General Motors says its software business keeps about seventy cents of every dollar it earns. Most car sales only earn GM four to ten cents per dollar. That makes software one of the most profitable parts of the company.
OnStar is GM’s safety and navigation service. It earned about eight hundred million dollars in the second quarter of 2026. That is up more than twenty percent from last year. GM plans to add about one million new OnStar users this year. That would bring its total close to thirteen million users.
Super Cruise* is GM’s hands free driving system. It is growing even faster than OnStar. GM added about seventy thousand new users last quarter. The company expects more than eight hundred fifty thousand users by the end of the year. Money from Super Cruise grew about seventy percent from last year.
Here is the interesting part. Drivers get Super Cruise free for three years when they buy a car. After that, thirty to forty percent of drivers keep paying for it. That tells GM that people like the feature enough to pay for it.
GM chief executive Mary Barra talked about this on the earnings call. We do think we have tremendous levers, multiple levers of growth, she said. We definitely think there’s a lot of opportunity at GM to grow.
This shows a bigger shift in the car industry. Automakers want money that keeps coming in every month, not just money from selling a car once. For car audio and aftermarket shops, this could mean automakers keep tighter control over car electronics and data.
*Super Cruise is a system that lets a driver take their hands off the wheel on certain highways while the car steers, brakes, and speeds up on its own. The driver still has to watch the road.
Sources – Yahoo Finance, Car Scoops
