Apple Carplay

When you’re driving a different kind of car for the first time, you’ll notice that the fundamentals are always the same: steering wheel, gas pedal, brakes—you’ll find everything right where you expect it. As a society, we’ve agreed that this is all too important to get wrong. But when it comes to digital controls—or the infotainment system, which is becoming an increasingly central part of the driving experience—there’s far less consensus. There’s no shared understanding of how it should look, feel, or behave, nor how it should align with our preferences and expectations. Both Apple and Google saw this as an opportunity to bring consistency to that digital experience—an experience already well defined on our phones. And that makes perfect sense.

Not only can you access your favourite apps, settings, and content, but it’s also easier to control, simply because you’re already familiar with the interface. This is exactly what users want: instead of having to figure out a new, unfamiliar system in every car, they can just plug in their phone and focus on what matters—driving. Things get more complicated when you ask carmakers what they value. Developing good software is hard, so letting a company like Apple handle that side of things is cost-effective. Over-the-air updates become more feasible, too. Car brands can then focus on what they do best: building and selling cars at a competitive price. But that’s also where their interests begin to diverge from Apple’s.

For carmakers, the driving experience is just as important as the price tag. It has to reflect their brand’s vision, values, strategy, and design language. And unsurprisingly, they want to own that experience, from start to finish. Asking Apple or Google to make changes to match their brand identity is not a position they want to be in. Apple, meanwhile, has been aggressively trying to convince manufacturers to fully embrace the latest version of CarPlay. But most haven’t gone down that road. To them, Apple is just another contractor. And their logic is simple: why outsource something you can do in-house? Even if Apple offers its services practically for free, that offer alone is enough to raise eyebrows. After all, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Car companies have to ask: what’s in it for Apple—and when will that become clear?

It’s a fair question. Car manufacturers are understandably wary of letting a big tech company take control over the user experience they’ve spent years refining. So, while streamlining and modernizing in-car software is clearly desirable, it could come at the cost of brand identity and user perception. Every design decision would require negotiation, every update could turn into bureaucracy. Imagine having to write software filled with edge cases to accommodate every manufacturer’s unique design preferences. Apple’s history of tightly controlling its platforms doesn’t inspire much hope for collaborative flexibility. This is the company that dictates how buttons and fonts should look, taxes every purchase, and enforces strict app guidelines. Now, Apple seems eager to extend that control to the car dashboard.

And yet, cars are the natural next step. They’re as much about design, interface, and aesthetics as they are about performance—fields where Apple has proven expertise. So, is there really no solution that works for everyone? One that gives carmakers a digital system that’s easy to design and maintain, allows Apple and others to provide consistency and familiarity, and lets users connect their phone to use their personal setup? Well, there might be. The ideal solution could be a shared foundation: not an operating system owned by one company, but rather a protocol or API agreed upon by all major car manufacturers. Something akin to an open-source project. Neither Apple, Google, nor any single automaker would have full control. Instead, proposed changes would be evaluated on merit and implemented only if they serve the broader ecosystem.

This collaboration could be funded by the manufacturers themselves and managed by a neutral, non-profit foundation led by independent experts. Apple and Google could still contribute, acting as abstraction layers on top of this standard—similar to how CSS styles shape a fixed HTML structure in web design. Now, would this slow down innovation? Perhaps initially. But in the long run, it could provide a stable, trusted foundation upon which companies—car manufacturers, software developers, and others—can build. With the right design and governance, it could even spark new forms of innovation. So why doesn’t this “Group of Automotive Digitization” exist yet? Probably because carmakers lack the experience, or even the mindset, to engage with open-source principles. They’re not used to giving up control, let alone investing in something they don’t fully own.

Meanwhile, Apple and Google are unlikely to give up their ambitions. They’ve already poured vast resources into building their own automotive platforms and won’t easily hand over control to some faceless standards committee. But if we look at examples like Matter—the new smart home standard—it’s clear that Apple can embrace such frameworks, provided they’re built on solid ground and aligned with its interests. That could serve as a model for a similar initiative focused on digital systems in cars. It may take more effort upfront, but it could pay off in the long term. The EU could play a vital role here, not just as a regulator, but as a co-funder and facilitator. Instead of issuing fines after the fact, they could help shape a balanced standard that levels the playing field for large and small players alike.

Ironically, this whole topic is not unlike the web: open, universal, but currently under pressure from tech giants like OpenAI and, again, Google. Maybe this is our last chance to regain control over one of the final frontiers of our digital lives: the infotainment system in our cars.