Car owners with infotainment systems have been used to either Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, so it wasn't exactly well-received when General Motors announced that they would be dropping both for their own system. The automaker is standing by its decision, even stating that third-party systems are unstable.
GM Pushes Its Own Infotainment
As General Motors is slowly going electric, it plans to also use its in-house infotainment system instead of Apple's or Android's. While it has a couple of reasons behind the change, the latest one is the claim that both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto have stability issues.
GM's Head of Product for Infotainment, Tim Babbitt said that these mentioned issues can "manifest themselves as bad connections, poor rendering, slow responses, and dropped connections," as reported by Gizmodo.
As a result, drivers would have to interact with their devices more to fix the issue, which takes their attention away from the road. The problem is that people are still not buying the reasons behind the shift in the system.
Babbitt also expressed that the embedded infotainment strategy is driven by the benefits of having a system that allows for greater integration with the larger GM ecosystem and vehicles, and it eliminates the need to control the vehicle's infotainment over external devices.
The in-house system was first announced about eight months ago, and as expected, it received a lot of backlash from people who have already been used to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The first GM vehicle that will adopt the infotainment system would be the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer.
With the change, people can no longer mirror their phones through their car's display system. They will also have to go through a bit of a hassle as they manually upload an entire database to their new infotainment system.
If you look at the potential earnings for the automaker once the change has been implemented, it makes more sense for the company. The annual revenue from subscriptions could go as high as $25 billion by 2030, with GM Chief Digital Officer, Edward Kummer, saying it's a good opportunity.
GM is Laying Off Over 1,300 Jobs
It seems that future customers are not the only ones being disappointed with the auto giant. The company is laying off more than 1,300 employees in its plants in Michigan. The facility in Lake Orion outside Detroit will see more job cuts with 945 employees being impacted.
The facility in Lansing will see 369 workers out of a job as well. What makes the layoff a bit cruel is that it's happening less than a month after a new labor contract has been certified by the unionized workforce, as reported by Bloomberg.
The wage increase had just been approved by United Auto Workers members. Currently, General Motors has no comments on the workforce reduction. The only other news is that the affected plants will soon stop production.
The Lake Orion plant oversees the production of the Chevy Bolt EV and will cease production before the year ends. The Lansing plant, on the other hand, will stop producing the Cadillac CT4 and CT5 models and the Chevrolet Camaro next month.
