More like ABCD/EFGH testing. So many unaccounted variables, from brand through, marketing, deals and even physical dealerships.
Everything else equal, I can believe having CarPlay adds value for some people. Things weren't equal so possibly not as much as the other variables in the room.
The japanese branded car outselling the domestic branded version in 2025 shouldn't surprise any millennial. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s getting shuttled around in a GM you almost certainly remember a piece of the interior coming off in your hand, or if you're an elder millennial, writing your name with your fingernail on the UV damaged interior of a late 70s/early 80s GM car that's only 3-5 years old. It's hard to shake that kind of shoddy build quality even decades later.
Meanwhile my friends kids are turning 16 and inheriting the honda accord with 250,000 miles I remember getting shuttled to and from soccer practice when I was 12 in the 90s
Came here to say this - this is a pretty meh comparison to me, there's too many other factors that are entirely ignored. Price and/or brand alone could easily explain most of not the entire difference.
I'm sure there is some impact to not including it, tbh, but as is this article is a giant nothing burger to me.
I own an EV6 and I definitely feel like Kia/Hyundia, especially their EVs, is essentially a different company than the one putting out easily hotwired and unreliable cars from just a few years ago.
Telluride/Palisade causing fires because they cheaped out on the current/torque sensors in the drive motors for the seats.
ICCU failures across their current EV platforms. No fix planned last I heard.
It hurts me to point this out because I really, REALLY like where their cars are going. Their new van is EXACTLY what we want, and I'd love an Ioniq 5N.
But those failures are critical and speak to a very deep engineering culture issue.
Story I heard, was that Hyundai hired away many high-end QA people from Toyota, and because there's no intellectual property treaties between Korea and Japan, there's really nothing Toyota could do about it.
They apparently even took plans, detailed documentation, endless amounts of information to Hyundai. I'm not sure of the veracity of that information, but it sure explains how Hyundai became incredibly good, literally overnight.
Also, despite the Honda being a rebadged Chevy, the average buyer may not be aware and may be drawn to the Honda brand's reputation for reliability and quality.
I call this "brand mining." Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on. The brand is now worthless (you've "mined" it out) but hey look at all the money you made.
Basically every 90s brand has had this happen. Typically involves PE.
> Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on
Similarly how every former reputable consumer electronic brand from 'The West' that sells consumer stuff today like Philips, GE, Thompson, Blaupunkt, Gigaset, etc is now just a brand label for a Chinese consortium that's fully designed and made in China with zero employees in their original western roots.
This is what I came to the comments for. The post didn't mention price a single time. It's not that expensive to retrofit CarPlay into any vehicle, and a 166% delta is hard to explain away with a single feature that can be retrofitted later.
It's practically impossible to retrofit CarPlay into most newer vehicles where the infotainment system is tightly integrated with the rest of the vehicle.
Buying a car is scary enough for most people, figuring out how to trust some unaffiliated rando to do work on the most expensive or second most expensive thing they own is truly intimidating.
I went car shopping with CarPlay as a must have, and I ended up foregoing that requirement as soon as I drove a Tesla.
If the software is as good as Tesla's, I have no need for CarPlay. Having to buy from a dealership and spend a few hours there, having to pay monthly for software features like maps/remote start/phone key, and having to deal with ICE stuff ended up being far bigger issues.
Yeah this is no good. If one says Honda and one says Chevy, then it's not apples to apples. It doesn't matter if it's the same car, the vast majority of people don't know that. Comparing sales numbers is meaningless.
I wouldn’t feel embarrassed by association in a Chevy, but I definitely don’t trust American manufacturers to be high value (quality/price) and reliable.
They always seem ten years behind with uninspiring designs and horrible MPG.
I would tell the dealer to knock $2k off the price so I can install a car play unit. If I am paying 30-50k on a vehicle having it work with my phone shouldn’t be optional.
