Joe Rossignol
American automaker General Motors (GM) announced last year that it would phase out CarPlay and Android Auto support in its new electric vehicles in favor of its own software platform, Ultifi. The decision was controversial, as many drivers consider CarPlay a must-have feature in a new car. For example, Apple has said that 79% of U.S. buyers will only consider a car that works with CarPlay in 2022.
To make matters worse, GM's rollout of Ultifi has been a bit of a bummer, with some early reviewers of the Chevrolet Blazer EV experiencing technical issues with the platform last year. Some of those issues have since been addressed, but it’s clear that the automaker may not be as efficient at developing software as a tech company like Apple.
In a statement provided to MacRumors last year, GM said its software strategy was “driven by the benefits of having a system that provides greater integration with the larger GM ecosystem and vehicles.” In other words, the automaker wants to control the entire in-car experience, which is both a smart and risky move.
In a recent interview with The Verge’s Nilay Patel, GM’s senior vice president of software Baris Cetinoq again tried to defend the automaker’s decision to phase out CarPlay. Cetinoq worked at Apple from 2012 to 2021, helping lead the launch of Apple Pay, Find My, iCloud Drive, and more, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Cetinoq joined GM a few months after the company announced its decision to phase out CarPlay and Android Auto, but unsurprisingly, he supports the automaker’s decision. He told Patel that GM believes with “strong conviction” that building its entire experience in-car delivers “the best customer experience” with “end-to-end magic.”
2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV with GM’s Ultifi software platform
“But we strongly believe that the effort pays off with a better customer experience,” Cetinoq said, speaking on the Decoder podcast. “You get the most out of your car because we’re now a company that makes the car and also builds the infotainment system, the cluster interface, the app, and everything else. We’re going to build that one day and maybe a voice assistant on top of that. The only way to create that end-to-end magic is to have a strong belief that you want to own it all.”
He said GM wants to offer a seamless experience that doesn’t require switching between phone-mirroring systems like CarPlay and Android Auto.
“When you want to create something that seamless, it’s hard to think about getting in the car and saying, ‘OK, I’m doing highway racing, but let me switch to a completely different UI to pick my podcast,’” Cetinok said. “It’s an app-centric UI, by the way — it’s still hard to believe. So I pick my podcast, switch back to trailering. Oh, now I can also do trailering in Super Cruise. Let me do that. Then, wait, we’re now getting to potentially Level 3, Level 4 autonomy, which is going to be deeply integrated with communicating with the map where the lanes are. But wait a minute, the map I'm using doesn't actually talk to my car.”
The full transcript of the interview, with additional comments about CarPlay, is available on The Verge.
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