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 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.
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.
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.
It's practically impossible to retrofit CarPlay into most newer vehicles where the infotainment system is tightly integrated with the rest of the vehicle.
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.
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.
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.
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 a decade to realize that not everything is doctor owned, dealer serviced 2004 Solara.
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. )
The entire premise is silly. People don't just compare spec-per-spec cars, brands, service, etc. also matter. The assumption that the Prologue sells more ONLY because of the integrations…
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
“ 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. ”
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.
It’s literally not an A/B tests It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
103 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 4.1 ms ] threadI know a number of people who’d buy a Honda without a second thought but wouldn’t be caught dead in a Chevy.
They always seem ten years behind with uninspiring designs and horrible MPG.
https://electrek.co/2025/09/23/honda-offering-over-20000-off...
Basically every 90s brand has had this happen. Typically involves PE.
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.
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.
Messrs. Sears and Roebuck are rolling in their graves.
Oh wait was I not supposed to say that out loud?
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.
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
I'm sure there is some impact to not including it, tbh, but as is this article is a giant nothing burger to me.
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
God I hate our Forrester.
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-...
It seems that every time I submit an update or new app, it gets rejected, because Apple just tightened the bolts a bit further.
The classic "oh but Apple's whitepapers say this" shtick is a non-contribution to the discussion.
Although I could imagine the car manufacturers wanting to get revenue from refueling ads.
Everyone doesn’t know statistics but, it is obvious when someone really doesn’t know.
There is not a single vehicle produced by Ford, GMC, or Chevy that I'm interested in owning.
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.
They can't do that if you're just looking at CarPlay/Android Auto.
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 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
They do this all the time.
It’s literally not an A/B tests It’s a well known story that this vehicle sold wayyyy better under a Honda badge and it has nothing to do with CarPlay.
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.
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.
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.