Hyundai must feel good about the U.S. market right now: It just posted “record-breaking” November sales, led by its electric and hybrid vehicles.
It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch for the South Korean automaker to believe it must be doing something right about answering the demands of the market. And at least one recurring feature at Hyundai has been a willingness to keep offering a flexible range of options for drivers.
The latest example comes in the form of Hyundai’s commitment to continue offering CarPlay and Android Auto, the in-car phone-mirroring apps.
“Right now, we’re still maintaining Android Auto and Carplay,” Olabisi Boyle, senior vice president of product planning at Hyundai, told InsideEVs in a new interview.
Of course, Hyundai has the benefit of having witnessed the negative reactions that followed General Motors’ 2023 decision to stop offering the apps for its vehicles. According to a McKinsey study, not having these apps available is enough of a factor to turn off nearly half of new-vehicle buyers.
But keeping all options available is also part of Hyundai’s approach to the market.
“It’s a little bit like EV charging,” Boyle says. “As we’re moving, give people all the options.”
Hyundai vehicles already provided access to charging stations via the traditional combined charging system (CCS) ports. But the automaker decided to also provide Tesla’s NACS charging ports, giving drivers access to over 28,000 SuperChargers in North America, for its new Ioniq 5.
Of course, keeping or ditching CarPlay and Android Auto is a question that never came up for the likes of Tesla and Rivian: They never offered the apps in the first place, preferring to develop their own cutting-edge software and electrical systems.
Boyle thinks Hyundai and the whole auto industry may eventually find better alternatives to CarPlay and Android Auto. “That may be the future,” she says.
But in the meantime, Hyundai is sticking to its philosophy of covering all the bases.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.
Missing out on the self-driving future is a tough pill to swallow, especially as a car enthusiast. But that is what Tesla handed us on Wednesday, without a hint of mercy.
During its October 21, 2026 earnings call, Elon Musk told investors the Cybercab is meant mainly as a ride service. Further, nearly all of them will be owned and managed by Tesla.