Google might have managed to pull an interesting move that beats Apple. Cars these days are more about software experience than just automobiles. In fact they are software products. Car companies are notoriously bad at building software. Android Auto and Apple Car play however managed to entice users and car makers with their brilliant product.

When you use Android Auto or Apple Car play, the phone basically takes over your car console. The car becomes and extension of your phone and gives a pleasant experience. Your streaming services, navigation with stored addresses, calendar everything integrates with car seamlessly. Where is the problem then ? All the amazing features that Apple and Google give you without costing car company even a penny.

The problem is that, the car companies realized that there is more money in making software for cars. If you entirely outsource the software experience to Apple or Google, you have no idea how they are using your cars to make money. People are buying spotify premium or youtube premium to listen to podcasts while driving. While dozen other companies make money in the process, the car company does not make any money.

Taking charge of your car

Car companies such as GM hence decided that their future cars wont support CarPlay or Android Auto. Instead they are rolling out “Android Automotive OS”, a Google OS that looks and feels like Android but for cars as part of the Car’s software suite.

This allows GM to get more control of your car’s software experience and also earn revenue from you in future. Even though it is Android Automotive OS, it is not same as Android Auto and still wont let you connect your Android phone to the console. It might still be able to sync things from your Android phone but the Apple users are pretty much ignored.

Does this move make sense ?

This move does not make sense in consumer point of view. Very likely, consumers would be upset with this and wont buy the cars and GM will end up allowing folks to use CarPlay and Android Auto. A lot of cars such as Polestar, Volvo, Honda Prologue etc. have adopted the strategy where they run Android Automotive OS but still let you use Android Auto and Apple CarPlay if you chose.

Giving consumers extra choice is a good idea. That forces competition to improve experience for the user and everyone wins. Locking people to a Car company’s software experience in my opinion is a terrible idea.

Why Google is a winner ?

Google however seems to be a clear winner here either ways as Google Automotive OS is the only real car os available today for vehicle manufacturers. There are indeed other options such as Blackberry’s RTOS etc. but ultimately, nothing comes closes to Google in terms reliability support and user friendliness.

Apple unfortunately does not have anything equivalent and unlikely to build anything as they do not generally deal with OEM partners.

As AI battle heats up we will also see Google Gemini in cars and we would be very interested in knowing how it plays out.