December 17, 2025 - GM Infotainment Gets Apple Music

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for December 17, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

In March 2023, General Motors upset a lot of Apple iPhone users when it announced that it would not include support for smartphone projection, including CarPlay, on its new electric vehicles. These vehicles all use Android Automotive with Google Automotive Services for their infotainment. This allows drivers to use Google Maps and Assistant and download a variety of apps from the Google Play Store. Most of the major media streaming apps, such as Spotify, YouTube Music, PocketCasts, NPR, and others, are available to download. Since the apps run directly on the vehicle's platform, they tend to be more reliable than projection solutions that often drop the connection between the phone and the vehicle. 

However, Apple users in particular were upset because they lost access to a number of iOS-exclusive apps that aren't available on Android, including Messages. The Google Play store doesn't currently support any messaging apps, including Google's own Messages and Beeper, a cross-platform app. 

However, there is one app made by Apple that is offered on Android: Apple Music. Apple could have made this app available on the Automotive Play Store from the time it launched, but has so far chosen not to. It is available on Rivian's infotainment system, which is also built on Android but without Google Services, and now it will be available on GM vehicles as well. It's still a standard Android app, but rather than distributing it through the store, GM will push it directly to customer vehicles. 

Apple is probably doing separate business deals with individual automakers, and we will likely see its Music appear on other brands at some point, although it would be preferable to just put it in the Store so customers who use other streaming apps can skip it if they choose not to use it. 

Thanks for listening.