GM Put CarPlay Back. The Fight Over Who Owns the Dashboard Is Not Over

General Motors put drivers on notice in 2023 that it would be doing away with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of its own software for the dashboard, beginning with the electric vehicles. The company has since backtracked on that plan for its top selling trucks this fall. The 2027 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra debut a new interface that divides the main screen: GM apps to the left and the driver's phone to the right, wireless at no cost. On the October earnings call GM made plain why it can cede half the screen. But the contest for the dashboard is by no means settled. It has merely moved to another part of the car.

What GM actually changed on its trucks

With the new layout a fully interactive map is kept in view with trailering data, fuel stats or media. Wireless CarPlay and Android Auto are standard, each given its own panel. A GM spokesperson has said there is no charge for either. The redesign is also high contrast and on the dark side, and it adds a 3D view of traffic around the vehicle once Super Cruise is on. OnStar provides access to Google Maps and Google Gemini, and there are over the air updates as well as a passenger screen that only the passenger can see while the truck is in motion. In all, the top Sierra Denali Ultimate has more than 60 inches of screens.

There are some limits to the reversal though. GM confirmed that phone projection is not returning to its EVs, which run the company's own Google based system. This change is for the gas trucks, and since the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 is GM's best seller in the U.S., it will be seen in many a driveway.

Michael Wahlstrom, executive director of software product management at GM, was blunt about the rationale.

Drivers kept winning this argument

The pressure was anything but subtle. Ford's chief executive, Jim Farley, has said that about 70 percent of his company's customers are iPhone users, so a driver coming onto a dealer lot is likely to have a phone in hand and an expectation of plugging it into the dash. Dropping it on trucks, whose loyal owners trade in every few years, was a risk GM's dealers would feel first.

Quality data tells the same story. In the J.D. Power 2026 U.S. Initial Quality Study, new vehicle quality improved to 175 problems per 100 vehicles from 192 the year before, but infotainment was the one category to get worse. Connectivity issues with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay were the largest single cause of that decline. Of those owners who cited a distraction problem, 46 percent put it down to the touchscreen or infotainment system.

It is a two way street. Drivers want their phones, but if the link drops, the owner blames the car. A split screen does not resolve that. It just means the carmaker is on the hook for both sides.

The money was never in the map

GM's earnings figures explain why the company could come to terms with Apple and Google. On October 20 GM reported $50.0 billion in third quarter revenue, and its top brass devoted much of the call to the software side of things.

Barra said GM is on pace to approach $7.5 billion in deferred revenue, with trucks a major force behind the uptake of Super Cruise and digital income. CFO Paul Jacobson gave some specifics for the quarter.

Jacobson said the company is on course for more than $3 billion in realized revenue from those services in 2026. That has nothing to do with mapping or music. It is hands free driving and connected services, and the data that flows through the vehicle's own computers. As for CarPlay, it can have the right hand side of the screen because the subscriptions live elsewhere.

Rivian's bet and Apple's bigger reach

Then again, not all carmakers are of that mind. Rivian has never offered CarPlay, and its chief software officer, Wassym Bensaid, argues that phone projection is a takeover rather than a feature.

His bet is that AI assistants built into the car will make the whole debate obsolete, since drivers can just tell the car what they want. GM is hedging along similar lines with Gemini in its trucks, while the phone is kept in its own lane.

Apple is after more than a lane. CarPlay Ultra, which began rolling out in 2025, puts Apple's interface on every screen down to the instrument cluster, complete with gauges styled to each brand. It is the kind of total takeover Bensaid talks about, and only a handful of brands have committed to it. GM has opted for a compromise: a split screen where the phone has its allotted room and the carmaker keeps the gauges, the driving features and the customer account.

A split screen is a computer problem

To have two operating worlds share a single display is as much a hardware issue as a design one. The native side must run maps, cameras, trailering tools, driver assistance graphics and an AI assistant without so much as a stutter, while the projected side is streaming the phone. The way the industry is solving it is to drop the separate boxes for the cluster, head unit, gateway and driver assistance system in the cockpit and put them on one central computer. That is hard on every component inside, memory not least. A Sparknify report this week on the cockpit memory squeeze noted that the older DRAM types found in all ten of the leading 2028 cockpit designs are expected to dry up from 2028.

