The Electric: Inside the Battle Over the EV Dashboard

Welcome back to The Electric! 

Automakers and tech companies are at war for who will control the profit from the sale of electric vehicles this decade. The assumption is that paid monthly subscriptions for software delivered over the air to EVs will generate much of the earnings. This week, we interrogate that assumption, and point out that it is probably incorrect.

A war over the electric vehicle dashboard is under way. General Motors is promoting Ultifi, its in-house software system, through which the company hopes to establish a visceral front-seat relationship with its EV customers and earn $20 billion in annual revenue by 2030 from services like navigation, luxury options and infotainment. Stellantis predicts that it will earn $22 billion a year in subscription revenue from dashboard software that it calls STLA Brain. And Sony and Honda Motor are planning a co-branded EV by 2025, promising infotainment as good as and possibly better than anyone else’s, including access to PlayStation videogames and films such as “Spider-Man” and the James Bond series. Amid all this, Apple and Google are offering their own front-seat products to the automakers, but demanding a large share of the profit for themselves.

What is this war all about? Analysts think automakers may earn little if any profit—especially at first—on many of the EVs themselves, given the uncertain price of raw materials and the reality that the industry has only begun to achieve the cost reductions that come with true mass production. So the companies hope to earn gobs of revenue on software features and services delivered in over-the-air updates—in the process attempting to convince Wall Street that they should be valued more like tech companies.