Joe’s Hot Take:
People love having Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in their cars so much so that clients oftentimes say to us – the only feature I really need to have in my new car is Apple CarPlay. Why? It allows you synch directly to many functions on your phone. The main ones we see people using – for navigating, either Waze or Google Maps, and for music, either Pandora or Spotify. How? It connects your phone to the center screen in your car. When navigating, you don’t have to be constantly looking at your phone. The screen in the car acts as a factory navigation system. Safer, right?
So why are the manufacturers (Volvo and General Motors come to mind) starting to move away from Apple CarPlay and Android Auto? They want to control the way consumers use features in the car. And in doing that, they get add’l sources of revenues. This article talks about these ways.
One issue I see with this – if ads are going to be popping up on the screen, this is going to distract drivers even more than they already are.