Ford says it's sticking with Apple CarPlay no matter what GM does

Apple CarPlay is a great feature for connecting your iPhone to a vehicle and then having its display projected onto a big in-car screen, but not everyone sees it that way. GM has famously declared that it won't be putting CarPlay support in its future electric vehicles - but Ford says that it has no intention of doing the same thing.

Ford CEO Jim Farley was speaking with The Wall Street Journal when he noted that around 70% of the company's customers in the United States also use iPhones. With that in mind, it's his belief that taking CarPlay away from them would be a bad idea. And he's probably right.

It seems that GM believes that it can reinsert itself between content and the customer, however. It'll be making apps for services like Spotify available via its new Google-based in-car entertainment system and that's how it expects people to listen to music and whatnot. But Ford's CEO has a different approach, saying that carmakers can't make a ton of money from controlling that experience and that it's all about safety and productivity instead.

With that in mind, Farley says that he doesn't want to get involved in the relationship between a driver and their service and content providers. Farley also namechecked Tesla as an example of a company that sees things differently - Tesla famously continues to refuse to add CarPlay support despite having a huge display in all of its cars that would suit such a feature down to the ground.

As for Apple, it promised a big CarPlay upgrade as part of iOS 16 but a year later that's yet to fully materialize.