- GM’s CEO says the company will stop offering phone projection systems
- A new planned platform, in use by 2028, could mimic much of what they do
General Motors will likely phase out Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in all of its cars by 2028.
CEO Mary Barra told The Verge yesterday that customer feedback drove the decision.
The two phone projection systems connect your phone to your car’s touchscreen, letting you operate apps for entertainment and turn-by-turn directions through your vehicle’s central touchscreen instead of on the phone.
They’re available on most new cars in the 2025 and 2026 model years. However, GM’s Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC brands have been moving away from them for some time. The company eliminated them from electric cars in 2023.
Now, Barra says, the company has found that customers don’t like using a phone company interface for some functions and the car’s interface for others. “It could be distracting to move back and forth if you were doing something that you could do on a phone projection type of system versus if you needed to do something in the vehicle,” she explains.
The company plans an all-new electrical and data architecture in its vehicles, starting with the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ. When that appears, Barra says, the company will have “ a central computer on which we can run a variety of applications to which we can deploy updates for those applications at a much higher pace than what we do today.”
- Phone projection systems let technology companies collect data on how you drive and what you listen to
- Automakers might want to monetize that data themselves
This May Really Be About Data
Apple has its own solution for that. The company recently introduced CarPlay Ultra, a next-generation system that lets the phone control car functions like climate control and even the speedometer display.
So far, only Aston Martin has offered it on a car. Other automakers seem resistant to giving a technology company access to data about where drivers go and how they get there.
That may be the unstated reason behind GM’s plan. Today’s cars collect data about how they’re used — and that data has financial value. Some have even found themselves in legal trouble for how much data they collect and sell.
Automakers, increasingly becoming another form of tech company, may not want to give Apple access to data they can monetize themselves.
