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GM's CarPlay refresh lands in the gas trucks; its eleven EVs stay Google-only
Last week's Silverado and Sierra software reveal got read as GM restoring phone mirroring. The eleven electric nameplates that lost projection in 2023 are still Google built-in only, and the stack underneath them is why.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- GM showed a new software experience for the upcoming Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra last week, including a new look for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the phone mirroring systems it pulled from its EVs.
- Yahoo Finance called the move an about-face and Apple Insider's headline said GM had caved on removing the interface from its gas-powered vehicles, according to The Verge.
- Phone projection has been absent from every GM electric vehicle for three years, since the automaker made a point of removing it in 2023.
- On Decoder in October 2025, GM CEO Mary Barra defended the EV prohibition and indicated the policy would eventually extend to the company's gasoline-powered lineup.
- Days later, GM told a number of outlets that CarPlay and Android Auto would remain in its gas-powered vehicles for the foreseeable future.
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Why it matters
- decision A buyer who wants CarPlay in a new GM vehicle has to pick the drivetrain that comes with it, so a software preference now settles the powertrain purchase.
- constraint GM's EV interface has to hold the driver on its own merits, because there is no projection fallback when a built-in app disappoints an owner mid-drive.
- contradiction GM's product manager calls the EV exception a small segment while the models involved number eleven, and the reporting does not include the sales figures that would settle which description fits.
- precedent Relaxing a policy in the segment where customers can walk, while holding it where the strategy sits, now has a worked example, and press coverage treated the relaxation as the whole policy.
The new CarPlay and Android Auto windows in the Silverado and Sierra are picture-in-picture, so the phone layout shares the screen with GM's own [2]. In a Silverado EV, GM's own layout has the screen to itself. That vehicle runs an operating system GM builds on top of Android Automotive, bundled with Google's native app suite, which is how Maps and Gemini end up on the dash without a phone plugged in [7].
Colin McCormick, group product manager for Google built-in, projection, and profiles at GM, told The Verge the company was "one of the early adopters of CarPlay and Android Auto when it first came out" [11][12]. On the split between the two halves of the lineup, he said "we do have a small segment of EVs right now that don't offer that, but there is a large majority of our vehicles that do offer that" [13]. He also said "our big position on this is that it shouldn't be two competing systems" [14].
That small segment runs to eleven nameplates as The Verge lists them: the Chevy Equinox, Blazer, Bolt and Silverado EVs, the Cadillac Lyriq, Optiq, Vistiq and Escalade IQ, and the GMC Sierra EV plus the Hummer SUV and Truck [5][6]. The report does not give sales figures for those models [17]. On the other side of the line, GM kept projection in its best-selling gas models, and The Verge writes that tens of thousands of owners project their phones onto their infotainment screens without any issue [8].
McCormick's stated goal is a setup where "we don't have a customer that has to decide" between projection and the native system, which he called "our sweet spot for us" [15]. In the trucks the two systems share one screen; the EVs have run on the built-in system alone for three years [4].
Two tests separate GM's truck answer from its EV answer, and they move over to any team deciding whether to let a customer's existing tool onto its own surface. The first is whether the customer can get that tool from you somewhere else. A truck buyer can; an EV buyer's only choice is GM's built-in system [5]. The second is what owning the surface delivers that you can state specifically. For GM, the EV dashboard is where the Google apps it licenses run, and the same manager owns built-in, projection and profiles [7][11]. Reporting the reveal, The Verge wrote that "People really like mirroring their phones!" [16]
What to watch
- Whether GM's next EV launch ships with phone projection or keeps the Google-only dashboard.
- Whether the picture-in-picture CarPlay design spreads from the Silverado and Sierra to the rest of GM's gas lineup.
- Whether GM restates Barra's October position that the EV projection policy will eventually reach gas vehicles.