• narwhal_breeder@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Lots of CEOs are perceiving a shift from car companies to being “software companies”, its a meme with executives right now - spurred on by the meteoric rise of Tesla’s stock price.

    The lack of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is not a cost cutting exercise - in fact its dirt cheap to have it onboard - most sub $15K brand new vehicles in India and China have it standard.

    Its a vendor lock-in exercise. They are hoping people will get used to Chevy/Tesla/BMW Vehicle systems and stay locked into the brand, just like how Apple keeps people in iOS/Mac land.

    The problem is that people probably spend 1-2 orders of magnitude less time interacting with their vehicles software than with their phones/laptops, in my opinion the hallmark of a good infotainment system is how little you have to use it.

    CEOs and making short sighted business decisions motivated by the growth in completely different industry while ignoring the nuances of the strategy of that particular industry. Name a more iconic duo.

    • tired_hungry@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Right, it’s also an attempt to build a new revenue stream for services where every GM driver spends $X/month to keep their infotainment system running

    • cubs223425@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Its a vendor lock-in exercise.

      Most every company designs their products in this manner. Locked-down app stores? That’s less about “user safety,” and more about making switching between Android or iOS incredibly painful. Netflix and Disney+ and other deal services’ taking content exclusively to their platforms? They want you locked into their service, not the other guy’s. “Free” cloud storage? They want you sticking photos (that probably train their AI) on their servers with automatic backups so you overrun that storage and buy more for them. Xbox Game Pass? Rent games forever and never switch to Playstation because you’ll lose everything (hence spending billions to make Starfield and others exclusives).

      The two biggest driving forces right now are “you’ll own nothing and like it,” and “only we have what you need, so never look elsewhere or else.”