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Dear automakers,

Before we get started, we want to ask you to please bear this in mind: we are both enthusiasts and consumer advocates. We want you, the makers of the vehicles we buy, to succeed and build great cars, whether those are affordable and relentlessly reliable small cars, exquisitely luxurious cars, or insanely fast cars – and everything in between. To succeed in this, though, we feel you should consider the thoughts of your customers a little more often.

Sometimes that means not putting special tires on a single model just to get the bragworthy MPG rating, because those tires are expensive for the owner to replace like-for-like. And sometimes it means hearing us when we suggest you use something other than piano black plastic – it looks great on the showroom floor, but our reality is that it quickly becomes a dust and fingerprint magnet that scratches if we don’t use a specialty cleaner and a cloth made from cashmere-infused microfiber.

What we need to talk about today, though, is infotainment. We don’t want to say you’re doing it wrong, but we do feel we can offer some useful suggestions that will make the lives of your customers a little easier – and, in turn, make your product more desirable.

You Can’t Do Infotainment Better Than Apple Or Google

This is a fact of life at this point. You are automakers – specialists in building cars – and while you may have a technology department, Apple and Google are longstanding global tech giants specializing in software (that includes you, Audi). We’re pretty sure almost every person reading this has either a Google or Apple-powered smartphone in hand (you’re probably reading this on that device), and both companies make an interface to blend that computer in your pocket/hand with your vehicles seamlessly. To not have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto as a standard feature moving forward is downright foolish in our books, even if your intentions are sincere (we’re looking at you, GM).

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Vehicles like the new Chevy Blazer EV have a new built-in infotainment system that isn’t compatible with these popular screen-mirroring apps.

We know that some automakers have given this thought and gone down the path of baking Google software into cars – the Honda Prologue, Volvo EX90, and Chevy Suburban, to name a few – but here in the US, more than half the people you’re trying to sell a car to have Apple phones, and most don’t care for getting into the Google ecosystem at all. Still, Google Maps is better than any other navigation system any automaker adds in-house, so it could be called a step forward.

Bite The Bullet And Make Wireless Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Standard

The vast, vast, majority of your customers have either a Google or Apple operating system on a computer in their pocket, and it has Auto or CarPlay ready and waiting to work with your car. Yes, we understand you’re handing a lot of power and information gathering to Apple and Google, and you need a features list to differentiate your trim levels. But – and this is important enough to repeat – Apple and Google do it better, and to rival them is going to take an insane amount of money and years of development.

Add CarBuzz to your Google News feed.

You do cars incredibly well, and they do software incredibly well. It’s time to let the experts do their thing – or you’ll have more smartphone makers wanting to take over your industry. To not have wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto as standard these days is an anti-consumer practice, in our opinion.

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That’s the stick, but here is the carrot.

The number of times we’re told by an automaker that they want to attract a younger demographic, only for us to find wireless CarPlay and Android Auto aren’t standard in base models, is almost comical. Each of those younger people you want to sell a car to is almost guaranteed to have a wireless Auto or CarPlay device in their pocket at your dealership. A device they pay a lot of money for is a central part of their life, and they will feel short-changed if they have to add thousands to a car to work seamlessly with it. We’re sure it’ll be a dealbreaker for some, and yet some of you don’t even have a trim level in your lineups that offers that level of phone connectivity, which is bizarre here in 2024.

We seriously think that if you want to get young people into your entry-level models and inspire some brand loyalty so that they come back down the line for an upgrade, you’ll need to speak their language. Don’t let them read reviews saying wireless Android Auto or Apple CarPlay isn’t available on the only model they can afford, or they have to pay a hefty outlay for it on the model they want. Even worse – don’t let them drive off in a new car to later find themselves unable to use their pocket computer to its fullest in your car. That is going to leave a big, negative feeling toward your brand.

Figure Out Wireless Charging Properly

Building on that is the issue of wireless charging. We’ve driven a few cars with wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay that don’t have a wireless charger. Sure, drivers can use the wireless services, but they still need to plug in a cable to charge their phone, which connects to the system anyway. Conversely, wired Android Auto and Apple CarPlay but with a wireless charger installed is just as absurd. We’re not sure what the point is.

Admittedly, that’s not a very common issue – but this is: You have wireless charging in the features list, the customer is pleased with the convenience being offered, then they drive around the corner, and the phone slides ever so slightly on the charging pad, and a notification shows that the phone isn’t charging anymore. They go around another corner and get another notification saying their phone is now charging. Then they go around another corner… and, well, you get the idea. It must happen a lot because our experience is that there are very few cars with a wireless charger that holds a phone in the right spot to charge for an entire journey, and it’s not a good look. Some supercar makers have nailed it, but do we need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the best wireless charger in the world?

We Love You, But Please Do Better

We understand technology is ever-evolving, and inviting the global corporate monsters that are Apple and Google into the fold can be scary. However, the reality is that both companies build the best and most seamless integrations with the operating systems nearly all of us have in our pockets and use to run our lives. You can still show off your tech for car-specific operations and give that slick, high-tech feel with flashy graphics and super sharp screens – but unless you become a giant tech corporation and are prepared to put the years of cash and development in with the hope you can get your own phone operating system and ecosystem into enough people’s pocket, well, Apple and Google are still your best bet for now.

We’re sure that some will take this letter less seriously, but there’s real data proving how infotainment systems can affect reliability scores; consumer ratings show that cars with systems that aren’t user-friendly score lower.

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We also understand information is valuable, but people are buying a car from you, and they expect their phone to track them and their apps to sell their information, but not their car. A car brand should be trusted by its customers, and its customers need to be respected to earn that trust. But we’ll get to the privacy issue in the not-too-distant future.

For now, we’re asking you to make your customers happy, and make us happy as advocates by putting wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in all of your cars, for starters. Our support and loyalty should have some weight in these matters.

Sincerely,

A devoted motoring journalist