and make them safer
Capacitive buttons need to die a painful death. I’m ok with some functions being capacitive or touch screen buttons, like little unimportant ones like accessing my 6th favourite radio station or whatever. Or even Carplay or Android Auto.
But when it comes to operating the HVAC or shifting gears, it shouldn’t be allowed that these aren’t mechanical switches with proper fail-safe backups. I don’t even think those shifter buttons in a lot of modern vehicles, or the shifting knobs, like what’s been in the Jeep SUVs for the past decade, are the best idea.
You know what’s unsafe? Putting a long-ass disclosure about keeping your eyes on the road that you have to close before you can use your infotainment center. We know how to drive, dude. Adding a distraction doesn’t improve safety, it makes it worse.
I’m dropping GM, because they are unsafe. I’m not going back to looking down at my phone while I’m driving.
Also, as a former 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt owner, I’d love to have a good chat about safety with the executives of GM. That is, if they aren’t too busy creating their new in-dash subscription model. Which is what this is really about, and we all know it.
Maybe they should first focus on their gross manufacturing shortfalls, and their other issues. Maybe take a look at that parking lot in Pontiac that’s bursting at the seams with Corvettes stuck in limbo, and their very pissed off purchasers.
Fuck. What a bunch of numbskulls.
Can you elaborate on the corvettes stuck in limbo, I haven’t heard of that
Wait your counterargument to this is “it’s unsafe to remove the unsafe feature, because now im going to use my phone, the exact thing that’s unsafe”
What? “How could you make me do this” energy.
No my counterargument is that there’s thankfully lots of alternatives on the market. I could care less what GM does at this point, honestly. There’s going to be some upset people at the dinner table next year, but I’m driving something else in 2024. The quality has just gone to absolute shit, and they are pretty clearly trying to rush everything out and come up with all these fucking pretend schemes why they are doing it and why options are missing. When it’'s got zero to do with safety, and everything to do with their new UAW deal, where they are going to try and find new revenue streams to offset their rising costs, while also charging everyone out the ass for their bullshit. Because heaven help if the executives or the worst CEO in their history has to give back the increases in their bloated salary/bonuses. Mary Berra couldn’t successfully run a fucking lemonade stand, let alone one of the biggest companies in the world.
This is not the comment of someone who doesn’t care what gm does.
Also your family is weirdly intense and cares far too much about someone’s choice of car manufacturer if “there will be some upset people at the dinner table”
And incredibly none of this has really any direct relation to the post or my comment.
I’m happy you have something to be passionate about.
My family is weirdly intense about my choice in car manufacturers because I’m from a small town, and growing up there was quite the vested interest in what I’m seen driving because I’m a GM dealer’s something something. It’s caused quite a few issues in my personal life over the years, which I’m not expecting you to comprehend or understand.
All you need to know my hatred for the modern day General runs deep. Mostly because it’s a company with a long institutional-like history and a deep integration into many communities, and was formerly a company that I cared very much about, for a variety of personal reasons and interests. But it’s also a company that has been run by a long succession of absolute fucking morons that have made a long successive chain of absolutely r word decisions. Like this one for example. So I mean I’m biased, and that needs to be stated. But this is still the stupidest fucking move by a company that I’ve read about all week.
Also the vehicles are terrible and I’m about to have to haul my wife’s POS GM for what feels like the 80th time this year to our local dealer (who is also complete shit, but I have a higher expectation of dealers than what is probably ordinary). I’m just over it.
Let’s be honest, GM can’t make money off owners using this software. They can make their own and have owners pay a subscription like some Tesla owners do now.
