- Consistency. You get into a new car, all you need to figure out is how to open CarPlay, no need to learning a completely different and often complicated infotainment system.
- "It's on your phone". You can decide what playlist to play or where to navigate before you even get into the car.
- Stays up to date over the long term. Just look at cars from five years ago. Most built-in infotainment systems are still stuck in that era, no matter how smart they once looked. CarPlay uses your phone as the main computing platform, and the car's infotainment system only needs to act as a thin client for I/O, it keeps updating with iOS.
I just bought a 10 year old Toyota estate (station wagon). It's got a reasonable screen and Bluetooth implementation etc. But I'm never going to want to use the built in navigation because it's just not as good as what my phone will do. And the audio integration isn't as sophisticated as it might be - I have to choose the app on my phone.
Whereas CarPlay/AndroidAuto is generic from the car point of view, and as phone features and software improve your car capability evolves too.
This was a fruitful conflict for the consumer until dealerships started steering buyers away from EVs.
The only way someone could buy a car more often is if they became a lot cheaper. That would mean doing away with a lot of the luxury parts of the car that are where the profit is.
In short, it’s an awful idea because even if the belt doesn’t fail early, debris from the belt will clog oil pickups, galleries, and passages.
Traditional companies do it the other way around.
I can't find one instance of a car UI being as good or easier to interact with than CarPlay.
But Tesla also understands that good software engineers need to be paid Silicon Valley wages. The other car companies hire B- and C-level software engineers and then wonder why their customers prefer to navigate with their phones.
Need I continue? And Tesla is generally understood to pay on the lower end among those companies.
Toyota had the better idea, keep the software folks an independent business unit with internal competency/ownership, and only allow them to fix future platforms. Woven is apparently having great success inside Toyota. The side effect is that those changes still aren't apparent even years later.
GM had the same idea, but killed it recently.
[0] https://www.germanautopreneur.com/p/cariad-volkswagen-softwa...
Ford, Toyota, Lexus, etc. This notice from Tesla actually specifies the regulation:
> On affected vehicles, upon vehicle power up, a certain software configuration may prevent camera streams from being sent to the MCU for up to 11 seconds, causing a loss of rearview image for up to 11 seconds for drivers who shift into reverse during this time, which does not comply with FMVSS 111, S5.5.3.
https://www.tesla.com/support/recall-loss-of-back-up-camera-...
Sure I would like the vehicle to have some style but trying to navigate with maps or something I want it to work / look consistently.
CarPlay is user-centric, which is why users like it. All these attempts to force people into a device-centric experience make no sense. I spent an hour or two a day, at most, in my car. My phone is within Bluetooth distance every waking moment. Why in the world would I want my car to be a disjointed experience?
My car’s integrated nav is… fine. But having to re-enter addresses drops the convenience considerably.
What you don't (usually) get from car's regular infotainment:
- Maps that don't suck
- Maps that get updated often
- Navigation that is aware of more than just what HD Radio tells about highways
- Helpful notification when you get into the car that starts navigating to whatever is next on your calendar
- A choice between what navigation software to use
- Ability to switch between audio sources (i.e. go from audiobook to spotify)
IMO Android Auto and CarPlay generally implemented pretty poorly in pretty much anything, but Mazda.
That just puts you in the space of needing all apps to be available on all devices.
That would still work, as you can use Bluetooth.
But I get the point.
- all the controls that I need, that are basically volume, radio station or CD track, are easily accessible trough physical buttons and knobs, that I can use without taking my eyes off the street
- I get in the car, insert the key and the radio turns on instantly and start playing music, no things that have to boot, no things that have to connect, etc. I usually listen to the radio and I stay up to date with news, listen to programs, listen to music without the need to create a playlist, or not and always listen to the same songs, or worse paying a subscription to just listen to music
- if I want to listen something different I can just put in a CD, and considering it supports mp3 CDs a CD can contain up to 100 songs without a noticeable loss in quality
- the UI of the radio in general is well designed, no useless functions, everything is easy to reach, no distractions. The radio is well integrated into the car dashboard, the design has something to say, not like a boring 10' tablet
- no distractions, notifications from my phone stay on my phone, calls don't pop up, simply when I arrive at destination I recall saying I was driving, or respond to the message
- finally, the sound quality is good, much better than most of integrated infotainment in modern cars that have 2000 useless functions, a shitty touchscreen, and a very poor sound quality. If I turn the volume all way up it shakes the car, the quality of analog FM radio is much better than modern digital radio that have the quality of a low bitrate MP3, and we are talking about the stock radio of a VW Golf 6, a normal car (when I bought it in 2011), not something fancy.
