Ford stands by CarPlay despite General Motors opting to leave

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"70% of Ford car owners are Apple customers"

Apple's next generation of CarPlay
(Image credit: Apple)

Ford CEO Jim Farley has said that Ford Motors will continue to use Apple CarPlay despite other car manufacturers opting to phase out support.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Farlay said, "70 percent of our Ford customers in the U.S. are Apple customers. Why would I go to an Apple customer and say good luck?"

This comes a month after General Motors, the U.S biggest carmaker, decided to stop supporting CarPlay and Android Audio with newly produced electric vehicles, starting with the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer.

General Motors has decided to work alongside Google to create "built-in infotainment systems," which would allow the car manufacturer to control the content within its vehicles.

Farley doesn't believe that there is a reason to control the content of car owners. He told WSJ, "In terms of content, we kind of lost that battle 10 years ago. So like get real with it, because you're not going to make a ton of money on content inside the vehicle. It's gonna be safety, security, partial autonomy, and productivity in our eyes. So that relationship for content is between you, The Wall Street Journal, and the customer. I don't want to get in the middle of that, but Tesla and other companies believe differently. They want to have complete control over the interior experience."

What's next for CarPlay?

With WWDC 2023 right around the corner on June 5, we expect to see new information on the next generation of CarPlay, first introduced last year at WWDC 2022.

Apple said then that the first vehicles to receive the next-gen upgrade would release in late 2023 from manufacturers including Acura, Audi, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Volvo, and others. So we don't have long to wait to see what Apple brings to the table in response to losing the faith of General Motors. 

John-Anthony Disotto
John-Anthony Disotto
How To Editor

John-Anthony Disotto is the How To Editor of iMore, ensuring you can get the most from your Apple products and helping fix things when your technology isn’t behaving itself. Living in Scotland, where he worked for Apple as a technician focused on iOS and iPhone repairs at the Genius Bar, John-Anthony has used the Apple ecosystem for over a decade and prides himself in his ability to complete his Apple Watch activity rings. John-Anthony has previously worked in editorial for collectable TCG websites and graduated from The University of Strathclyde where he won the Scottish Student Journalism Award for Website of the Year as Editor-in-Chief of his university paper. He is also an avid film geek, having previously written film reviews and received the Edinburgh International Film Festival Student Critics award in 2019.  John-Anthony also loves to tinker with other non-Apple technology and enjoys playing around with game emulation and Linux on his Steam Deck.

In his spare time, John-Anthony can be found watching any sport under the sun from football to darts, taking the term “Lego house” far too literally as he runs out of space to display any more plastic bricks, or chilling on the couch with his French Bulldog, Kermit.