Which does sort of get slightly to the heart of some recent things that the dealer model in the US has always been sometimes antagonistic to consumers, EVs make that worse, and it may be time for brand new dealer regulation. (Though that alone won't address the subscription fees because car companies will want recurring revenue with or without dealers.)
What is this, the 60s? Modern gas cars are so computer controlled that the concept of a "tune-up" effectively no longer exists, and they go 10,000 miles between oil changes so most people don't even average a single oil change every 6 months. EVs are even lower maintenance, but the difference isn't nearly as big as you're implying.
Examples: self-ordering kiosks at restaurants, every change made at every airline in the last 15 years, bandwidth caps at ISPs, “resort fees” at every hotel, tipping for car services, etc.
They know that since there aren’t many options, it doesn’t matter if customers all hate it, as long as they have no choice. The automakers (at least in their fantasies) smell blood in the water for the idea of CarPlay/Android Auto, and want to kill it if they can.
Curious if anyone has been able to calculate the sales and profits surrendered by the likes of GM and Rivian due to this switch. (My guess is it’s low.)
If Rivian et al. truly want to sell a premium product, their software needs to be premium. And frankly it's just not there. The other day I was trying to listen to an upcoming album that has a few singles released. On my phone I can do that no problem. On the Rivian Spotify app, the album just didn't show up. It wasn't possible to play those songs in order without searching for the songs one by one. There are a ton of things that I love about my R1T, but as more time passes, the gap between what they offer and what other manufacturers offer becomes more and more apparent
Actually, Tesla is apparently planning to add CarPlay support via a software update.
It hasn’t happened yet, as apparently it’s been waiting on a new feature from Apple which will allow navigation data to be shared/synced between CarPlay and the car’s self-driving system.
This Route Sharing feature was announced at WWDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwG0I8UGjg&t=771s
I've only had Android Auto in my own vehicles, and while it hasn't been as buggy, it feels slow. I never use it anymore.
Their homemade infotainment system prior to CarPlay was awful, and has an overflow error which hits me about once every 6 months which requires pulling the fuse to hard reset it. As far as I can tell they keep adding new songs to a stack, and never flush it so at some point you'll reach the end of a song and it won't play any more. Once you reached that you can only use the phone function, attempts to use music result in you getting your Bluetooth connection terminated.
It was always stable for me, just sluggish.
If I had to pick I'd take sluggish over constantly buggy of course. So props there.
The infotainment setup on my Tesla though is golden with only the occasional quirk. After using that, Carplay and Android Auto feel very regressive. A guy I work with has an R2 so I got to tinker with it and I figured it would be comparable but it actually kinda sucked.
I haven't seen a broad range, but Mazda seems very fast and reliable.
Chevrolet (prior to recent models that drop it) and Honda do it well.
I don't actually know if the Toyota infotainment setup is to blame though. Since I've never encountered a reasonably stable, glitch free Carplay experience in the last 5 years, I've always just figured "that must be how CarPlay is". I have never owned an iPhone so I only get the cliffnotes version of the experience. But since it's got a 0% track record in that limited viewing, I'm either unlucky, emit magical anti-apple em waves, or am possessed by the soul of Steve Jobs favourite black shirt.
I don't know if the sensitivity to Siri can be turned down, again not an iPhone guy myself, but it bugs me how often we will be talking and suddenly the audio stops and Siri says "I don't know how to help you with that" or something similar. Sometimes we just don't talk so that we don't constantly have Siri interrupting Hardcore History.
fun car to drive too. zoom zoom :)
Porsche sells head units with car play for their cars going back to the 1960’s. I think they look great.
https://vehicle-accessories.porsche.com/prod/pag/Vehicle/Acc...
Like you have this 30 year old car with a pristine wooden trim where all components align nicely in design and you decide to ruin it for the convenience of having notifications in your face while driving? A phone holder looks much less invasive.
GM just wants to extract a pound of flesh. All are companies making dumb decisions by ignoring what customers want.
It will cost them customers. My company buys like 10k cars a year and we make CarPlay a requirement. We see it as a safety and productivity issue. We want employees using maps to navigate and avoid hazards, but don’t want them operating our vehicles unsafely.
Personally, it would be a long shot for me to buy any GM product due to high depreciation. The CarPlay/Android Auto thing disqualifies them.
https://www.teslarati.com/apple-developing-missing-link-tesl...
https://www.theverge.com/transportation/804562/gm-apple-carp...