And, I personally find the quality of YouTube Music Premium (256kbps AAC) superior to FM radio.
When it comes to playing music from phones in cars, connection type seems to matter more than the source, and iOS has some weird built-in sound normalization only for CarPlay that drives me crazy.
In my Audi A3 (2018), if I connect my iPhone 12 Mini via AUX or Bluetooth, sounds works perfectly fine. Same when playing via CD or USB stick inserted into the car, no problem. FM radio also works well, regardless of volume.
However, if I play music via CarPlay (Spotify [lossless], YouTube, on phone .flac files, etc) some built-in sound normalization seems to kick in and suddenly it ruins the music when playing even slightly louder.
I've tried for years to figure out what the hell is going on, tried every setting under the sun, but cannot get it to work so only thing left is some built-in sound ruinification ("normalization") that Apple does, only when played via CarPlay, not when playing via AUX or Bluetooth.
Seems to happen with every car I try it with, but I never tried a different phone. So right now I'm choosing between being able to have GPS or listen to music properly, as I cannot do both at the same time...
Have you tried Android Auto?
> Maybe it’s trying to split the output into more than two audio channels when in CarPlay mode?
I hope so, most of what I play is stereo, and works fine via AUX/Bluetooth.
I agree that CDs have too much friction though. Theres no easy pathway from “I like this album” to listening in the car/stereo. Especially for someone who is constantly discovering music and keeping up with new releases from artists.
First of all, not all releases are even available on CD. Even if they were, I would be spending thousands of dollars per month for the amount of music I listen to. Not to mention the lead time from ordering CDs which could take a couple weeks or more to arrive. And then I can’t even listen in my new car anyway cause there’s no CD drive.
I like hi-res lossless audio files. I can load them up on a USB and plug it into the car. I don’t have to mess around with Bluetooth at all. It’s easier to get the music too. And it sounds better. And it can’t be taken away. And is cross platform. And its free!
Btw I like supporting artists, especially the less popular ones. If I like your stuff, Ill buy some merch. But thats after I have the music.
Even today, while I use spotify on my work computer, it’s basically the same albums every day (around a dozen). Playing CDs would be probably better than switching to the UX disaster that is Spotify
Why don't you switch to CDs then? Something is telling me this isn't quite the full story.
I'm sure lots of people who don't really need to use Spotify use Spotify all the time, if you really do listen to just a few albums, why not buy those off Bandcamp/Beatport/Whatever then listen to those and stop paying Spotify? I'd easily switch away from Spotify if I no longer saw/agreed with the convenience, but hard to beat it for discovery right now.
But the concept holds. I have a directory in a copyparty share that I stream music from constantly. It's probably 20 albums worth of music, and it's just in a mix that I put on almost every day, whether I'm driving or I'm working.
I tend to tune into livestreams on YouTube for the discovery aspect.
Currently my bane with the smart TV I have. Takes so long to boot and to wake from sleep that I’d press the power button, go to make my coffee and then get back to it. Otherwise I’d be halfway through my breakfast when all I wanted to do is watch a few videos on Youtube.
I miss dumb TVs so much.
I don’t mind a built in infotainment system stuck in a previous era, as long as it works.
> - "It's on your phone"
Straight use your phone.
There is no need for the car to adapt, no updates, no back deal by the car manufacturer, nothing is tied to the car except Bluetooth.
Current screens are IMHO big enough, moving to a tablet or foldables is also an option
Mounting/unmounting is a solved problem since magsafe (or Peak Design like stronger updates), which also handles charging.
Voice commands will be enough for most operations and you're guaranteed to have physical buttons for volume up/down and screen off.
You're also 100% efficient with the interface.
