The japanese branded car outselling the domestic branded version in 2025 shouldn't surprise any millennial. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s getting shuttled around in a GM you almost certainly remember a piece of the interior coming off in your hand, or if you're an elder millennial, writing your name with your fingernail on the UV damaged interior of a late 70s/early 80s GM car that's only 3-5 years old. It's hard to shake that kind of shoddy build quality even decades later.
Meanwhile my friends kids are turning 16 and inheriting the honda accord with 250,000 miles I remember getting shuttled to and from soccer practice when I was 12 in the 90s
Just my opinion: The K shaped economy is forcing people to start picking up bottom of the barrel Chevy models like the Cruze or possibly agressive lease deals caused by the same reason? (Also applies to Hyundai, Kia as well as they had agressive lease deals after their Kia Boys incidents)
When comedians are making fun of this brand, I dont think its out of any love for the brand.
American cars then were basically disposable cars - you drive them until about 80,000 miles at which point they are practically falling apart, effective a beater. Bob Lutz was the king of marketing low quality cars as "fun to drive".
Wasn't Lutz responsible for the Dodge Viper, The Ford Explorer, BMW 3 Series, and the Chevy Volt? He seems like he has a lot of wins as well. American cars are a reflection of their culture: Singular pursuit of happiness and freedom yada yada (along those lines).
We got Mustang, Camaro(Lutz had a hand in that), Jeep etc. They all don't compete with Toyota for quality partially because the culture drives the companies and that eventually drives car design and manufacturing. Tourists often rent these cars when visiting the US because they are one representation of the country's soul.
I own an EV6 and I definitely feel like Kia/Hyundia, especially their EVs, is essentially a different company than the one putting out easily hotwired and unreliable cars from just a few years ago.
Telluride/Palisade causing fires because they cheaped out on the current/torque sensors in the drive motors for the seats.
ICCU failures across their current EV platforms. No fix planned last I heard.
It hurts me to point this out because I really, REALLY like where their cars are going. Their new van is EXACTLY what we want, and I'd love an Ioniq 5N.
But those failures are critical and speak to a very deep engineering culture issue.
Will never buy Hyundai again(applies to Kia as well). The company management has caused systematic quality problems. They can hire famous designers to put lipstick on a pig but the soul underneath is still ugly. I don't care how good their warranty is. That only matters if time spent trying to get your car serviced for warranty is worthless to you. Most people only have X cars they will owbn in their lifetime (likely singular for most people). Spend a little more and get a Japanese brand that still has some resemblance of shame.
After watching this I totally understood why so many dumb issues occured:
Kia Boys issues: cheaped out on adding a immobilizer in the US only, Canada had laws in place.
Engine explosions: Poor manufacturing standards left junk in the engine causing oil starvation which caused spun bearings.
Oil consumption: GDI engine design caused excessive burning of oil and deposit layers of gunk if you keep topping up oil. If you don't(and most Hyundai owners expect their car to work like a normal car and not burn up to a qt/1000 mi) then the engine eventually runs dry and explodes(denied warranty as well).
The Kia factory recall key cylinder fix solved the hotwiring issue; and the engines that burn oil last pretty well as long as you keep adding oil. Not saying these countermeasures are solutions, nor that the issues are minor, but they produce a car that can't be easily hotwired and lasts a long time.
Some of these cars (older Kia Souls, for example) become a great value if you implement the countermeasures, and also because they have a lower cost of repairs than some Hondas and Toyotas.
I learned this because I seemed to find cars that had few problems that had nonetheless been given up for salvage. What I found was that if a stolen car is not recovered quickly enough, insurance will pay the (properly-insured) owner an amount close to the replacement value of the car; they may then recover the car later in the same shape it was stolen in other than a broken window, door handle and steering column cover. They then put it up for auction even though it would be better financially to work with a dealer or fleet network to cherry pick these high value cars that only need some simple fixes.
For example, my $2,220 bid won a 2015 Kia Soul+ (49K miles) at auction that a dealer had sold for ~$12,000 some months previous. Bidding competition was light primarily because of the "easily stolen" and "likely to burn oil" issues. But with fees and a few cheap repairs, I got a $12,000 dealer-prepped car for under $4,500. I added remote start, Android Auto and a backup camera, gave it a little ceramic spray coating and got a nice car for my wife.
I also threw in a fake $12 steering wheel lock bar as a deterrent. (It's a real bar, but I don't lock it because the "unable to unlock the cheap lock" risk is to me a more likely hassle than a broken window). I considered adding an immobilizer, but the car was stolen with one installed, and I could always add a switch to the battery under the hood in case better-prepared thieves than the "hoping for an easy hotwire" type show up.
I love digging into questions and seeing where they lead; this all started with a vague sense that dealers made a lot of money on a high volume of used cars via auction houses, and trying to learn how it worked. This also leads me to argue with AI quite a bit, and until recently, made the idea of AI "thinking" kind of laughable due to its many mistakes once you start following the chain of reasoning.
Story I heard, was that Hyundai hired away many high-end QA people from Toyota, and because there's no intellectual property treaties between Korea and Japan, there's really nothing Toyota could do about it.
They apparently even took plans, detailed documentation, endless amounts of information to Hyundai. I'm not sure of the veracity of that information, but it sure explains how Hyundai became incredibly good, literally overnight.
Came here to say this - this is a pretty meh comparison to me, there's too many other factors that are entirely ignored. Price and/or brand alone could easily explain most of not the entire difference.
I'm sure there is some impact to not including it, tbh, but as is this article is a giant nothing burger to me.
I got a 2001 Honda Accord passed down from my dad in 2016 and drove it for three years before I sold it for 2000 bucks, and the reason I sold it was because my dad had a spare 2013 Lexus RX350 I got to drive. I now drive a 2024 Toyota 4Runner and have been absolutely loving the car with least amount of smart tech.
This is a meme predicated on internet fanboyism and sampling bias.
The best selling car in most of the 90s was a Taurus and the Impala and friends made a great showing in the late 90s.
But those cars got chewed up and spit out comparatively so nobody thinks they were any good.
I literally have all the entire spectrum of these vehicles in my driveway right now. I feel very confident saying that anyone peddling such a nuance-free take on things doesn't know shit from fuck. If there was a way I could phrase this to be even more existentially offensive to such people I would.
