Infotainment Enshitification
Automotive infotainment systems are at a point of inflection for the industry. Car prices are high, average car selling prices are up, and automakers are struggling with the start-stop political jerkiness of electric vehicle subsidies, supply chain tariffs, and other uncertainties in the industry. Automakers are increasingly looking to maintain and even tighten their grasp on the information management hardware and software within their vehicles. This area has long been an area to up-sell customers and seek out more profit. But with the increased prices of vehicles, consumers are expecting higher performing infotainment systems.
The best infotainment systems in the past few years have been whatever CarPlay and Android Auto were bolted on to. A good infotainment system was one that connected to phone projection quickly and reliably. Most would consider it a good day if they didn’t have to interact with the native UI. Modern vehicles, particularly electric ones, need tighter integration than phone projection can provide. The trend more or less started with Tesla and Rivian as modern infotainment systems that refuse to support phone projections. GM recently doubled down on their plans to drop all car projection support in the future, despite consumer outcry.
Prove It
Their logic is that the integrations are too important for route planning with charging stops along the way. Apple Maps added EV planning, but it can’t currently integrate tightly with the vehicle. Google Maps added it first, and some infotainment systems that refuse to support phone projection actually run Android Automotive which supports Google Maps natively. I’ve yet to hear anyone from any automaker provide a compelling argument for not supporting phone projections. There are common justifications along the lines of “we can do it better” but to that I suggest: do it better.
Customers expect modern, regularly updated, responsive interfaces from their touchscreen devices. The cheapest phones and tablets have been pulling this off for years. It’s a large and difficult undertaking to design a UI from scratch, especially in an environment where it needs to interact with the real-time OS that the vehicle is running on. A useful, efficient UI is hard. It’s a skill set that few have and that even Apple seems to have lost recently.
When in Doubt, Enshitify
For Rivian, Tesla, or GM to spend the effort to develop their own UI, they must be convinced they can provide a better experience. Right? Surely it’s not about their ability to add subscription revenue from people who have already purchased their vehicles. Right? Of course it is. That could be okay, but no one has yet demonstrated they understand how to do so successfully. If your car manufacturer offered a new feature but you had to pay a monthly subscription for it, would you entertain the thought? I would, but it would need to be something I wanted to pay for, not something that I felt I was being nickel-and-dimed for.
For example, my car has wireless CarPlay but it doesn’t support CarPlay navigation in the middle of the gauge cluster. Would I pay for that as a feature a year after buying my car? I think I probably would. Would I pay for an OTA update that enabled CarPlay Ultra? I think I would. But these are features that would add value for me, and so I would be willing to pay. Would I pay for an OTA update to add non-CarPlay navigation? Absolutely not.
Focus on Your Strengths
For automakers to see subscription/services revenue, they would need to offer something the smartphone makers cannot. They would also have to execute on the hardware and software as good, or better, than smartphone makers. Hundreds of subcomponents in any given vehicle are bought from suppliers and not manufactured by the automakers. In many cases, they are major components. If I were an automaker, I would work closely with either Apple or Google to develop the next infotainment software architecture for my products. Google already does this with Android Auto, but Apple should compete in this space too.
Apple and Google have expertise that could be cleverly utilized. For example, many current driver-assist systems monitor the driver’s eyes to make sure they’re looking at the road. One could use those sensors to determine exactly where the driver is looking and use that information to turn a HUD into an augmented reality overlay. Apple and Google already do this with existing products. Car makers do not.
This is to say nothing of future AI integrations that Apple and Google have planned for their smartphones. Imagine your phone knowing your work calendar and alarm clock settings. Imagine it learning how long between when you wake up and when you get in your car each morning and using that information to precondition your vehicle or top off the charging for the last 20%. Most people replace the smartphones more frequently than their vehicles. That means new, faster hardware to drive new faster software. Auto makers cannot compete with that.
There’s a decades-old adage to never bet against the smartphone. Watching automakers do it doesn’t bode well for them. I don’t want Google to make a car. I don’t want GM to make a tablet. It’s a waste of time and money unless you’re really committed, and I doubt any car maker is. Even as Toyota shows off its next-gen infotainment, it’s clear they don’t have it. It’s better than the previous version, yes, but it’s not better than a smartphone that can access car systems.
The infotainment system in your next vehicle… it should be better.