The next time you buy a Chevy, your iPhone might no longer be your co-pilot. According to a new report, GM plans to “phase out” CarPlay from future electric vehicles as it looks to “capture more data on how consumers drive and charge EVs.”
Reuters reports that the first General Motors car to drop CarPlay support will be the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer. The company plans to launch a new onboard navigation system with Google that has been in development since 2019. GM is moving its entire fleet of cars to “zero tailpipe emissions” by 2035 and plans to eventually begin charging for digital subscription services as Tesla does.
Moving away from CarPlay won’t happen overnight–and likely won’t affect the millions of GM cars currently on the road–but it’s a notable shift away from what has been the standard in cars over the past several years. More than 70 car manufacturers support CarPlay and 600 models, including numerous electric cars. However, several notable electric car makers don’t support CarPlay, including Tesla and Rivian.
According to Mike Hichme, executive director of GM’S “digital cockpit experience,” the carmaker has “a lot of new driver assistance features coming that are more tightly coupled with navigation” and won’t be “dependent on a person having a cellphone.” It’s not clear from the report whether the new system will support Apple Music. Tesla only added support for the Apple Music app in its cars late last year.
Apple announced the next generation of CarPlay at WWDC 2022, which provides “content for all the driver’s screens including the instrument cluster” and handles vehicle functions such as radio and temperature controls. Apple says vehicle announcements are coming late in 2023, but it’s safe to assume a number of electric cars will be among the first partnerships.
Author: Michael Simon, Executive Editor
Michael Simon has been covering Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive. He's still waiting for that to come back in style tbh.