If you went back in time to 2008 and changed Toyota and Nissan's priorities so that they each picked up the other's buyers everyone with pure air between their ears would be sharing memes about beat to crap Camrys and reliable Altimas (i.e the reverse of today).
However far apart you think any two OEMs are divide that by a big number. Any two competing brands are way more neck and neck than the fanboys comment section mmakes it out to be.
Also, despite the Honda being a rebadged Chevy, the average buyer may not be aware and may be drawn to the Honda brand's reputation for reliability and quality.
I call this "brand mining." Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on. The brand is now worthless (you've "mined" it out) but hey look at all the money you made.
Basically every 90s brand has had this happen. Typically involves PE.
> Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on
Similarly how every former reputable consumer electronic brand from 'The West' that sells consumer stuff today like Philips, GE, Thompson, Blaupunkt, Gigaset, etc is now just a brand label for a Chinese consortium that's fully designed and made in China with zero employees in their original western roots.
Goodwill liquidation is what I’ve been calling it.
I think we might be coloring it as we’d like it to be, though. Only rarely does it end in brand death, more often they just get a bad reputation then keep going, sometimes not even less profitably. I think the intent might be more along the lines of recalibrating to a lower expectation of consumer discernment or rationality.
I don't think thats what happened in this case. They explained it in the article. Honda was way behind in developing EVs, and as a "prologue" to their eventual EV strategy, they released a car called the Honda Prologue, which they licensed GM EV technology for. (fun fact, after Trump and the EV numbers that didn't materialize in the US, I think Honda has either delayed or scrapped a lot of their EV plans, which is unfortunate. )
Havent bought a Craftsman tool in about that many years. I buy Harbor Freight tools now, if I'm going to buy a cheap made-in-China tool at least I'll buy it from a place that makes no secret about it and charges about half the price.
Messrs. Sears and Roebuck are rolling in their graves.
It still has a pretty big delta, so much so SBD bought the name for nearly a billion dollars.
I think a lot of people realize it's not the same old company, but apparently enough don't such that it's still profitable to sell their stuff at a premium.
Kinda like how Toyota just ignored turbos and pure EVs and instead sold cars to rich people (because rich people don't spew clapped out examples onto the used market) and now they're making money hand over fist on their reputation despite not having a competitive EV offering or being able to keep a turbo engine together but they'll still make money hand over fist for a decade because that's how long it'll take for consumers who've been astro-turfe'd at for years to realize that not everything is doctor owned, dealer serviced 2004 Solara.
This is what I came to the comments for. The post didn't mention price a single time. It's not that expensive to retrofit CarPlay into any vehicle, and a 166% delta is hard to explain away with a single feature that can be retrofitted later.
It's practically impossible to retrofit CarPlay into most newer vehicles where the infotainment system is tightly integrated with the rest of the vehicle.
Buying a car is scary enough for most people, figuring out how to trust some unaffiliated rando to do work on the most expensive or second most expensive thing they own is truly intimidating.
I went car shopping with CarPlay as a must have, and I ended up foregoing that requirement as soon as I drove a Tesla.
If the software is as good as Tesla's, I have no need for CarPlay. Having to buy from a dealership and spend a few hours there, having to pay monthly for software features like maps/remote start/phone key, and having to deal with ICE stuff ended up being far bigger issues.
Yeah this is no good. If one says Honda and one says Chevy, then it's not apples to apples. It doesn't matter if it's the same car, the vast majority of people don't know that. Comparing sales numbers is meaningless.
I wouldn’t feel embarrassed by association in a Chevy, but I definitely don’t trust American manufacturers to be high value (quality/price) and reliable.
They always seem ten years behind with uninspiring designs and horrible MPG.
Calling Chevrolet an American manufacturer is already a stretch if you consider that outside of the very specific US market/bubble/niche Chevrolet is mostly selling chinese made cars globally.
It’s a partial driver, perhaps even meaningful in some way, but this is hardly an A/B test. Suffice to say lack of CarPlay is costing them in some way but model refreshes, steep price discounts, and other economical considerations are going to win out. Sure, 79% of some sample of car buyers said they wouldn’t buy a car without carplay but putting carplay in an otherwise crappy car isn’t going to magically make people buy that instead. There’s a lot of reasons Chevy is struggling. Blowing their own foot off with this decision can’t have been good for business but it’s certainly been hilarious for the quotes their execs have had to say in public with straight faces so they don’t get whacked for not following the party line. At some point I’m sure there will be a reorg where the opposite will become true.
I heard that the reason the major car companies started to sour on CarPlay was because Apple started to get increasingly needy with their data collection requirements (as of CarPlay Ultra) and the car companies weren't comfortable (or legally able) to give Apple that much canbus/telemetry data. And I guess Apple was pushing CarPlay Ultra as the only option without classic less-data-snoopy CarPlay?
Heh, the version of this I heard from a Porsche tech was that the reason Porsche's supported Carplay (added in 2017 models) but NOT Android Auto for so long (added in 2022 models) was because Apple wasn't snoopy and Google was.
I find that hard to believe. My experience with Apple (as a developer), is that they are absolutely brutal about data collection, and being an Apple developer, means toeing a lot of lines, wrt privacy-related stuff.
It seems that every time I submit an update or new app, it gets rejected, because Apple just tightened the bolts a bit further.
Yes, it’s the same story on android. Apps are sandboxed and security is a top priority… unless you’re Google, then you get elevated privileges across the board, no permission dialogs, and sandbox escapes with no questions asked.
It’s literally not an A/B test. It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.
GM tried for years building their own infotainment system internally and never made one anyone liked until they just integrated android auto/car play finally. It was an admission of defeat in doing so, but made everyone happy. When they announced pulling this back, I laughed, thinking "trying to put the rabbit back in the bag, eh?"
Would I buy a car without android auto as an android user? No, end of story. GM can die like other stupid heavy-handed vendors, but sadly they are too big to fail, and will drag down the nation with them.
“ The car industry accidentally did something I've always wanted to see, which was to release basically the same car under two brands and models, with one major consumer-facing difference. ”
More like ABCD/EFGH testing. So many unaccounted variables, from brand through, marketing, deals and even physical dealerships.
