The only way it could possibly work was always as an apple branded model under the umbrella of another manufacturer, with their support and dealership network. Think polestar being its own brand but using Volvo workshops for servicing and support, as well as using a lot of Volvo parts internally. I can imagine an Apple car that's just a really fancy version of an existing car, with their own infotainment.
Oh, this I could also see. Apple hates to partner with others, for the most part, which is why I don’t think that happened. And some of that is for good reason. The awfulness of the Motorola Rokr is what convinced Steve Jobs that Apple had to fully own and control the iPhone.
And Apple is showing off parts of Car Play that could be fully integrated by manufacturers in a much deeper way, assuming they want to give up control (which given GM’s decision to drop Car Play and Android Auto, seems like it’ll be a challenge).
There is certainly a world where Apple could be a modern QNX unencumbered by its parent company baggage and a better business model (ongoing subscription and not 50-cents a car or whatever it is QNX gets) and provide the software for all that stuff, but based on everything that has been reported, that wasn’t what Apple was doing here. They were trying to build a real car. And as challenging and interesting as that might be as an R&D exercise, I just don’t see why that would be a business you’d willingly want to enter when you are so successful in other areas and the margins are so poor.
I think I know why GM and the others fear CarPlay and Android Auto, but it's just so dumb to me.
It makes sense for companies like Netflix to shy away from the Apple "walled garden." They want to deliver a unique experience with exclusive content, not just be another content supplier to the Apple experience. They don't want to wind up like the record companies.
But car manufacturers? There's a whole lot of stuff going on w.r.t. your driving experience. Like driving. Hundreds of physical things. Etc. Unlike the media industry I can't think of a future where the car companies eventually find themselves subsumed by allowing CarPlay integration.
Then again, I can't tell what's the main fear... if car companies are scared of getting iTunes'd, or if they really just want that revenue from 5% of car buyers paying for the Premium GM Infotainment Experience Recurring Subscription or whatever.
From my past discussions with car executives (that are ~10 years old so grain of salt), I really do think it’s as simple as that recurring infotainment subscription revenue.
The small margin GM gets on its cars is buffered by the revenue splits it gets with Sirius XM and the various call for assistance services. Sirius revenue is on the decline because everyone listens to Spotify on their phone. The GPS revenue stream died with Google Maps on phones. So they have to try to lock in those fees where they can. See also: BMW selling a subscription to unlock features like heated seats.
Now, I think this backfires for GM. I think way more people will not buy new cars if they lack Android Auto or Car Play than they think. I also think that it will be harder to maintain the apps and services than GM thinks. When Ford was doing its partnership with Microsoft 15 years ago (and then they took it in-house because Microsoft Connect or whatever it was called was buggy as hell), I think that made a lot of sense. But it was also expensive to do and so you saw the car companies offload a lot of those details to Apple and Google via a QNX or other middleware layer. Tesla built its own software as sort of a foundational part of the car experience, and I think it has worked well for them. I don’t have the same confidence in GM.
The thing is, if GM just made a $30 a month connected car subscription package to unlock Car Play and 5G assistance or whatever, I think they’d sell tons of it. People would complain but I know that I would pay the money in a second versus trying to pair my phone with a non-Car Play infotainment system. But I bet Apple and Google would insist on 30% of that revenue (at least).
The thing is, if GM just made a $30 a month connected car
subscription package to unlock Car Play and 5G assistance
or whatever, I think they’d sell tons of it. People would
complain but I know that I would pay the money in a second
versus trying to pair my phone with a non-Car Play infotainment system
Would you pay it, or just avoid GM?
I really can't imagine significant numbers of people paying for it and I don't know that a 5G bundle makes any sense. I don't understand why anybody would want their car to have it's own 5G connection when they already have their 5G phone in their pocket.
Even my elderly borderline-technophobe parents are able to understand (with some effort) the concept of CarPlay since it's more or less the existing phone interface that they're used to.
Maybe the real killer issue is that on one hand, clearly many people value CarPlay enough to pay for it. But it has always been free, and will continue to be free from quite a few other auto makers, and that's a big obstacle to getting anybody to pay for it. That has historically been difficult for any sort of good or service...
I suspect Ioniq 5 and 6 were supposed to be those models, up until Hyundai exec leaked negotiations to media presumably thinking it'll somehow give them advantages. Timelines match up.