- My phone's screen is nowhere near big enough for me to "glance" at it while driving (to see if my turn is coming up, etc)
- I'm not carrying around a tablet with me - my phone fits in my pocket
- Mounting is _not_ a solved problem. It just... isn't. This is a whole topic on it's own, but mounting a phone in a good position, where it will stay without moving/falling/bugging (especially in 100+ degree heat) and not be in the way of _other_ car things is a pain
- I already have physical buttons (that interact with car play, where needed) for all those things in my car
- Interacting with the screen of my phone while driving is 100% not something I'm proficient with; nor would I want to be. It's not designed for interacting with it while not paying attention to it. CarPlay is
That's not Android Auto, it's Waze doing that (and it would do it on Apple too). And it's not "an attempt at engagement", it's a cost for keeping the real-time map and traffic data that Waze is chosen for up-to-date. Use Google Maps if you don't like the interruptions.
Imagine if your ten year old car hasn’t seen an infotainment update in four+ years. Or if you want to buy used.
Personally I’d much prefer my phone. It’s baked into Apple/Google ‘s business model to keep it up to date.
Also I only need my phone’s subscription, not an additional one with the auto manufacturer.
Now that cars are rolling screens, I wouldn’t buy a car without screen mirroring for the same reason.
I recently had the idea of taking the FireStick 4K Max that I bought ~1year ago for the living room smart OLED TV which is getting a little older, I had gotten ready to take it on a few trips I'm doing this year, thought I was being clever, unfortunately it died a literal week after the warranty, boot looping constantly.
I won't buy another Firestick again, it was atrociously add-riddled and often showing things inappropriate for the kids in the middle of the day, but if generic Android TV stick like that was available with good performance and all the necessary DRM levels, I'd probably use that.
For now, I will just carry an HDMI cable and use my laptop.
Unlike the sibling, I've never encountered a hotel with all ports blocked. But I have encountered hotels where there is no way to choose other ports. In that case, I've just unplugged their STB and plugged my FS in.
This was a bummer just the other day where my iPhone somehow (and I still don't know how) auto-signed into an amazingly fast wifi AP managed by my cell provider, but I was stuck working on crappy guest wifi on my laptop and could not get the laptop onto the better wifi.
No, they are not. When you press "Home" button on your car where does it go? In some cars it goes to CarPlay main screen, in others it goes to car's built-in system main screen. When you press back what happens? When you press Nav/Maps button where does it go? Again, some cars will launch built-in navigation while others will go in whatever last nav app you used in car play. Mazda disables touch screen when car play is enabled (which is good and I like it)
> One interesting use case I saw was a couple where one used a left-to-right interface and the other a right-to-left UI.
That depends on if car was originally made for left-hand or right-hand traffic, some cars allow you to change that (in my BMW it required messing with obd port)
Car makers make money selling cars. Which buyers happily pay five figure suns for. An executive can add to the bottom line by raising sales prices/volumes with a more competitive product, or lowering component costs.
This isn’t some weird social media business with non-paying users and a reliance on ad money.
Getting all my information - calendar, maps history, music, contacts, etc. on a rental car without syncing that info to it is absolutely great.
It's also part of the safety rating of Euro NCAP, and AFAIK China mandated physical buttons for important functions as well.
Yes, you can open the AC screen by tapping the AC button but then you still need use the touch screen for any actual AC adjustments.
It’s a joke that that’s legal. Looking at my phone is illegal, yet it’s many times faster.
Also, the Jaguar F Pace was a big screen with the only knob being the vents, so they did take the majority away.
Also some of their brands had physical buttons all along. I think Skoda never removed them in the Elroq or Enyak.
R.I.P. Anton Yelchin, who brought us joy with his portrayal of Chekov in the Star Trek films, before losing his life at only 27, from a switch poorly masquerading as a brake lever.
(I stick with a manual for my vehicles, so fortunately I'm mostly immunized against the madness.)
https://esv6hz7yeij.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/b...
I wonder which it is.
I have the same car, those are the previous/next buttons.
We're literally talking about a car wheel, how do you get off on it so much?
There's no Play button on the whole wheel? That roller, doesn't it also play/pause when pressed?
This is what set me off:
> Like it's been a case for like 40 years or so?
Am I missing something?
Still, if you are very used to the UI, you can say the music app is one item down from the map, and the phone is two, so you can count presses. I was able to SMS people with a Nokia phone with a hand on the steering wheel and one on the phone (back when it was not forbidden).