Everything else equal, I can believe having CarPlay adds value for some people. Things weren't equal so possibly not as much as the other variables in the room.
As far as I can tell it's not AI slop, but I wish this author had asked one LLM if his example is A/B testing, because the AI would've told him no, and we wouldn't have to have read this garbage.
Don't say that too loudly.. People will think you're encouraging use of AI in researching and writing articles, which is apparently a mortal sin. Certain people here would rather read a nonsense post by a human than a logical post by an AI
I would rather see a world wide standard for infotainment devices so that the car makers would deliver you a car with a specific hw interface and you could buy a device that would fit any car that supports the standard. This is why we have the EU. We could just decide to do this and everyone that wants to sell us cars would probably just implement this.
I'd be worried the standard wouldn't include my favourite carplay feature, where it plays the same song from my phone on startup no matter how I configure it.
If you decuple the vehicle features from infotainment you get infinite possibilities. You can get anything you want within the HW constraints of the car .. so you could probably get a device to do whatever you want and even multiple vendors supporting CarPlay.
Even though the Prologue is based on the Blazer platform, most people don't consider that, with the brand carrying more weight.
Secondly, EV purchasers have different criteria, like range. After all, the best selling EV brand and model in America has never had CarPlay but has the trust of buyers (and would probably have more if the founder wasn't so polarizing).
I would tell the dealer to knock $2k off the price so I can install a car play unit. If I am paying 30-50k on a vehicle having it work with my phone shouldn’t be optional.
It would be better if we could see the other variables explicitly listed i.e. are they the same price (or same price for a comparable spec), what do the reviews for both vehicles look like, etc.
I test drove a new Subaru Forester a little while ago. I currently drive the 2015 version where the most advanced feature is the visual crash prevention system that brakes for you and a bluetooth sync that barely works
and yet I hated the new Subaru so much. I hated the fact that the entire console is now one giant touchscreen, requiring you to look away from the road in order to operate. I hated the huge bulky 'Starlink' hardware hidden in the roof. I hated the fact that the MPG was barely better even with ten years worth of supposed engineering advancement and the Forester was now wider and taller which sucks for being a city car
the last 15 years of 'innovation' in cars was a total mistake. call me a luddite but I really don't want my car to be able to be tracked by any satellite at any time. so it's either used cars for me from now or something like the Slate truck with the barest dashboard config (or a kei truck once it's legal in my state)
The Forester still has the awful infotainment system with the vertical screen, first introduced on the 2020 Outback. I actually like the vertical aspect ratio, and the screen is pretty bright and high resolution, but the underlying software is disastrous. It was slow and buggy and felt outdated when it was introduced 6 years ago!
For what it’s worth, the new 2026 Outback has an excellent new infotainment system and tons of physical controls for car settings. But apparently everyone hates it for the external redesign (I think it looks fine). Hopefully that interior will roll out to the rest of the models too.
They are not going back to physical controls out of the goodness of their hearts. Physical controls are a requirement to get a European 5-star safety rating, and possibly in China as well.
Also everyone started screaming when Tesla was starting to rumor to start using the cabin cameras to recognize people when Subaru has a totally creepy facial recognition system on their current vehicles to do seating presets and the like. It was bad enough they use the cameras to imply I'm distracted or sleepy while I'm driving and have the things throw twenty million chimes and warnings, but actual driver ID is just terrible.
> Seat position profiles is a great feature, making it automatic is completely unnecessary.
Driving a Model 3, I disagree - having seats and basically everything else adjust as soon as you open the door is the biggest boon I can imagine. I totally wish the rearview mirror would adjust as well…
This is totally absurd because people don’t buy phone based on car integration they have. They buy car integration that works with their phone. And numbers reflect iPhone vs Android market share.
I have a 2023 Yukon that i like very much but i'm not going to ever replace it by another Yukon without carplay. By the time its not drivable anymore the kids won't need strollers and I'll likely pick a smaller car with car play.
They could have had me trading it in this or next year for the newer model (that does have some nicer things i'd like to have, like the larger infotainment screen) but the lack of carplay and the shitty native google maps and spotify products that come installed on it are are not acceptable for a car that sells for 90K USD.
GM decided it had all the cards, looks like they don't.
I won’t claim the A/B test is a good one, but I can say I canceled my blazer EV reservation when they announced it wouldn’t support carplay or android auto.
A lot of skepticism here, but, anecdotally, we bought a Prologue without even test driving a Blazer.
I knew they were essentially the same car and that maintenance-wise it probably made more sense to get the Blazer from a GM dealer - but it lacked CarPlay so we didn’t consider it.
I would say simpler tech would be good. Just because you can put a super powerful chip in the car doesn't mean you should. It is wasteful overkill and breeds complicated software solutions and problems for things hardware already solved over a decade or more ago.
That’s where CarPlay comes in, the tech doesn’t matter. Your phone has good navigation right? Good messages, good music. So just use that. Then it doesn’t really matter how awful the car infotainment is.
Even “good” infotainment (tesla) is inferior to CarPlay in many ways, because it’s not your phone. You don’t get your maps app with everything magically synced and working.
There is very little rational about car buying or branding.
In the eye of many consumers a car with 3 wheels and 1 with 4 from the same brand will have more in common than 2 identical cars with different badges.
I hate to say this, but (for every person I've asked) this was a simple "no-brainer". There must have been internal 'political' reasons to avoid Apple. Maybe the managemant hated Tim Cook?? I dunno.
Which don't exist. BMW famously tried to blame Apple for trying to charge buyers an annual fee for Carplay and Apple _publicly_ called their shit out. They confirmed they don't charge anything - neither one-off nor recurring. Manufacturers may incur certification costs, there's nothing after that.
Just did a couple quick searches and nothing's changed since then AFAIK
According to their MFi page, there may be a royalty, as Apple says that information is covered by NDA. (including the authentication coprocessors required for CarPlay)
"What is the royalty associated with MFi accessories?
This information is only available under NDA. You will be able to review this information once your application for the MFi License has been approved."
I still absolutely don't want CarPlay or Android Auto to become the default. Should they become the arbiters of what I can and cannot do in my car? Should I be beholden them for features, or which apps they allow in their walled garden?
Today I can vote with my money, choosing a car that fits me. If they all become the same, it's a monopoly.
