this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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The thing that kills me about this sort of thing is the complete lack of accountability. Working class people at assembly plants, dealers, suppliers will all feel the sting from the drop in sales. There’s some dipshit MBA at GM who made and pushed this decision. Any rational person could see that GM is not is a position to push their own infotainment system. Car play and android auto are beloved. Not having one or both is a deal breaker for new car purchasers. We will never know who this person is. Making such an outrageously bad business decision should result thing this person being blackballed from any kind of business role. But that will never happen.
These sorts of decisions can become more understandable when we incorporate the idea that corporate politics and management structure play a huge role in decision making. If the director of the division charged with building the software is close with the CTO or c-suite, they’re going to give that person the job and just make the numbers fit by adjusting the projections.
This is what’s referred to as the “agency problem” - that the people designated to act as the agents of others (whether you consider the others to be shareholders or employees) instead make the decisions based on the benefit to themselves, that’s a conflict of interest based on level of selection.
And in three years when it turns into a disaster, the director will have moved on to a new role or new company.
Becoming employee-owned can help with this. Union pressure can also help. Nothing stopping the unions from enrolling their members in a stock purchase plan to give them more votes/power/sway.
Too many people make the mistake of projection. No one buys GM vehicles for their infotainment system. Any loss in vehicle sales will likely be offset by the increased income from selling user data.
That's what they're banking on.
They’re pushing a Google developed infotainment system. Android automotive.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/03/31/gm-carplay-support-ev/
so is everyone else
Eh not everyone. Ford Sync is developed with Blackberry currently, but Sync 5 will be with Google. FCA UConnect is all in house. Toyota uses a Linux base with Flutter on top. Tesla is in house. Rivian uses Android.
Tesla is also a Linux base.
yeah, it's definitely not "developed with Blackberry" yes, it Runs QNX, yes Ford bought a good portion of Blackberry and hired even more of their developers when they opened the waterloo office, as does most touch screen infosystems before GAS. There is near 0 active development on SYNC 4, their first GAS system, 2024 Lincoln Nataulis. Uonnect also runs QNX, and Chrysler is actively d developing their GAS Allison. Pretty much everything GM put out since 2012 ran QNX, Tesla is shitty so I don't care. I don't know for certain on the foreign manufactures, but I have no reason to think they don't have at least a GAS based solution still in the works.
No true in the least bit. I've worked in automotive for more than a decade, the vast majority of that time in automotive. GM is getting rid of Cp the same reason Apple got rid of Flash, they spend more time investigating issues causd by software that they can't do anything about and AA/Cp issues are a removed. The project I am on currently has more that double issues with Projection Services than written all other components combined. Nearly half of all vehicle buy backs in North America are because of infotainment issues and like 80% of those are projection issues that are actually caused by the user's phone. Thankfully I don't deal with end users anymore, but have you ever tried to tell am apple fan boy that his iPhone is the cause of the problem...
Fair but that’s just the cost of business. People won’t buy cars without CP/AA unless they’re a cool EV, which GM vehicles aren’t considered.
Na I won't buy a car without Android Auto even if it's a cool ev. GM can diaf though
Galaxy brain solution to problem of car buybacks: make your cars so undesirable that none are sold to be bought back.
It doesn't matter if the iPhone is causing the problem. The issue is in the way GM's software interacts with it. If it's shit software, the working edge cases are a lot smaller, and more people have problems with it. An iPhone isn't exactly some kind of niche device.
Can you give a concrete example where CarPlay has been implemented properly and a bug still exists?
Not having one or the other is a deal breaker? My guy, neither one ever crossed my mind while purchasing a car. Didn't need it growing up, still don't need it now.