Did cars get cheaper when they took all of those out? I certainly didn't notice.
If all it takes to be a good person is spam low-effort high attention virtue signals that's great I will do more of that.
I'm sorry, but I do not buy the "people talk like that" argument. It's anecdotal evidence for me, sure, but I'm waiting for facts.
From July 2022: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/22/apple-carplay-could-be-a-tro...
Apple engineering manager Emily Schubert said 98% of new cars in the U.S. come
with CarPlay installed. She delivered a shocking stat: 79% of U.S. buyers would
only buy a car if it supported CarPlay.
“It’s a must-have feature when shopping for a new vehicle,” Schubert said
during a presentation of the new features.I’m sure they are trying and it has gotten slightly better lately - but it’s still not great imho. If they really want to do it better than Apple etc., they seriously need to up their game - and I really wish they would, but I don’t see that happening, the cost is too high.
I have a newish car (2023 make) with an Android based infotainment system: the built-in maps move so slow, no online updates (I have to use a stick to update them once a year) and so on. Basically they put it there I think out of habit, not that the majority of their customer demand in-car navigation as a must to buy it.
Some brands don't even do OTA updates, so you'd have to get your car in for a service if there's a new feature or bug fix in an update you care about. I'd never want to do that for a map fix when I could just use Carplay where Google Maps (or whatever else) has already fixed it.
And even if they do OTA updates, they won't be updating those maps in 10 years, much less 20.
It's a real competition, not sure who would take home the gold.
> I’ve had ~15 cars over the past 25 years
They already collect and track you, even with car play. I strongly recommend this CCC talk, where they hacked a Volkswagen database that contained unfiltered, high-accuracy, timestamped locations of a large majority of electric cars from VW group.
Based on that they were, for example, able to identify cars owned by members of Germany's security apparatus: where they work, where they live, where they drop off their children each morning. Who visited brothels.
I don’t pay for any Tesla subscription services, but I do not miss Carplay. Would it be nice to have? Sure. But there was/is no equivalent car at that price with Carplay.
Rivian is turning away potential lifetime customers because they want to force customers to pay for another cellular data plan and get their cut.
Basically despite the popularity the market seems to be moving against it slowly. And the more those cars succeed the more other auto makers will be willing to follow.
Curious if anyone has been able to calculate the sales and profits surrendered by the likes of GM and Rivian due to this switch. (My guess is it’s low.)
Examples: self-ordering kiosks at restaurants, every change made at every airline in the last 15 years, bandwidth caps at ISPs, “resort fees” at every hotel, tipping for car services, etc.
They know that since there aren’t many options, it doesn’t matter if customers all hate it, as long as they have no choice. The automakers (at least in their fantasies) smell blood in the water for the idea of CarPlay/Android Auto, and want to kill it if they can.
If Rivian et al. truly want to sell a premium product, their software needs to be premium. And frankly it's just not there. The other day I was trying to listen to an upcoming album that has a few singles released. On my phone I can do that no problem. On the Rivian Spotify app, the album just didn't show up. It wasn't possible to play those songs in order without searching for the songs one by one. There are a ton of things that I love about my R1T, but as more time passes, the gap between what they offer and what other manufacturers offer becomes more and more apparent
Actually, Tesla is apparently planning to add CarPlay support via a software update.
It hasn’t happened yet, as apparently it’s been waiting on a new feature from Apple which will allow navigation data to be shared/synced between CarPlay and the car’s self-driving system.
This Route Sharing feature was announced at WWDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwG0I8UGjg&t=771s
I've only had Android Auto in my own vehicles, and while it hasn't been as buggy, it feels slow. I never use it anymore.
Their homemade infotainment system prior to CarPlay was awful, and has an overflow error which hits me about once every 6 months which requires pulling the fuse to hard reset it. As far as I can tell they keep adding new songs to a stack, and never flush it so at some point you'll reach the end of a song and it won't play any more. Once you reached that you can only use the phone function, attempts to use music result in you getting your Bluetooth connection terminated.
It was always stable for me, just sluggish.
If I had to pick I'd take sluggish over constantly buggy of course. So props there.
The infotainment setup on my Tesla though is golden with only the occasional quirk. After using that, Carplay and Android Auto feel very regressive. A guy I work with has an R2 so I got to tinker with it and I figured it would be comparable but it actually kinda sucked.