Weird argument. "Just don't use <any big tech necessary to function in society>" doesn't really hold.
You can choose now, but what when you must use one of those, because no one cares about the built in system anymore, so it's neglected or even just covering the basics?
I loath my smart car, but my truck was amenable to bieng hardware hacked, so I modified a 1/4" headset harness and built a
phone shelf where the head unit was, and used a power amp with just an impidence matching input gain and a mic and answer button, and could be modified to work with essentialy any amplifier and speakers ever made. Zero extra sofware, tunes, calls.
Back to my car, which is an abomination of
choices made by people with a level of certitude into human preferance that I did not know existed, or is that what happens when engineering descisions are made by mutual apreciation clubs?
It does not matter, my faith in technology has been destroyed, and as someone who can, will be building cars to suit myself.
Picking bodys for realy comfy interiors and then grafting in an awd electric power train.
I would just buy something, but touch screens for basic standard functions is something I find revolting, If there is a menue, that means one of two things, I am working on a computer or someone is going to bring me something yummy.
TFA just shows the author is addicted to his phone and nothing else. Many comments here are already explaining why the comparison is not valid.
As a consumer in the market for cars (we've got four at home), I'm basically interested in how pleasant/agreeable the car is to drive and how secure it is.
I give exactly jack fucking zero shit if it's got Android Auto or Apple Car Play or both or neither.
I drive way, way, way more than most on this forum. For example I've been both to Stockholm and Ibiza by car [involving a part with the on a boat in both cases]). And I regularly do long distances (longest was 8am to 10pm non-stop except bio-break and gasoline). I'll cross Germany (I don't live in Germany) in one-go to go to Poland. Stuff like that. Also I spent months a year in a rural area, so car is the only option (closest village to find croissants and baguettes is a 10 minutes drive).
And yet I don't care a yota about "phone connectivity" in my car.
The rare cases where I really need my phone I can... just use my phone?
Like what the heck is hard about that?
BTW my main car run QNX for its infotainment/phone system and phonecalls and reading message over Bluetooth works just fine. And it wouldn't be working, it'd be totally fine too.
TFA and people agreeing with it says more about people's incestuous relation with their phones than about what the "best option" (mentioned in TFA) is.
Saying you're not going put in a very popular feature (CarPlay) that probably doesn't cost that much to put in is one of the biggest self owns I can think of, especially when saying "we're going to do a better job." Has any OEM done a decent job with navigation, ever, perhaps aside from Tesla.
CarPlay is sort of like Apple Pay / Tap to Pay, even Home Depot, Kroger, and now Walmart capitulated. I hope there's fire to the smoke that Tesla will add Carplay, and I suspect if they do, Rivian won't be far behind.
My EQS has carplay and android auto, and I am a staunch google maps user. That said, I use the MBUX mapping most of the time. It does a good job -- and not just long drives where I need the EV charger logic -- day to day, it's plenty fine.
Consumers are just easily impressed with car infotainment at this point. If the screen takes less than 1s to respond to input and doesn’t drop 30 frames on every animation, they consider it “good”.
Tesla's system is well-integrated to the car and chargers, but its navigation is terrible. It seems to have marked a street near my home as impassible, so it takes an absurd roundabout route. This problem does not exist on Apple or Google Maps.
The japanese branded car outselling the domestic branded version in 2025 shouldn't surprise any millennial. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s getting shuttled around in a GM you almost certainly remember a piece of the interior coming off in your hand, or if you're an elder millennial, writing your name with your fingernail on the UV damaged interior of a late 70s/early 80s GM car that's only 3-5 years old. It's hard to shake that kind of shoddy build quality even decades later.
Meanwhile my friends kids are turning 16 and inheriting the honda accord with 250,000 miles I remember getting shuttled to and from soccer practice when I was 12 in the 90s
Yes, but the Honda to Chevy ratio is accelerating in just 2 years, which suggests something more than a preference for Japanese brands is at play.
Just my opinion: The K shaped economy is forcing people to start picking up bottom of the barrel Chevy models like the Cruze or possibly agressive lease deals caused by the same reason? (Also applies to Hyundai, Kia as well as they had agressive lease deals after their Kia Boys incidents)
When comedians are making fun of this brand, I dont think its out of any love for the brand.
[1]: https://youtu.be/U33vwS1WcI8?t=86
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTfS0nAgfuE
American cars then were basically disposable cars - you drive them until about 80,000 miles at which point they are practically falling apart, effective a beater. Bob Lutz was the king of marketing low quality cars as "fun to drive".
Wasn't Lutz responsible for the Dodge Viper, The Ford Explorer, BMW 3 Series, and the Chevy Volt? He seems like he has a lot of wins as well. American cars are a reflection of their culture: Singular pursuit of happiness and freedom yada yada (along those lines).
We got Mustang, Camaro(Lutz had a hand in that), Jeep etc. They all don't compete with Toyota for quality partially because the culture drives the companies and that eventually drives car design and manufacturing. Tourists often rent these cars when visiting the US because they are one representation of the country's soul.
I remember my Kia being a joke and held together by duct tape after 2 years while 25 years later one of the hottest brands.
I own an EV6 and I definitely feel like Kia/Hyundia, especially their EVs, is essentially a different company than the one putting out easily hotwired and unreliable cars from just a few years ago.
As a counterpoint:
Telluride/Palisade causing fires because they cheaped out on the current/torque sensors in the drive motors for the seats.
ICCU failures across their current EV platforms. No fix planned last I heard.
It hurts me to point this out because I really, REALLY like where their cars are going. Their new van is EXACTLY what we want, and I'd love an Ioniq 5N.
But those failures are critical and speak to a very deep engineering culture issue.
Will never buy Hyundai again(applies to Kia as well). The company management has caused systematic quality problems. They can hire famous designers to put lipstick on a pig but the soul underneath is still ugly. I don't care how good their warranty is. That only matters if time spent trying to get your car serviced for warranty is worthless to you. Most people only have X cars they will owbn in their lifetime (likely singular for most people). Spend a little more and get a Japanese brand that still has some resemblance of shame.
This video explains why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_epwf-IBgU
After watching this I totally understood why so many dumb issues occured:
Kia Boys issues: cheaped out on adding a immobilizer in the US only, Canada had laws in place.