It’s a partial driver, perhaps even meaningful in some way, but this is hardly an A/B test. Suffice to say lack of CarPlay is costing them in some way but model refreshes, steep price discounts, and other economical considerations are going to win out. Sure, 79% of some sample of car buyers said they wouldn’t buy a car without carplay but putting carplay in an otherwise crappy car isn’t going to magically make people buy that instead. There’s a lot of reasons Chevy is struggling. Blowing their own foot off with this decision can’t have been good for business but it’s certainly been hilarious for the quotes their execs have had to say in public with straight faces so they don’t get whacked for not following the party line. At some point I’m sure there will be a reorg where the opposite will become true.
GM tried for years building their own infotainment system internally and never made one anyone liked until they just integrated android auto/car play finally. It was an admission of defeat in doing so, but made everyone happy. When they announced pulling this back, I laughed, thinking "trying to put the rabbit back in the bag, eh?"
Would I buy a car without android auto as an android user? No, end of story. GM can die like other stupid heavy-handed vendors, but sadly they are too big to fail, and will drag down the nation with them.
I heard that the reason the major car companies started to sour on CarPlay was because Apple started to get increasingly needy with their data collection requirements (as of CarPlay Ultra) and the car companies weren't comfortable (or legally able) to give Apple that much canbus/telemetry data. And I guess Apple was pushing CarPlay Ultra as the only option without classic less-data-snoopy CarPlay?
Heh, the version of this I heard from a Porsche tech was that the reason Porsche's supported Carplay (added in 2017 models) but NOT Android Auto for so long (added in 2022 models) was because Apple wasn't snoopy and Google was.
I find that hard to believe. My experience with Apple (as a developer), is that they are absolutely brutal about data collection, and being an Apple developer, means toeing a lot of lines, wrt privacy-related stuff.
It seems that every time I submit an update or new app, it gets rejected, because Apple just tightened the bolts a bit further.
A lot of skepticism here, but, anecdotally, we bought a Prologue without even test driving a Blazer.
I knew they were essentially the same car and that maintenance-wise it probably made more sense to get the Blazer from a GM dealer - but it lacked CarPlay so we didn’t consider it.
I have a 2023 Yukon that i like very much but i'm not going to ever replace it by another Yukon without carplay. By the time its not drivable anymore the kids won't need strollers and I'll likely pick a smaller car with car play.
They could have had me trading it in this or next year for the newer model (that does have some nicer things i'd like to have, like the larger infotainment screen) but the lack of carplay and the shitty native google maps and spotify products that come installed on it are are not acceptable for a car that sells for 90K USD.
GM decided it had all the cards, looks like they don't.
It’s literally not an A/B test. It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.
I would say simpler tech would be good. Just because you can put a super powerful chip in the car doesn't mean you should. It is wasteful overkill and breeds complicated software solutions and problems for things hardware already solved over a decade or more ago.
I test drove a new Subaru Forester a little while ago. I currently drive the 2015 version where the most advanced feature is the visual crash prevention system that brakes for you and a bluetooth sync that barely works
and yet I hated the new Subaru so much. I hated the fact that the entire console is now one giant touchscreen, requiring you to look away from the road in order to operate. I hated the huge bulky 'Starlink' hardware hidden in the roof. I hated the fact that the MPG was barely better even with ten years worth of supposed engineering advancement and the Forester was now wider and taller which sucks for being a city car
the last 15 years of 'innovation' in cars was a total mistake. call me a luddite but I really don't want my car to be able to be tracked by any satellite at any time. so it's either used cars for me from now or something like the Slate truck with the barest dashboard config (or a kei truck once it's legal in my state)
The Forester still has the awful infotainment system with the vertical screen, first introduced on the 2020 Outback. I actually like the vertical aspect ratio, and the screen is pretty bright and high resolution, but the underlying software is disastrous. It was slow and buggy and felt outdated when it was introduced 6 years ago!
For what it’s worth, the new 2026 Outback has an excellent new infotainment system and tons of physical controls for car settings. But apparently everyone hates it for the external redesign (I think it looks fine). Hopefully that interior will roll out to the rest of the models too.
Also everyone started screaming when Tesla was starting to rumor to start using the cabin cameras to recognize people when Subaru has a totally creepy facial recognition system on their current vehicles to do seating presets and the like. It was bad enough they use the cameras to imply I'm distracted or sleepy while I'm driving and have the things throw twenty million chimes and warnings, but actual driver ID is just terrible.
