General Motors discontinues support for CarPlay and Android Auto: A controversial decision between safety and user convenience.
Apple’s CarPlay has been extremely popular among users and automotive manufacturers. Surprisingly, however, one manufacturer is pulling out and blaming Apple for it.
Apple had positioned CarPlay as a safe way to access important iPhone features while driving, including reading incoming messages aloud, navigating via map apps, and much more, controlled through the Siri voice assistant. But now the question arises: is this sufficiently safe?
General Motors, or GM for short, has announced that it will reduce support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and discontinue it completely. In an interview with MotorTrend, Tim Babbitt, head of infotainment at GM, explained his concerns regarding the two smartphone integration systems.
According to Babbitt, GM’s decision is based on safety concerns: He argues that drivers who use the vehicle’s integrated systems are less likely to pick up their phone, leading to less distraction and more safety behind the wheel.
However, Babbitt also admitted that tests have not yet confirmed this hypothesis in the lab or practice but believes it has potential if customers support it.
Babbitt further claims that CarPlay and Android Auto users tend to pick up their smartphones more frequently than an integrated system.
This contradicts the design of both systems, which aims to transfer notifications to the vehicle display and enable important functions such as making calls and sending messages (both reading and sending via voice) in the least intrusive way possible.
He notes that both systems struggle with poor connection, low resolution, slow feedback, and connection drops.
For many of these problems, however, the manufacturer shares responsibility with connection drops, which are now rare and often fixable by a cable connection.
CarPlay and Android Auto unsafe? – Conclusion
These arguments are not understandable. I have been using Apple CarPlay with my Clarion car radio for years. Thanks to the cable connection, I have no connection drops, and the smartphone lies in the console.
It remains suspicious that a proprietary system may be being pushed.