Engine explosions: Poor manufacturing standards left junk in the engine causing oil starvation which caused spun bearings.
Oil consumption: GDI engine design caused excessive burning of oil and deposit layers of gunk if you keep topping up oil. If you don't(and most Hyundai owners expect their car to work like a normal car and not burn up to a qt/1000 mi) then the engine eventually runs dry and explodes(denied warranty as well).
They extended a 10 year warranty on the iccu. Even though there is no fix that’s probably good enough
The Kia factory recall key cylinder fix solved the hotwiring issue; and the engines that burn oil last pretty well as long as you keep adding oil. Not saying these countermeasures are solutions, nor that the issues are minor, but they produce a car that can't be easily hotwired and lasts a long time.
Some of these cars (older Kia Souls, for example) become a great value if you implement the countermeasures, and also because they have a lower cost of repairs than some Hondas and Toyotas.
I learned this because I seemed to find cars that had few problems that had nonetheless been given up for salvage. What I found was that if a stolen car is not recovered quickly enough, insurance will pay the (properly-insured) owner an amount close to the replacement value of the car; they may then recover the car later in the same shape it was stolen in other than a broken window, door handle and steering column cover. They then put it up for auction even though it would be better financially to work with a dealer or fleet network to cherry pick these high value cars that only need some simple fixes.
For example, my $2,220 bid won a 2015 Kia Soul+ (49K miles) at auction that a dealer had sold for ~$12,000 some months previous. Bidding competition was light primarily because of the "easily stolen" and "likely to burn oil" issues. But with fees and a few cheap repairs, I got a $12,000 dealer-prepped car for under $4,500. I added remote start, Android Auto and a backup camera, gave it a little ceramic spray coating and got a nice car for my wife.
I also threw in a fake $12 steering wheel lock bar as a deterrent. (It's a real bar, but I don't lock it because the "unable to unlock the cheap lock" risk is to me a more likely hassle than a broken window). I considered adding an immobilizer, but the car was stolen with one installed, and I could always add a switch to the battery under the hood in case better-prepared thieves than the "hoping for an easy hotwire" type show up.
I love digging into questions and seeing where they lead; this all started with a vague sense that dealers made a lot of money on a high volume of used cars via auction houses, and trying to learn how it worked. This also leads me to argue with AI quite a bit, and until recently, made the idea of AI "thinking" kind of laughable due to its many mistakes once you start following the chain of reasoning.
Story I heard, was that Hyundai hired away many high-end QA people from Toyota, and because there's no intellectual property treaties between Korea and Japan, there's really nothing Toyota could do about it.
They apparently even took plans, detailed documentation, endless amounts of information to Hyundai. I'm not sure of the veracity of that information, but it sure explains how Hyundai became incredibly good, literally overnight.
They used to be a joke.
I dunno, my mechanic says he's recently had late-model Kias and Hyundais come into his shop needing full engine rebuilds after like 50k miles.
Came here to say this - this is a pretty meh comparison to me, there's too many other factors that are entirely ignored. Price and/or brand alone could easily explain most of not the entire difference.
I'm sure there is some impact to not including it, tbh, but as is this article is a giant nothing burger to me.
I got a 2001 Honda Accord passed down from my dad in 2016 and drove it for three years before I sold it for 2000 bucks, and the reason I sold it was because my dad had a spare 2013 Lexus RX350 I got to drive. I now drive a 2024 Toyota 4Runner and have been absolutely loving the car with least amount of smart tech.
This is a meme predicated on internet fanboyism and sampling bias.
The best selling car in most of the 90s was a Taurus and the Impala and friends made a great showing in the late 90s.
But those cars got chewed up and spit out comparatively so nobody thinks they were any good.
I literally have all the entire spectrum of these vehicles in my driveway right now. I feel very confident saying that anyone peddling such a nuance-free take on things doesn't know shit from fuck. If there was a way I could phrase this to be even more existentially offensive to such people I would.
If you went back in time to 2008 and changed Toyota and Nissan's priorities so that they each picked up the other's buyers everyone with pure air between their ears would be sharing memes about beat to crap Camrys and reliable Altimas (i.e the reverse of today).
However far apart you think any two OEMs are divide that by a big number. Any two competing brands are way more neck and neck than the fanboys comment section mmakes it out to be.
This is an invalid comparison. There were enormous discounts on the Prologue, up to $20,000 off.
https://electrek.co/2025/09/23/honda-offering-over-20000-off...
Also, despite the Honda being a rebadged Chevy, the average buyer may not be aware and may be drawn to the Honda brand's reputation for reliability and quality.
I call this "brand mining." Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on. The brand is now worthless (you've "mined" it out) but hey look at all the money you made.
Basically every 90s brand has had this happen. Typically involves PE.
> Take a brand previously known for quality, start selling shite, and then you get to pocket the delta until the market catches on
Similarly how every former reputable consumer electronic brand from 'The West' that sells consumer stuff today like Philips, GE, Thompson, Blaupunkt, Gigaset, etc is now just a brand label for a Chinese consortium that's fully designed and made in China with zero employees in their original western roots.
Goodwill liquidation is what I’ve been calling it.
I think we might be coloring it as we’d like it to be, though. Only rarely does it end in brand death, more often they just get a bad reputation then keep going, sometimes not even less profitably. I think the intent might be more along the lines of recalibrating to a lower expectation of consumer discernment or rationality.
I don't think thats what happened in this case. They explained it in the article. Honda was way behind in developing EVs, and as a "prologue" to their eventual EV strategy, they released a car called the Honda Prologue, which they licensed GM EV technology for. (fun fact, after Trump and the EV numbers that didn't materialize in the US, I think Honda has either delayed or scrapped a lot of their EV plans, which is unfortunate. )
It's actually remarkable how long that takes. Craftsman is still chugging along 30 years later in name only.
Havent bought a Craftsman tool in about that many years. I buy Harbor Freight tools now, if I'm going to buy a cheap made-in-China tool at least I'll buy it from a place that makes no secret about it and charges about half the price.
Messrs. Sears and Roebuck are rolling in their graves.
But the brand no longer commands the massive delta, everyone knows that current craftsman is nothing like old craftsman.