> Seat position profiles is a great feature, making it automatic is completely unnecessary.
Driving a Model 3, I disagree - having seats and basically everything else adjust as soon as you open the door is the biggest boon I can imagine. I totally wish the rearview mirror would adjust as well…
Saying you're not going put in a very popular feature (CarPlay) that probably doesn't cost that much to put in is one of the biggest self owns I can think of, especially when saying "we're going to do a better job." Has any OEM done a decent job with navigation, ever, perhaps aside from Tesla.
CarPlay is sort of like Apple Pay / Tap to Pay, even Home Depot, Kroger, and now Walmart capitulated. I hope there's fire to the smoke that Tesla will add Carplay, and I suspect if they do, Rivian won't be far behind.
My EQS has carplay and android auto, and I am a staunch google maps user. That said, I use the MBUX mapping most of the time. It does a good job -- and not just long drives where I need the EV charger logic -- day to day, it's plenty fine.
“ The car industry accidentally did something I've always wanted to see, which was to release basically the same car under two brands and models, with one major consumer-facing difference. ”
As far as I can tell it's not AI slop, but I wish this author had asked one LLM if his example is A/B testing, because the AI would've told him no, and we wouldn't have to have read this garbage.
Don't say that too loudly.. People will think you're encouraging use of AI in researching and writing articles, which is apparently a mortal sin. Certain people here would rather read a nonsense post by a human than a logical post by an AI
I would rather see a world wide standard for infotainment devices so that the car makers would deliver you a car with a specific hw interface and you could buy a device that would fit any car that supports the standard. This is why we have the EU. We could just decide to do this and everyone that wants to sell us cars would probably just implement this.
Even though the Prologue is based on the Blazer platform, most people don't consider that, with the brand carrying more weight.
Secondly, EV purchasers have different criteria, like range. After all, the best selling EV brand and model in America has never had CarPlay but has the trust of buyers (and would probably have more if the founder wasn't so polarizing).
It would be better if we could see the other variables explicitly listed i.e. are they the same price (or same price for a comparable spec), what do the reviews for both vehicles look like, etc.
There is very little rational about car buying or branding.
In the eye of many consumers a car with 3 wheels and 1 with 4 from the same brand will have more in common than 2 identical cars with different badges.
This is totally absurd because people don’t buy phone based on car integration they have. They buy car integration that works with their phone. And numbers reflect iPhone vs Android market share.
I loath my smart car, but my truck was amenable to bieng hardware hacked, so I modified a 1/4" headset harness and built a
phone shelf where the head unit was, and used a power amp with just an impidence matching input gain and a mic and answer button, and could be modified to work with essentialy any amplifier and speakers ever made. Zero extra sofware, tunes, calls.
Back to my car, which is an abomination of
choices made by people with a level of certitude into human preferance that I did not know existed, or is that what happens when engineering descisions are made by mutual apreciation clubs?
It does not matter, my faith in technology has been destroyed, and as someone who can, will be building cars to suit myself.
Picking bodys for realy comfy interiors and then grafting in an awd electric power train.
I would just buy something, but touch screens for basic standard functions is something I find revolting, If there is a menue, that means one of two things, I am working on a computer or someone is going to bring me something yummy.
I hate to say this, but (for every person I've asked) this was a simple "no-brainer". There must have been internal 'political' reasons to avoid Apple. Maybe the managemant hated Tim Cook?? I dunno.
Which don't exist. BMW famously tried to blame Apple for trying to charge buyers an annual fee for Carplay and Apple _publicly_ called their shit out. They confirmed they don't charge anything - neither one-off nor recurring. Manufacturers may incur certification costs, there's nothing after that.
Just did a couple quick searches and nothing's changed since then AFAIK
According to their MFi page, there may be a royalty, as Apple says that information is covered by NDA. (including the authentication coprocessors required for CarPlay)
"What is the royalty associated with MFi accessories?
This information is only available under NDA. You will be able to review this information once your application for the MFi License has been approved."
TFA just shows the author is addicted to his phone and nothing else. Many comments here are already explaining why the comparison is not valid.
