Two giant car manufacturers in the United States, Ford and General Motors (GM), have different attitudes regarding the use of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in their cars. GM recently made headlines for refusing to install Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
The reason is that both cellphone mirroring technologies are dangerous for car drivers. Motor Trend reported, Friday (15/12/2023) that Tim Babbit, GM Head of Product for Infotainment, said that Android Auto and Apple CarPlay have stability problems.
He said that the two technologies could suddenly lose connection, be slow to respond, and fail to display the screen on the car’s head unit completely. This condition is actually very dangerous for car drivers.
The reason is that the driver will lose focus while on the road. They’ll look at their phone and try to fix the connections needed to run Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
“The same problem still occurs even though the connection to the car is via a cable plug,” said Tim Babbit.
To strengthen his statement, the Babbit Team actually showed data released by J.D Power. The data states that Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are things that car owners always complain about.
From there, GM decided to no longer install Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in their cars. GM is now trying to maximize the same technology called Ultifi. The application developed by Google is believed to work well in cars made by GM.
In contrast to GM, another American car company, Ford, has actually doubled down on the use of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, even said that owners of their cars actually like Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
According to him, these two technologies can actually make the driver focus on the road and always have their hands on the steering wheel.
“We will continue to work with Apple and Google to provide a high-quality experience for customers. I think we actually have the best experience with SYNC 4A,” wrote Jim Farley, via his official X account.
Meanwhile, the Drive site actually provides a quite unique opinion. The failure of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in GM cars cannot be generalized to other cars.
“This is a failure of the car manufacturer to integrate technology, not the fault of the technology maker,” said Drive.