It still has a pretty big delta, so much so SBD bought the name for nearly a billion dollars.
I think a lot of people realize it's not the same old company, but apparently enough don't such that it's still profitable to sell their stuff at a premium.
Reputation lag. Or just exploiting trust
Kinda like how Toyota just ignored turbos and pure EVs and instead sold cars to rich people (because rich people don't spew clapped out examples onto the used market) and now they're making money hand over fist on their reputation despite not having a competitive EV offering or being able to keep a turbo engine together but they'll still make money hand over fist for a decade because that's how long it'll take for consumers who've been astro-turfe'd at for years to realize that not everything is doctor owned, dealer serviced 2004 Solara.
Oh wait was I not supposed to say that out loud?
This is what I came to the comments for. The post didn't mention price a single time. It's not that expensive to retrofit CarPlay into any vehicle, and a 166% delta is hard to explain away with a single feature that can be retrofitted later.
It's practically impossible to retrofit CarPlay into most newer vehicles where the infotainment system is tightly integrated with the rest of the vehicle.
It's a $200 kit: https://evplay.io/shop/ev-play-lite-gm
Buying a car is scary enough for most people, figuring out how to trust some unaffiliated rando to do work on the most expensive or second most expensive thing they own is truly intimidating.
79% of car buyers explicitly said they won't buy a car without carplay: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/22/apple-carplay-could-be-a-tro...
So the numbers check out and there's no need for you to find the blame elsewhere.
Doesn't excuse the article from making such a comparison without mentioning price.
Ask that 79% of car buyers if they would forego carplay for a $10-20k discount.
I would not buy a car without carplay, I would also not pay $20k to have carplay if that were my only option.
It's not the consumers only option though.
I can believe a lot of people said that. But I'm not sure that means it's a true prediction of consumer behavior.
I went car shopping with CarPlay as a must have, and I ended up foregoing that requirement as soon as I drove a Tesla.
If the software is as good as Tesla's, I have no need for CarPlay. Having to buy from a dealership and spend a few hours there, having to pay monthly for software features like maps/remote start/phone key, and having to deal with ICE stuff ended up being far bigger issues.
Joe Blow doesn't want to have to 'retrofit', they want to plug in and go.
Also, warranty and services differences.
Yeah this is no good. If one says Honda and one says Chevy, then it's not apples to apples. It doesn't matter if it's the same car, the vast majority of people don't know that. Comparing sales numbers is meaningless.
Agreed. There is essentially nothing that could convince me to buy a Chevy over a Toyota or Honda. CarPlay be damned: I can install one after market.
There is not a single vehicle produced by Ford, GMC, or Chevy that I'm interested in owning.
We need a control group where the only difference is the Honda badge.
I know a number of people who’d buy a Honda without a second thought but wouldn’t be caught dead in a Chevy.
I wouldn’t feel embarrassed by association in a Chevy, but I definitely don’t trust American manufacturers to be high value (quality/price) and reliable.
They always seem ten years behind with uninspiring designs and horrible MPG.
Calling Chevrolet an American manufacturer is already a stretch if you consider that outside of the very specific US market/bubble/niche Chevrolet is mostly selling chinese made cars globally.
Were the two cars priced the same? Is public image of both brands the same? I'm not sure this was a good A/B test.
It’s a partial driver, perhaps even meaningful in some way, but this is hardly an A/B test. Suffice to say lack of CarPlay is costing them in some way but model refreshes, steep price discounts, and other economical considerations are going to win out. Sure, 79% of some sample of car buyers said they wouldn’t buy a car without carplay but putting carplay in an otherwise crappy car isn’t going to magically make people buy that instead. There’s a lot of reasons Chevy is struggling. Blowing their own foot off with this decision can’t have been good for business but it’s certainly been hilarious for the quotes their execs have had to say in public with straight faces so they don’t get whacked for not following the party line. At some point I’m sure there will be a reorg where the opposite will become true.
I heard that the reason the major car companies started to sour on CarPlay was because Apple started to get increasingly needy with their data collection requirements (as of CarPlay Ultra) and the car companies weren't comfortable (or legally able) to give Apple that much canbus/telemetry data. And I guess Apple was pushing CarPlay Ultra as the only option without classic less-data-snoopy CarPlay?
Heh, the version of this I heard from a Porsche tech was that the reason Porsche's supported Carplay (added in 2017 models) but NOT Android Auto for so long (added in 2022 models) was because Apple wasn't snoopy and Google was.
I find that hard to believe. My experience with Apple (as a developer), is that they are absolutely brutal about data collection, and being an Apple developer, means toeing a lot of lines, wrt privacy-related stuff.
It seems that every time I submit an update or new app, it gets rejected, because Apple just tightened the bolts a bit further.
You are assuming Apple is applying the same rigor to themselves as app developers. They are not.
Yes, it’s the same story on android. Apps are sandboxed and security is a top priority… unless you’re Google, then you get elevated privileges across the board, no permission dialogs, and sandbox escapes with no questions asked.
Do you work at Apple, or collaborate with them on a professional basis like the car manufacturers do?
The classic "oh but Apple's whitepapers say this" shtick is a non-contribution to the discussion.
CarPlay Ultra adds information such as speed, fuel/charge level, climate control, and tire pressure. Hard to imagine legal issues around that.
Although I could imagine the car manufacturers wanting to get revenue from refueling ads.
That explanation doesn't pass a sniff test if you even try to Google anything about car manufacturer data collection practices.
This is garbage.
It’s literally not an A/B test. It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.
GM tried for years building their own infotainment system internally and never made one anyone liked until they just integrated android auto/car play finally. It was an admission of defeat in doing so, but made everyone happy. When they announced pulling this back, I laughed, thinking "trying to put the rabbit back in the bag, eh?"
Would I buy a car without android auto as an android user? No, end of story. GM can die like other stupid heavy-handed vendors, but sadly they are too big to fail, and will drag down the nation with them.
Where's the data that shows that this is about carplay and not just because Honda has a better reputation or other reasons unrelated to carplay?
If I didn't know they were the same car I'd probably take Honda without carplay over a Chevrolet with it.
“ The car industry accidentally did something I've always wanted to see, which was to release basically the same car under two brands and models, with one major consumer-facing difference. ”
They do this all the time.