As a consumer in the market for cars (we've got four at home), I'm basically interested in how pleasant/agreeable the car is to drive and how secure it is.
I give exactly jack fucking zero shit if it's got Android Auto or Apple Car Play or both or neither.
I drive way, way, way more than most on this forum. For example I've been both to Stockholm and Ibiza by car [involving a part with the on a boat in both cases]). And I regularly do long distances (longest was 8am to 10pm non-stop except bio-break and gasoline). I'll cross Germany (I don't live in Germany) in one-go to go to Poland. Stuff like that. Also I spent months a year in a rural area, so car is the only option (closest village to find croissants and baguettes is a 10 minutes drive).
And yet I don't care a yota about "phone connectivity" in my car.
The rare cases where I really need my phone I can... just use my phone?
Like what the heck is hard about that?
BTW my main car run QNX for its infotainment/phone system and phonecalls and reading message over Bluetooth works just fine. And it wouldn't be working, it'd be totally fine too.
TFA and people agreeing with it says more about people's incestuous relation with their phones than about what the "best option" (mentioned in TFA) is.
I still absolutely don't want CarPlay or Android Auto to become the default. Should they become the arbiters of what I can and cannot do in my car? Should I be beholden them for features, or which apps they allow in their walled garden?
Today I can vote with my money, choosing a car that fits me. If they all become the same, it's a monopoly.
Everything else equal, I can believe having CarPlay adds value for some people. Things weren't equal so possibly not as much as the other variables in the room.
Meanwhile my friends kids are turning 16 and inheriting the honda accord with 250,000 miles I remember getting shuttled to and from soccer practice when I was 12 in the 90s
I'm sure there is some impact to not including it, tbh, but as is this article is a giant nothing burger to me.
Telluride/Palisade causing fires because they cheaped out on the current/torque sensors in the drive motors for the seats.
ICCU failures across their current EV platforms. No fix planned last I heard.
It hurts me to point this out because I really, REALLY like where their cars are going. Their new van is EXACTLY what we want, and I'd love an Ioniq 5N.
But those failures are critical and speak to a very deep engineering culture issue.
They apparently even took plans, detailed documentation, endless amounts of information to Hyundai. I'm not sure of the veracity of that information, but it sure explains how Hyundai became incredibly good, literally overnight.
They used to be a joke.
https://electrek.co/2025/09/23/honda-offering-over-20000-off...
Basically every 90s brand has had this happen. Typically involves PE.
Similarly how every former reputable consumer electronic brand from 'The West' that sells consumer stuff today like Philips, GE, Thompson, Blaupunkt, Gigaset, etc is now just a brand label for a Chinese consortium that's fully designed and made in China with zero employees in their original western roots.
So the numbers check out and there's no need for you to find the blame elsewhere.
Ask that 79% of car buyers if they would forego carplay for a $10-20k discount.
If the software is as good as Tesla's, I have no need for CarPlay. Having to buy from a dealership and spend a few hours there, having to pay monthly for software features like maps/remote start/phone key, and having to deal with ICE stuff ended up being far bigger issues.
I know a number of people who’d buy a Honda without a second thought but wouldn’t be caught dead in a Chevy.
They always seem ten years behind with uninspiring designs and horrible MPG.
Would I buy a car without android auto as an android user? No, end of story. GM can die like other stupid heavy-handed vendors, but sadly they are too big to fail, and will drag down the nation with them.
It seems that every time I submit an update or new app, it gets rejected, because Apple just tightened the bolts a bit further.
The classic "oh but Apple's whitepapers say this" shtick is a non-contribution to the discussion.
I knew they were essentially the same car and that maintenance-wise it probably made more sense to get the Blazer from a GM dealer - but it lacked CarPlay so we didn’t consider it.
I can’t imagine we’re the only ones.
They could have had me trading it in this or next year for the newer model (that does have some nicer things i'd like to have, like the larger infotainment screen) but the lack of carplay and the shitty native google maps and spotify products that come installed on it are are not acceptable for a car that sells for 90K USD.
GM decided it had all the cards, looks like they don't.