Taiwan's electronics makers are at the heart of the change. Pegatron, which has built cockpit systems for European and Japanese carmakers for years and is an ECU supplier to the world's top ten automakers, is set to present VEYON at CES 2027. The unified cockpit and sensing platform is built around a scalable central computer for zonal, software defined vehicles and handles infotainment, the gateway and ADAS. Pegatron backs it with reference designs on NXP S32 and i.MX processors, developed in a joint lab with NXP, and with plants in Texas and Mexico. Pegatron will be in the Taiwan Mobility Pavilion, Booth #4577 in LVCC West Hall, from January 6 to 9, and automotive teams can book a meeting with Pegatron before the show.

Will the dashboard end up as shared territory?

What is in store for the near future is more carmakers following GM's example and making a similar compromise. With a split screen a brand can have it both ways: retain its own look, driving features and paid services and at the same time offer buyers the phone apps they will not be parted with. That also lowers the stakes of the old all or nothing debate. If the money sits in hands free driving and connected services, as GM's figures suggest, there is no need to fight customers over the map and the playlist. Expect the new crop of cockpit designs coming out of CES and the 2028 model year to plan for two operating worlds on a single screen from the start, as opposed to tacking the phone on afterwards.

There are genuine concerns, not least distraction. J.D. Power has found infotainment to be the one area getting worse, a fact that ought to give any designer second thoughts about putting in more panels and screens. Put two systems on one display and you have two sets of menus, two voice assistants and twice the chance of a connection going down. Privacy is another matter. By keeping the native side, carmakers collect location and driving data the phone never sees, and that data is what their subscription businesses run on. GM is still dealing with investigations and litigation tied to its former OnStar Smart Driver product, and with a richer native system regulators will have more to ask about.

At bottom the controversy is over control. Rivian holds that projection hands the car's most valuable relationship to Apple and Google, and that a good built in assistant will make the phone unnecessary. Then there is Apple's bet with CarPlay Ultra that drivers would rather see their phone's interface on every screen. GM's split screen is a way of saying each camp is partly right. Some critics will call it a retreat from software ambition, others a half measure that still keeps the full CarPlay experience off the gauges and out of GM's EVs.

Things to keep an eye on: whether GM does end up putting phone projection back in its EVs; how many automakers ship CarPlay Ultra in 2027 instead of a split screen like GM's; whether Super Cruise and OnStar revenue keeps climbing with the phone back on the trucks; whether the next J.D. Power study shows fewer infotainment complaints; and which central computers carmakers choose to handle it all, a choice that will lock in the vehicle platform for years to come.

The phone won back half the screen, and the carmakers are betting that the other half is where the money was all along.

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Questions & Answers

Q1: With GM making CarPlay a free option on its trucks, where is the company's software revenue supposed to come from?

Mostly from hands free driving and connected services. Super Cruise and OnStar Digital brought in more than $800 million in recognized revenue in the third quarter, and GM is counting on its trucks to spur further Super Cruise take up. Next in the works is GM's eyes-off system planned for 2028, which will rely on cameras, radar and lidar.

Q2: Will in-car AI assistants put an end to the CarPlay dispute altogether, as Rivian's head of software would have you believe?

That depends on whether an assistant can get at the apps a driver actually uses. Rivian's Wassym Bensaid reckons built in AI will make projection obsolete, while GM is already putting Gemini in its trucks. The difficult part is having assistants work across apps, the very problem behind Town's $108 million raise for AI assistants that team up.

Q3: How can automotive groups talk with Pegatron about VEYON and central cockpit computers at CES 2027?

Pegatron, the Taiwanese Tier 1 that supplies ECUs to the world's top ten automakers, will be exhibiting VEYON, a unified cockpit and sensing platform that runs the gateway, ADAS and infotainment on one scalable central computer. It will be in the Taiwan Mobility Pavilion, Booth #4577 in LVCC West Hall, from January 6 through 9. Teams can book a meeting with Pegatron at sparknify.com/pegatron-en before the show.