GM’s CarPlay removal puts Chevy EV sales to the test
GM’s decision to drop CarPlay is being put to the test, with a nearly identical CarPlay version outselling its Chevy counterpart by an increasingly wide margin.
In 2023, General Motors announced it wouldn’t include CarPlay in its electric vehicles going forward. There was notable public backlash.
Then, in 2025, GM CEO Mary Barra announced that the company would remove Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from all vehicles. Instead, the company would use an in-house infotainment system built on Android Automotive OS.
The company called the decision “Jobsian,” patting itself on the back, and claiming that this was a win for privacy. However, what it really did was make a move to own the digital relationship with its customers.
Now, a year later, sales data has finally offered a glimpse into how that panned out for GM. Matthew Haughey, a UX/UI designer, compared the sales data between two similar vehicles on his blog, A Whole Lotta Nothing.
The first vehicle is the Chevy Blazer EV, a mid-market electric vehicle geared towards the average buyer. The second is Honda’s Prologue EV.
The Prologue EV was made in partnership between Honda and Chevrolet, as Honda didn’t have a particularly robust EV program. As a result, the Prologue EV is essentially a Chevy Blazer EV with a Honda sticker on it.
But there are two crucial differences.
The first is that Honda’s Prologue EV has CarPlay. Chevy’s Blazer EV does not.
This resulted in an unintentional A/B test between the vehicles over the last few years. And the results were interesting.
The 2024 Chevy Blazer shipped without CarPlay. That year, Honda’s Prologue EV outsold the Blazer EV by 43%.
In 2025, the Prologue EV outsold the Blazer EV by 73%. In the first six months of 2026, the Prologue EV has outsold the Blazer EV by more than 165%.
People are buying the Honda Prologue EV more than one and a half times as much as the vehicle it’s based on.
You may be wondering what the second crucial difference is.
Well, the Honda is cheaper, too, which probably doesn’t hurt its sales. Especially in a time where everything seems to be getting more expensive.
A base model Honda 2026 Prologue EV EX boasts an MSRP of $39,900. Its Chevy counterpart, the Chevy 2026 Blazer EV LT, has an MSRP of $44,700.
That’s a difference of about 11%. Not insignificant, and obviously, dealership offers, trade-ins, and brand allegiance can all make that 11% more or less significant to your average buyer. In some quick checks online, street prices between the two were about the same, and generally within a few hundred dollars.
Convenience is king
Haughey makes it clear early on in the article that he’s a fan of CarPlay, saying that he believes it to be a safer hands-free option. The thing is, Haughey isn’t alone.
People like CarPlay, if for no other reason than they really dislike infotainment systems as a whole. A J.D. Power study showed that CarPlay users had notably higher satisfaction levels compared to built-ins, and still ranked above Android Auto.
Again, this may be less about CarPlay and more about infotainment systems. If you’ve ever had to use a vehicle’s built-in infotainment system, it’s a safe bet that you already know that.
Automotive makers are wildly out of touch with what their users want. The answer isn’t innovation or flashy design: it’s simplicity.
Ultimately, the reason people like CarPlay, or even Android Auto, is because it already mirrors something they use daily. It’s an interface that is familiar, no need to navigate winding mazes of submenus.
If you want to play music, it’s a tap or two away. If you want to call someone, you have a familiar voice assistant who can do it quickly and cleanly without you needing to take your eyes off the road.
Removing that option in favor of something unfamiliar, and likely overly complex, isn’t going to win over your customer base. If anything, I’d expect it to do the opposite.