I haven't seen a broad range, but Mazda seems very fast and reliable.
Chevrolet (prior to recent models that drop it) and Honda do it well.
fun car to drive too. zoom zoom :)
I don't actually know if the Toyota infotainment setup is to blame though. Since I've never encountered a reasonably stable, glitch free Carplay experience in the last 5 years, I've always just figured "that must be how CarPlay is". I have never owned an iPhone so I only get the cliffnotes version of the experience. But since it's got a 0% track record in that limited viewing, I'm either unlucky, emit magical anti-apple em waves, or am possessed by the soul of Steve Jobs favourite black shirt.
I don't know if the sensitivity to Siri can be turned down, again not an iPhone guy myself, but it bugs me how often we will be talking and suddenly the audio stops and Siri says "I don't know how to help you with that" or something similar. Sometimes we just don't talk so that we don't constantly have Siri interrupting Hardcore History.
Porsche sells head units with car play for their cars going back to the 1960’s. I think they look great.
https://vehicle-accessories.porsche.com/prod/pag/Vehicle/Acc...
Like you have this 30 year old car with a pristine wooden trim where all components align nicely in design and you decide to ruin it for the convenience of having notifications in your face while driving? A phone holder looks much less invasive.
GM just wants to extract a pound of flesh. All are companies making dumb decisions by ignoring what customers want.
It will cost them customers. My company buys like 10k cars a year and we make CarPlay a requirement. We see it as a safety and productivity issue. We want employees using maps to navigate and avoid hazards, but don’t want them operating our vehicles unsafely.
Personally, it would be a long shot for me to buy any GM product due to high depreciation. The CarPlay/Android Auto thing disqualifies them.
https://www.teslarati.com/apple-developing-missing-link-tesl...
https://www.theverge.com/transportation/804562/gm-apple-carp...
My vehicle doesn't support the carplay to hud stuff, but that's okay. The thing is... when my car stops getting map and traffic updates, I will still be able to switch to carplay for at least the command screen presenting information. I intend on keeping this vehicle for a long time, so that's important to me.
On top of that, carplay offers better bitrate than bluetooth.
For people that wish to keep a vehicle for a long time, carplay/android auto isn't just a convenience anymore. With the increased integration of headunits, aftermarket becomes a tougher sell.
Why not just name the brand?
Could be an Alpina
I would be shocked by the number being that high because while iOS has a slim majority of the market share, it's nowhere near 79%.
These companies are giving up sovereignty of their primary product to a company that can steer away customer loyalty and disrupt any hope these companies have of increasing their already scant margins.
Any car should be able to interface with a phone without Apple or Google's legally binding terms and NDAs. The direction of control should be on the side of the customer first, and the automotive company second.
Where the hell are the regulators? This is not okay.
Your comment would only make sense in a hypothetical situation where the car infotainment only worked if you had an iPhone or if there was some kind of exclusivity agreements to preclude it working with Android, but that isn’t the case in any circumstance I’m aware of.
Or "we're gonna cut off our older models to force people towards new cars instead of older ones." That's a bad pattern to let people selling $30,000+ devices get access to.
As it is, CarPlay is implemented as a h264 video stream which receives touch, microphone, and metadata from the vehicle, the protocol is fine albeit proprietary
I feel the same way about Android auto. I refuse to be locked into some terrible, never updated or expensive subscription vendor nav unit. I have a phone. I want to be able to use it.
To quote a wise man:
>> We need to stop this helicopter civilization bullshit.
>>We're building 1984 to protect from god knows what imaginary harms.
These trillion dollar companies are the problem. They're moving into other healthy industries and crushing them. They're sucking the oxygen out of every market.
Stop cheerleading this. They need vibrant competition. We need a de-ossifying forest fire. We need lots of nimble smaller companies.
Instead the giants place a ceiling on the growth of every other industry, then when they need more growth, they start to creep in and dump on healthy markets unrelated to their original enterprise.
Look at Amazon giving away Lord of the Rings, running a $200M ad campaign for free on its Rivian trucks, printed boxes, website, app, etc., buying up MGM... How do actual companies in these spaces compete with the dumping?