More like ABCD/EFGH testing. So many unaccounted variables, from brand through, marketing, deals and even physical dealerships.
Everything else equal, I can believe having CarPlay adds value for some people. Things weren't equal so possibly not as much as the other variables in the room.
That's... not what an ab test is.
They are the same platform, but of course consumers don't buy platforms, they buy brands.
As far as I can tell it's not AI slop, but I wish this author had asked one LLM if his example is A/B testing, because the AI would've told him no, and we wouldn't have to have read this garbage.
Exactly.
Everyone doesn’t know statistics but, it is obvious when someone really doesn’t know.
Don't say that too loudly.. People will think you're encouraging use of AI in researching and writing articles, which is apparently a mortal sin. Certain people here would rather read a nonsense post by a human than a logical post by an AI
I would rather see a world wide standard for infotainment devices so that the car makers would deliver you a car with a specific hw interface and you could buy a device that would fit any car that supports the standard. This is why we have the EU. We could just decide to do this and everyone that wants to sell us cars would probably just implement this.
I'd be worried the standard wouldn't include my favourite carplay feature, where it plays the same song from my phone on startup no matter how I configure it.
If you decuple the vehicle features from infotainment you get infinite possibilities. You can get anything you want within the HW constraints of the car .. so you could probably get a device to do whatever you want and even multiple vendors supporting CarPlay.
Even though the Prologue is based on the Blazer platform, most people don't consider that, with the brand carrying more weight.
Secondly, EV purchasers have different criteria, like range. After all, the best selling EV brand and model in America has never had CarPlay but has the trust of buyers (and would probably have more if the founder wasn't so polarizing).
> if the founder wasn't so polarizing
I wanted to nitpick on calling Elon Musk a founder, as Tesla was originally founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in July 2003.
But as I did my research, I learnt, that he has now legally the status of a co-founder after a settlement. It is up to the reader to think about that.
So to keep my nitpick, I can only say the quoted sentence is missing a "co-" prefix. :p
yeah he has done it with every purchase
I would tell the dealer to knock $2k off the price so I can install a car play unit. If I am paying 30-50k on a vehicle having it work with my phone shouldn’t be optional.
It would be better if we could see the other variables explicitly listed i.e. are they the same price (or same price for a comparable spec), what do the reviews for both vehicles look like, etc.
And are the buyers told whether there is carplay. Because you generally assume a car can't not include it, until you step in and realize.
I test drove a new Subaru Forester a little while ago. I currently drive the 2015 version where the most advanced feature is the visual crash prevention system that brakes for you and a bluetooth sync that barely works
and yet I hated the new Subaru so much. I hated the fact that the entire console is now one giant touchscreen, requiring you to look away from the road in order to operate. I hated the huge bulky 'Starlink' hardware hidden in the roof. I hated the fact that the MPG was barely better even with ten years worth of supposed engineering advancement and the Forester was now wider and taller which sucks for being a city car
the last 15 years of 'innovation' in cars was a total mistake. call me a luddite but I really don't want my car to be able to be tracked by any satellite at any time. so it's either used cars for me from now or something like the Slate truck with the barest dashboard config (or a kei truck once it's legal in my state)
The Forester still has the awful infotainment system with the vertical screen, first introduced on the 2020 Outback. I actually like the vertical aspect ratio, and the screen is pretty bright and high resolution, but the underlying software is disastrous. It was slow and buggy and felt outdated when it was introduced 6 years ago!
For what it’s worth, the new 2026 Outback has an excellent new infotainment system and tons of physical controls for car settings. But apparently everyone hates it for the external redesign (I think it looks fine). Hopefully that interior will roll out to the rest of the models too.
They are not going back to physical controls out of the goodness of their hearts. Physical controls are a requirement to get a European 5-star safety rating, and possibly in China as well.
I never suggested it was out of the goodness of their hearts. I suspect it’s because it’s what customers want.
I agree!
Still driving my Toyota Avensis 2014 and I hope he‘ll serve me well for the next 10 years.
I like the bluetooth connection it has so I can listen to my podcasts from my iPhone while driving but from a security point of view, I think the touchscreens are horrible. See this link: https://etsc.eu/physical-buttons-outperform-touchscreens-in-...
Also everyone started screaming when Tesla was starting to rumor to start using the cabin cameras to recognize people when Subaru has a totally creepy facial recognition system on their current vehicles to do seating presets and the like. It was bad enough they use the cameras to imply I'm distracted or sleepy while I'm driving and have the things throw twenty million chimes and warnings, but actual driver ID is just terrible.
God I hate our Forrester.
I have a 2019 Forester so I think I just missed that.
There’s a panel where the preset buttons for seat position profiles would be if I had paid for that feature.
Seat position profiles is a great feature, making it automatic is completely unnecessary.
> Seat position profiles is a great feature, making it automatic is completely unnecessary.
Driving a Model 3, I disagree - having seats and basically everything else adjust as soon as you open the door is the biggest boon I can imagine. I totally wish the rearview mirror would adjust as well…
This is totally absurd because people don’t buy phone based on car integration they have. They buy car integration that works with their phone. And numbers reflect iPhone vs Android market share.
Is it a real A/B test? Honda's reputation is much better than Chevy's overall, regardless of infotainment system.
This is not an A/B test, it’s confirmation bias at best
I have a 2023 Yukon that i like very much but i'm not going to ever replace it by another Yukon without carplay. By the time its not drivable anymore the kids won't need strollers and I'll likely pick a smaller car with car play.
They could have had me trading it in this or next year for the newer model (that does have some nicer things i'd like to have, like the larger infotainment screen) but the lack of carplay and the shitty native google maps and spotify products that come installed on it are are not acceptable for a car that sells for 90K USD.
GM decided it had all the cards, looks like they don't.
I won’t claim the A/B test is a good one, but I can say I canceled my blazer EV reservation when they announced it wouldn’t support carplay or android auto.
A lot of skepticism here, but, anecdotally, we bought a Prologue without even test driving a Blazer.
I knew they were essentially the same car and that maintenance-wise it probably made more sense to get the Blazer from a GM dealer - but it lacked CarPlay so we didn’t consider it.
I can’t imagine we’re the only ones.
I made the same choice. Also did not even consider the Blazer knowing they are identical.
