In WWDC 2022, Apple claimed CarPlay is a “must-have” because 79% US buyers only consider cars with CarPlay inside. How is Apple reinventing the driver experience? May the trojan horse make Apple Car irrelevant?
CarPlay “2.0”
In 2014, Apple introduced CarPlay to reinvent the handsfree car kit for iPhone, while other OEMs struggled to make their smartphones connect to cars via Bluetooth or USB protocols. Over the years, Apple added APIs for various iPhone apps in cars: mainly navigation, audio, communication, EV charging, parking, and quick food ordering. This year, Apple takes a step forward adding two more types of apps: fueling & driving task. More impotently, CarPlay is also taking over the dashboard, aka the instrument cluster, sucking up car signals & controlling car accessories. CarPlay “2.0” is one step further to make dump cars smarter with iPhone inside.
To be or not to be
As CarPlay gets much more capable to reinvent driver experience, is Apple Car still needed? It is a very interesting question worth Apple decision-makers scraping their heads for. Let me know if you know more 🙏. My 2 cents:
- If CarPlay can do the most valuable things for Apple — the holes, why create another drill — Apple Car? For example, I bet as cars become smarter, cars can become moving keys & wallets to make the drive-through experience much better. Next year, CarPlay may pay gas for you with new fueling APIs according to Reuters. So, what stops CarPlay to serve more actions around the pump?
- Not yet clear how Apple Car will be commercialization worthy. Whereas, CarPlay is much easy to scale because Apple only needs to define the API & figure out a way to make most car makers implement them. Whereas Apple Car requires much more integration with cars, which takes a lot of time & effort, e.g. as Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess suggested. Furthermore, CarPlay is a reinforcing function of the iPhone’s moat. I’m not saying Apple will kill the Apple Car project. Rather, it takes much more if to graduate a research project.
To play or not to play
Top car brands are still figuring out if to let Apple CarPlay take over all the screens in cars. Not hard to guess that will be carmakers’ nightmare when cars become an accessory of the iPhone. Unfortunately, the trend is pointing in that direction in the past few years. When CarPlay is already in 98% of cars in US & 79% US car buyers consider it’s a must-have for cars, car makers have no choice but to add it to stay in the game. This is how a pull strategy works. So the only valid question for carmakers is how to play better.
There is one reason why the Apple Car project is still research worthy at least as some magic gets much better when hardware, software & service just work better together. Which is something Apple loves to do according to Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Others may try to innovate in the same style too, and carmakers are still in a better position for now. The key will be how to experiment & iterate faster. For those who do not, being disrupted is a matter of when not if because CarPlay is not “skin deep” anymore. Wish the best player win 😉.
Full Disclosure
The opinions stated here are my own, not those of my company. They are mostly extrapolations from public information. I don’t have insider knowledge of those companies, nor a whatever expert.