How do businesses keep Apple and Google from strong-arming them? Rivian doesn't want to be Apple's bitch. You guys are cheerleading it and telling Rivian to bend over.
Google and Apple are the companies that want to track you and turn the internet into a land of device attestation and mandatory ID sign in. They're both actively building "age assurance" into their platforms, and it won't be long before they start gating internet use via these tendrils.
Google and Apple are not good companies.
You're all building this Orwellian hellscape. STOP.
You'll note that it wasn't Apple who sold out their own customers, it was GM. [1] False-equivalence arguments are both pointless and, in this case, unnecessary. There is a lesser and greater evil here, and the lesser one in this case happens to be Apple.
1: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/gm-pay...
What’s your point?
(I will, apparently, never buy a car)
But Ford's EEC was built around Toshiba's TLCS-12, the world's first 12-bit microprocessor, developed specifically for engine control, and might have been in cars produced prior to 77, but documentation is spotty.
So do you only drive cars built prior to the late 70s? Because sacrificing the enormous safety improvements just for a bizarre feeling of moral superiority is a really awful hill to die on. And literal death is a real possibility
Or do you not drive and never planned to buy any kind of car and thus your claim is meaningless?
Anyway those are just four of hundreds of computers in your car these days.
My car will not exceed a certain speed if TPMS is malfunctioning.
But then again, I am old enough perhaps to have been taught to regularly check your tires before driving to begin with.
Real TPMS sensors inside the wheel give much more accurate information.
There are downsides, but many boil down to 'manufacturers are knobheads' (data collection, pushing subscriptions) and lessened control (tuning computers can be easier than tuning mechanics, you just aren't given control, so this to is arguably a case of 'manufacturers are knobheads', or sometimes liability issues).
"No antenna/modem I can't readily remove" might be _slightly_ more achievable.
Fuel injector timing and quantity, along with ignition timing, is generally computer controlled, certainly on any modern vehicle.
Realistically the only navigation UI have seen that was better was a 2012 or 2013 BMW 5 series which had a HUD that projected my location, speed, heading and turn by turn navigation (with lane info!) onto the windshield. That system rocked because of how the projected UI had your eyes focus farther out so you had a very easy time perceiving the road ahead while getting the next direction info.
I assume my next car will have it and I might even upgrade the radio in my current car to have it but it is to me entirely optional.
that's why more recent models move the screen higher up. it sometimes looks a bit silly (like they glued an ipad on top of the dashboard), but it's a lot more usable
> HUD that projected my location, speed, heading and turn by turn navigation (with lane info!) onto the windshield
the latest carplay implementations are compatible with the inbuilt navigation aids, so turn signals from waze/maps/whatever will feed into the HUD
E.g. Peugeot 4008 I was driving a few months ago could show CarPlay/Auto maps on main gauge cluster.
The car's integration with Carplay? Even models that are 4 years newer than mine seem to still not have this. Not sure what's going on there.
you said they bothered you, so I suggested a fix. no obligation to do it if you don't care.
Because, I quote: "they bother you". Which would explain why should you bother, right?
(Also, I was specifically talking about having Android Auto/Carplay projected in gauge cluster.)
The directions being shown in the gauge cluster via carplay is still not a thing on later Kias from what I can tell, so that problem is unfixed no matter what.
We all know driving looking at a phone is bad, starring at your cluster for a few seconds can also be bad.
That's far from optimal, that would be where I have my phone, at eye level just to the left of my head, right in front of the pillar. It's perfect in every way, especially since I'm longsighted.
Slate has the right idea, car makers should get out of the user software/interface business and prioritize choice. The instrument cluster is fine, as are basic controls, but they just tend to screw things up and add complexity.
... until there's some child walking right into that visual "dead space".
I'm in the same boat, though with Android Auto or whatever. I'm honestly surprised how many people seem to need CarPlay; a comment or two down there's a stat claiming 79% of buyers wouldn't buy a car without it. Is it that different from the Android implementation? Is there something special about it?
I don't get it. It's a nice to have for sure, but honestly not that special, and gets annoying at times (when Android Auto connects on my phone, it tends to stop me from using the maps app on the phone, plus a few other minor grievances). And it's not much easier than just plugging in an aux cord.