I would not buy a car with carplay. I don't want any tech in my car.
The nice thing about phone projection (Android Auto, CarPlay) is that the tech remains in your phone, in contrast to Android Automotive OS.
I would say simpler tech would be good. Just because you can put a super powerful chip in the car doesn't mean you should. It is wasteful overkill and breeds complicated software solutions and problems for things hardware already solved over a decade or more ago.
That not an option in modern vehicles. You can either have good tech or bad tech - not no tech.
I'm yet to see a modern car with "good tech", the options tend to be:
- Mediocre tech at best.
- Awful tech at worse.
That’s where CarPlay comes in, the tech doesn’t matter. Your phone has good navigation right? Good messages, good music. So just use that. Then it doesn’t really matter how awful the car infotainment is.
Even “good” infotainment (tesla) is inferior to CarPlay in many ways, because it’s not your phone. You don’t get your maps app with everything magically synced and working.
Google Maps being displayed on built-in screen is good thing.
There is very little rational about car buying or branding. In the eye of many consumers a car with 3 wheels and 1 with 4 from the same brand will have more in common than 2 identical cars with different badges.
I would pick Honda over Chevy regardless of car play.
Don't even get me started about how my 2018 Model 3 has a crappier entertainment system than far cheaper cars. God dammit.
I. Want. CarPlay.
So like an option....
I hate to say this, but (for every person I've asked) this was a simple "no-brainer". There must have been internal 'political' reasons to avoid Apple. Maybe the managemant hated Tim Cook?? I dunno.
GM wants to sell subscriptions and ads. E.g. they want you to pay for their OnStar subscription to use the Spotify app in their navigation system.
They can't do that if you're just looking at CarPlay/Android Auto.
Or licensing costs.
> Or licensing costs.
Which don't exist. BMW famously tried to blame Apple for trying to charge buyers an annual fee for Carplay and Apple _publicly_ called their shit out. They confirmed they don't charge anything - neither one-off nor recurring. Manufacturers may incur certification costs, there's nothing after that.
Just did a couple quick searches and nothing's changed since then AFAIK
According to their MFi page, there may be a royalty, as Apple says that information is covered by NDA. (including the authentication coprocessors required for CarPlay)
"What is the royalty associated with MFi accessories? This information is only available under NDA. You will be able to review this information once your application for the MFi License has been approved."
https://mfi.apple.com/faqs
I hate most cars' infotainment.
I still absolutely don't want CarPlay or Android Auto to become the default. Should they become the arbiters of what I can and cannot do in my car? Should I be beholden them for features, or which apps they allow in their walled garden?
Today I can vote with my money, choosing a car that fits me. If they all become the same, it's a monopoly.
Just don't use CarPlay then?
Weird argument. "Just don't use <any big tech necessary to function in society>" doesn't really hold.
You can choose now, but what when you must use one of those, because no one cares about the built in system anymore, so it's neglected or even just covering the basics?
Both CarPlay and Android Auto are second screens to your phone... they're just "Airplay" streaming a simpler interface.
I loath my smart car, but my truck was amenable to bieng hardware hacked, so I modified a 1/4" headset harness and built a phone shelf where the head unit was, and used a power amp with just an impidence matching input gain and a mic and answer button, and could be modified to work with essentialy any amplifier and speakers ever made. Zero extra sofware, tunes, calls. Back to my car, which is an abomination of choices made by people with a level of certitude into human preferance that I did not know existed, or is that what happens when engineering descisions are made by mutual apreciation clubs? It does not matter, my faith in technology has been destroyed, and as someone who can, will be building cars to suit myself. Picking bodys for realy comfy interiors and then grafting in an awd electric power train. I would just buy something, but touch screens for basic standard functions is something I find revolting, If there is a menue, that means one of two things, I am working on a computer or someone is going to bring me something yummy.
Pardon my cynicism, but it's 2026 and people still blatantly confuse correlation with causation.
TFA just shows the author is addicted to his phone and nothing else. Many comments here are already explaining why the comparison is not valid.
As a consumer in the market for cars (we've got four at home), I'm basically interested in how pleasant/agreeable the car is to drive and how secure it is.
I give exactly jack fucking zero shit if it's got Android Auto or Apple Car Play or both or neither.
I drive way, way, way more than most on this forum. For example I've been both to Stockholm and Ibiza by car [involving a part with the on a boat in both cases]). And I regularly do long distances (longest was 8am to 10pm non-stop except bio-break and gasoline). I'll cross Germany (I don't live in Germany) in one-go to go to Poland. Stuff like that. Also I spent months a year in a rural area, so car is the only option (closest village to find croissants and baguettes is a 10 minutes drive).
And yet I don't care a yota about "phone connectivity" in my car.
The rare cases where I really need my phone I can... just use my phone?
Like what the heck is hard about that?
BTW my main car run QNX for its infotainment/phone system and phonecalls and reading message over Bluetooth works just fine. And it wouldn't be working, it'd be totally fine too.
TFA and people agreeing with it says more about people's incestuous relation with their phones than about what the "best option" (mentioned in TFA) is.
We found the Rockstar driver!
Saying you're not going put in a very popular feature (CarPlay) that probably doesn't cost that much to put in is one of the biggest self owns I can think of, especially when saying "we're going to do a better job." Has any OEM done a decent job with navigation, ever, perhaps aside from Tesla.
CarPlay is sort of like Apple Pay / Tap to Pay, even Home Depot, Kroger, and now Walmart capitulated. I hope there's fire to the smoke that Tesla will add Carplay, and I suspect if they do, Rivian won't be far behind.
My EQS has carplay and android auto, and I am a staunch google maps user. That said, I use the MBUX mapping most of the time. It does a good job -- and not just long drives where I need the EV charger logic -- day to day, it's plenty fine.
No. Tesla's system is not good. It's just fairly homogenous in style with the rest of the UX. Functionally? Extremely disappointing.
Consumers are just easily impressed with car infotainment at this point. If the screen takes less than 1s to respond to input and doesn’t drop 30 frames on every animation, they consider it “good”.
Tesla's system is well-integrated to the car and chargers, but its navigation is terrible. It seems to have marked a street near my home as impassible, so it takes an absurd roundabout route. This problem does not exist on Apple or Google Maps.