Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern that Ford has no plans to drop CarPlay support in its vehicles, thanks to its popularity with Ford customers. The comment came in an interview with Stern.
“70 percent of our Ford customers in the U.S. are Apple customers. Why would I go to an Apple customer and say good luck?” he said.
Farley was commenting on car manufacturers that have never supported CarPlay, like Tesla, and car makers that are planning to drop CarPlay and Android Auto, like General Motors. GM earlier this year announced its plans to phase out support for both CarPlay and Android Auto, starting this year.
In place of CarPlay and Android Auto, GM is planning to go with an infotainment system developed in partnership with Google, who also makes Android Auto. GM will continue to offer CarPlay in internal combustion vehicles, but has plans to make its vehicle lineup all-electric by 2035.
As you can imagine, GM’s announcement has been unpopular with its CarPlay-using vehicle owners. GM and Tesla both likely have numerous reasons to be anti-CarPlay. However, it’s safe to say that the main reason for GM and Tesla is to gain more data about their customers, which can be sold to interested parties, and they’ll be able to charge monthly or annual subscription fees for certain digital infotainment services.
Farley told Stern that there isn’t any money to be made in selling or renting content to car owners for consumption while in their vehicles. Instead, Ford is focusing on safety, security, autonomy, and productivity features.
In terms of content, we kind of lost that battle 10 years ago. So like get real with it, because you’re not going to make a ton of money on content inside the vehicle. It’s gonna be safety, security, partial autonomy, and productivity in our eyes. So that relationship for content is between you, The Wall Street Journal, and the customer. I don’t want to get in the middle of that, but Tesla and other companies believe differently. They want to have complete control over the interior experience.
Drivers appreciate having a familiar interface on their infotainment systems, as both CarPlay and Android Auto offer a familiar interface that most drivers have been using for years on their mobile devices, like the iPhone and Android smartphones. So, it will likely prove that GM’s decision to drop both infotainment systems from their vehicles in favor of an in-house interface will be off-putting for those users, at least at first. In fact, GM customers that have been considering the purchase of another company’s vehicles may find the move to drop CarPlay and Android Auto the straw that broke the camel’s back, purchasing a Ford, Honda, Kia, or another company’s vehicle.
Apple has announced its plans to roll out a next-generation CarPlay experience later this year that will offer deeper integration with new vehicles made by manufacturers who choose to hang in there when it comes to offering CarPlay in their vehicles.