An Open Letter to GM's Mary Barra: Bring Back CarPlay and Android Auto in Your EVs

The following is the open letter I sent to General Motors CEO Mary Barra. I'm publishing it here because this decision affects every prospective GM EV buyer, and the conversation around it deserves to happen in the open.

 

Dear Ms. Barra,

I'm writing as someone who follows the EV market closely and covers it for an audience of prospective buyers. I want to make a direct case for restoring Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to GM's electric vehicles.

For a large segment of buyers, this is a dealbreaker, not a preference. I constantly hear that shoppers cross-shop the Silverado EV, Equinox EV, or Blazer EV against a Kia/Hyundai or Ford, see the missing projection support, and walk away. GM is losing sales it would otherwise win on price, range, and design over a feature that costs nothing to include.

The official reasoning doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and I think that's worth being candid about:

This isn't a replacement, it's a downgrade. The core problem isn't that GM removed something and gave us something equal or better. It removed projection and replaced it with a meaningfully worse experience. The built-in app store is sparse, and features GM is now introducing as innovations such as the Gemini digital assistant, have been on our phones for over two years. This is reinventing the wheel, and the wheel that already exists in everyone's pocket is rounder. The apps I actually rely on prove the point: A Better Route Planner and Waze run as full-featured, deeply integrated tools through CarPlay and Android Auto, but on GM's native system they're either absent or a stripped-down shadow of what owners get on every other EV. Asking customers to give up the better version of the tools they already use, with nothing equivalent in return, is not progress.

The "clunky and distracting" argument runs exactly backwards. GM's own infotainment lead has acknowledged that when native systems glitch, drivers get frustrated and reach for the phone in their hand, the genuinely dangerous behavior. But the bigger driver of that behavior is the one GM is creating: when the functionality people have relied on for over a decade simply isn't in the car anymore, they don't do without it, they pull out the phone and prop it on the dash. Removing projection doesn't reduce phone use. It guarantees more of it! All in the name of subscription revenue.

Because that is what this is about. GM has publicly targeted more than $25 billion in annual subscription and connected-services revenue by the end of the decade. When an automaker fights Apple and Google for control of the in-car experience and the customer's data, the customer is the one who loses access, choice, and a feature they already paid for in the price of the car.

And the independence argument doesn't even hold. GM's replacement is built on Google's Android Automotive OS (AAOS), so the system being removed in the name of breaking free from a tech giant is being replaced by a deeper, more native Google integration, not less reliance on one.

GM has already proven the feature works fine when it wants it to. The Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer EV shipped with CarPlay, and GM EVs sold overseas still support smartphone projection today. If it were truly unworkable or unsafe, it wouldn't survive in your flagship and export vehicles.

I'm not asking GM to abandon its native platform. Build the best in-house experience you can, but let customers choose. The two are not mutually exclusive, and every competitor that offers both is proving it daily.

Please reconsider this decision for GM's electric lineup. It is costing you buyers who genuinely want to choose GM.

If you own or are shopping for a GM EV and this resonates, the most useful thing you can do is make your voice heard directly with GM rather than only venting online. politely, specifically, and as a real customer. I'll keep covering this issue as it develops.

Got questions? Drop a comment I love hearing from all of you.

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