GM's CarPlay-free Blazer EV loses sales race to its Honda twin in accidental A/B test

GM dropped CarPlay, and Honda kept it

A couple of years ago, General Motors announced that its new vehicles would ship without Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, replacing phone mirroring with Google's Android Automotive platform. According to a post on the blog A Whole Lotta Nothing that circulated on Hacker News, that decision has since produced something rare in the car business: a real-world A/B test of essentially the same vehicle sold with and without phone integration. The result, the post argues, is a widening sales gap in favor of the version that keeps CarPlay.

The accidental experiment

The Honda Prologue EV exists because Honda, like Toyota and Subaru, arrived late to dedicated EV development and partnered with other automakers to fill the gap. The Prologue is built on GM hardware: the post describes it as a Chevrolet Blazer EV with Honda badges, minor sheetmetal and interior differences, and underpinnings that are straight from Chevrolet — even the key is a GM design with a Honda logo over it.

The one significant consumer-facing difference is that the Prologue offers CarPlay and Android Auto while the Blazer EV does not. Because the two cars perform and drive the same way, the author argues, buyers are effectively choosing between two versions of one car that differ mainly on whether their phone appears on the dashboard.

The numbers

The post compiles US sales figures from the reports GM and Honda publish for investors. In 2024, Honda sold 33,017 Prologues against 23,115 Blazer EVs, about 42.8% more. In 2025 the gap widened: 39,194 Prologues versus 22,637 Blazer EVs, a 73.1% advantage. In the first half of 2026, the Prologue outsold the Blazer EV 8,407 to 3,166 — a 165.5% margin, meaning buyers chose the Honda well over one and a half times as often.

The post cautions that the 2026 figures cover only January through June. It is also worth noting that absolute volumes fell steeply for both models in that period: combined sales of 11,573 in six months compare with 61,831 for all of 2025, even as the Prologue's relative lead kept growing.

The stated rationale

Chevrolet framed the removal of phone mirroring as a privacy measure, telling buyers that their driving and phone data would no longer go to Apple. The post is skeptical of that framing, noting the data now flows to Google, which the author says is likely to share it with GM, Chevrolet's owner. By the author's account, 2025 Chevrolet EVs run Android Automotive and interface with phones only over Bluetooth, with no CarPlay or Android Auto apps on the dash.

The comparison is not a randomized trial. Brand loyalty, dealership networks, pricing and incentives all differ between Honda and Chevrolet, and raw sales figures do not separate those effects from the CarPlay question. But the direction of the gap — and the fact that it widens in each period — is at least consistent with the straightforward reading that buyers prefer cars that mirror their phones.

Why it matters

Automakers have been replacing phone mirroring with their own software stacks, partly to keep customer data and future software revenue in-house. The Blazer EV versus Prologue comparison is among the clearest public data points on what that choice costs in demand: the same car, sold under a badge that kept CarPlay, outsold the original by an ever-larger margin across two and a half years. The post closes by asking whether GM will reconsider now that buyers appear to have made their preference clear.

The wider implication reaches every carmaker weighing the same trade-off. If a manufacturer cannot match the usability of CarPlay and Android Auto in its own system, this data suggests buyers will notice — and will take the badge that keeps phone integration, even when it is the same car underneath.