The Room to Room Problem

"As we evolve our UI systems, we want customers to feel like they're interacting with a single experience rather than moving from room to room inside a house."

That is Mike Wahlstrom, GM's connected apps and services leader, describing the thing GM is fixing. What he is fixing is GM's own decision. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are coming back, starting with the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, in a new interface where CarPlay lives in a card on the home screen next to native apps for trailering, vehicle status, and a map.

Three weeks ago I wrote that the touchscreen had become something the most expensive car on earth hides in a drawer. This week the company headquartered twenty minutes from me opened the drawer. I should say up front that I call myself the CarPlay truther in my own bio, so read the rest of this knowing exactly which way I was already leaning.

I understand what it cost them to get here. Automakers have spent enormous amounts of R and D building their own interfaces, and being told nobody wants it is not a fun quarter. But CarPlay is already seamless. It connects the second I turn my car on. My nav asks if I am going to work in the morning. My calendar and my calls are just there. If it ain't broke certainly comes into play.

Nobody uses the native tech anyway.

In 2023 GM said it would drop CarPlay and Android Auto from its future electric vehicles, betting drivers would take to a Google based system built into the car instead, with a stated plan to phase projection out of the rest of the lineup after that. The EV half happened. The lineup-wide half, as Pras Subramanian pointed out at Yahoo Finance, never did. One GM employee, writing in anonymously to a mobility newsletter this week, put it better than any statement did: at least we didn't make the mistake of continuing to make this mistake.

Ford never picked that fight. "70% of our Ford customers are Apple customers," Jim Farley said, and that was the end of the conversation in Dearborn. I drive an Edge, so I have been on the winning side of this one by accident for two years, which is not the same as being right, but it is a nice place to watch from.

The sad part is that the data they wanted is already available somewhere else. Google Maps has it. So the decision seemed unnecessary in the first place, and I am glad there was pushback.

I was talking to a friend who drives an older Range Rover and is getting ready for a new one in the next couple of years. I asked whether he would stick with an older model at lower mileage. He said no, I want CarPlay in the next one. It is a feature these cars do not even sell you. And everybody wants it.

It is the ultimate convenience luxury, and it is standard on most new cars now. Honestly, I would be shocked if it wasn't offered. That would deter me from buying the car.

Which is the part worth sitting with, because of where GM put it. Not on a halo car. Not on a cheap one. The Silverado and the Sierra, the two most middle-of-the-market vehicles in North America and the trucks that pay for everything else in the building.

Take the top one percent out of the argument, the Bugattis that hide the screen because glass cheapens the room. Take the bottom one percent out too, the Slate, which deletes the screen because glass costs money and figures you will just put your phone on the mount. That is not CarPlay. That is your phone doing the job because nothing else is there. Everybody left in the middle would say yes to CarPlay without thinking about it. The Fathom keeps its screen and goes hunting for its savings on the factory floor. It is not even an added benefit anymore. It is customary, expected, not broken.

Before I bought the Edge I was dreaming about how good CarPlay would look on that big screen. When I got in the X5 and felt like I had to learn a new language, I plugged my phone in, CarPlay was an option, anxiety gone.

So let me give GM the argument it actually had, because it was not a stupid one. When you hand the dashboard to Apple you hand over the surface where navigation, media, subscriptions, and eventually charging and service all get sold. Someone else is getting all that data on your customer. GM looked at that and decided it could not afford to rent the screen out.

I get it. But since CarPlay's inception, the customer has preferred it to the native system every single time. It's Apple. It will always be simpler, better, preferred, and the loyalty does not move. I do not think car buyers care that they are hurting an automaker's feelings.

It was not a dumb bet. It just ran into the fact that CarPlay already owns the market. Taking it away, or charging for it, was going to create problems in a decade when Detroit needs brand loyalty more than it needs another revenue line. You know who is coming.

Which brings me to the card, because CarPlay is not coming back the way it left. It comes back as a tile you tap, sitting next to GM's own apps. That is not a surrender. That is a truce, and GM wrote the terms.

My dad has to go into phone, then settings, then launch CarPlay in his Telluride every single time he gets in the car. It drives him absolutely mad. But put yourself in the maker's shoes. CarPlay has gotten to the point where I forget Ford even has native software I could use. Why would I? So the makers want us to at least acknowledge that the thing they worked so hard on exists. Fine. I think we all know what the final decision is going to be anyway. As long as CarPlay works, it takes the cake.

I have written before that no touchscreen has ever turned my head the way the sound of an engine does. Still true. But there is a lot to be said for convenience and for what people actually want. CarPlay has become synonymous with a new car, not even a question. And if you are still driving an older one, you can buy a knockoff CarPlay screen on the TikTok store.

Which tells you this was never really about cars. It would take a lot to get people to leave Apple and go back to a BlackBerry. Same goes for CarPlay. Until you can beat it, leave it alone.

Windows down.