It’s literally not an A/B test. It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.
and yet I hated the new Subaru so much. I hated the fact that the entire console is now one giant touchscreen, requiring you to look away from the road in order to operate. I hated the huge bulky 'Starlink' hardware hidden in the roof. I hated the fact that the MPG was barely better even with ten years worth of supposed engineering advancement and the Forester was now wider and taller which sucks for being a city car
the last 15 years of 'innovation' in cars was a total mistake. call me a luddite but I really don't want my car to be able to be tracked by any satellite at any time. so it's either used cars for me from now or something like the Slate truck with the barest dashboard config (or a kei truck once it's legal in my state)
For what it’s worth, the new 2026 Outback has an excellent new infotainment system and tons of physical controls for car settings. But apparently everyone hates it for the external redesign (I think it looks fine). Hopefully that interior will roll out to the rest of the models too.
Still driving my Toyota Avensis 2014 and I hope he‘ll serve me well for the next 10 years.
I like the bluetooth connection it has so I can listen to my podcasts from my iPhone while driving but from a security point of view, I think the touchscreens are horrible. See this link: https://etsc.eu/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-in-...
God I hate our Forrester.
There’s a panel where the preset buttons for seat position profiles would be if I had paid for that feature.
Seat position profiles is a great feature, making it automatic is completely unnecessary.
Driving a Model 3, I disagree - having seats and basically everything else adjust as soon as you open the door is the biggest boon I can imagine. I totally wish the rearview mirror would adjust as well…
CarPlay is sort of like Apple Pay / Tap to Pay, even Home Depot, Kroger, and now Walmart capitulated. I hope there's fire to the smoke that Tesla will add Carplay, and I suspect if they do, Rivian won't be far behind.
They do this all the time.
Everyone doesn’t know statistics but, it is obvious when someone really doesn’t know.
Secondly, EV purchasers have different criteria, like range. After all, the best selling EV brand and model in America has never had CarPlay but has the trust of buyers (and would probably have more if the founder wasn't so polarizing).
I wanted to nitpick on calling Elon Musk a founder, as Tesla was originally founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in July 2003.
But as I did my research, I learnt, that he has now legally the status of a co-founder after a settlement. It is up to the reader to think about that.
So to keep my nitpick, I can only say the quoted sentence is missing a "co-" prefix. :p
Which don't exist. BMW famously tried to blame Apple for trying to charge buyers an annual fee for Carplay and Apple _publicly_ called their shit out. They confirmed they don't charge anything - neither one-off nor recurring. Manufacturers may incur certification costs, there's nothing after that.
Just did a couple quick searches and nothing's changed since then AFAIK
"What is the royalty associated with MFi accessories? This information is only available under NDA. You will be able to review this information once your application for the MFi License has been approved."
https://mfi.apple.com/faqs
As a consumer in the market for cars (we've got four at home), I'm basically interested in how pleasant/agreeable the car is to drive and how secure it is.
I give exactly jack fucking zero shit if it's got Android Auto or Apple Car Play or both or neither.
I drive way, way, way more than most on this forum. For example I've been both to Stockholm and Ibiza by car [involving a part with the on a boat in both cases]). And I regularly do long distances (longest was 8am to 10pm non-stop except bio-break and gasoline). I'll cross Germany (I don't live in Germany) in one-go to go to Poland. Stuff like that. Also I spent months a year in a rural area, so car is the only option (closest village to find croissants and baguettes is a 10 minutes drive).
And yet I don't care a yota about "phone connectivity" in my car.
The rare cases where I really need my phone I can... just use my phone?
Like what the heck is hard about that?
BTW my main car run QNX for its infotainment/phone system and phonecalls and reading message over Bluetooth works just fine. And it wouldn't be working, it'd be totally fine too.
TFA and people agreeing with it says more about people's incestuous relation with their phones than about what the "best option" (mentioned in TFA) is.
I still absolutely don't want CarPlay or Android Auto to become the default. Should they become the arbiters of what I can and cannot do in my car? Should I be beholden them for features, or which apps they allow in their walled garden?
Today I can vote with my money, choosing a car that fits me. If they all become the same, it's a monopoly.