This is on Google Maps. Nothing about Auto/CarPlay prevents this. Google just chose to do this.
If I’m spending $10K on something, I want the Android/iOS experience to be first-class instead of some shitty UI designed be people who I presume don’t drive cars.
Cars are otherwise fungible between brands. If one has CarPlay/Android Auto there is little reason to pick a brand that lacks support.
For example - when using Google Maps on my phone I can pan around the map to look at nearby places really quickly - maybe while I'm stopped at traffic lights, and then reset back to the navigation. Spotify in CarPlay is really hard to use - much harder than the normal app. Whether it plays the song you want seems to be a game of chance.
Car UIs are just universally awful. Even if somehow you find one with a decent UI, it will never get updated and within 5 years it will suck
AUX cord? It's been a few years since I've seen a phone with a headphone jack, or a car with an AUX input. I also don't miss the time where my phone had to be connected on one side to USB for charging, on the other side to the sounds system, and my navigation was done using a a 6" screen that kept falling between the chairs. Android Auto/CarPlay let's you connect one thing (or not at all), have your phone charged, your navigation clear, and your music playing smoothly and controlled with the physical car knobs.
It just works and it is, like others before me said, consistent. I can connect my iPhone to any car I drive that has CatPlay and the dashboard looks like I like it. And Spotify starts right from where it left off in the other car.
Can't speak for the Android experience.
That being said I think there are a few things that make my carplay experience _worse_ than my friends’ android auto experience: for example today I am annoyed by google maps spam me with notifications trying to get me to use googles maps instead of waze which is so fucking stupid since it’s also google and it just makes me more annoyed with google instead of being the sort of thing that would convince me to switch to android. But I have to admit the google maps and waze integration on android is better.
It's no big issue for me one way or another to have a car with the technology from factory, and I do like having the wireless connectivity - music from the phone etc is really nice - but visual maps and visual UI add no value to me personally.
The setup I have for my project car is ideal for me - a small bluetooth receiving amplifier that feeds the speakers directly. It's all hidden behind the dash, has no visible UI, but I get in the car and the phone takes over, it's in a cradle and becomes the head unit.
I never need to see a map on screen (Maybe because I grew up doing orienteering, or can just listen to the verbal directions, I'm not sure) so that doesn't bother me. And siri can handle hands-off interaction with the device when needed.
I did upgrade the head unit in my family/daily car to support carplay etc, but the primary motivator there was finding a unit that could support a reversing camera. It certainly made the interior feel more modern, but again I don't think it adds much value to me personally.
I don’t hate carplay but some things annoy me like I can’t Shazam what I’m listening to in the car because CarPlay pauses the cars audio. I would be willing to try to make it optional until CarPlay works better.
Clip based ones, worst case you can mount them on the aircon vents. They are not great in general but they are cheap and you can fit them pretty much anywhere
I have tried everything that is available at my local shops (which looks like it came from Temu)
CarPlay is a fantastic system because it keeps you off your phone.
But some of these new infotainment systems, and the complete lack of physical controls, are starting to feel extremely unsafe.
The passenger can use the phone if you want to be able to scroll through an artist's catalog, rearrange playlists, etc. CarPlay's UI is a quick way to access your current library.
Tinfoil hat time: CarPlay was created as a 4D regulatory chess move, because it enables users to continue interacting with their phones in a legislative environment where said action is otherwise illegal.
It would be hard to argue that it’s illegal to use the phone in a way that’s nearly identical to the way you interact with your vehicle controls.
I have a rivian, and my wife has a car with carplay. I've had rivians for years now. I don't miss carplay when i drive my Rivian.
In truth, I used carplay for 3 main things - navigation that didn't suck, listening to music on the apps i wanted to, and reading text messages out loud.
Rivian has made those things not suck. So i don't miss carplay.
On my wife's car, those things suck, badly, without carplay.
I'm sure there are people out there who heavily depend on carplay for other things, and thus, it really does matter if they have carplay or not.
and maybe a day will come when the features carplay could provide me are as shitty on the Rivian as they are on my wife's car, and i'll start demanding it again.
But at least right now, that's not true, and so I think Rivian's choice is fine.
Navigation was still Google Maps, and text integration was there.
But no Pandora for music. And that's the problem, in my opinion. Even Android Automotive is way behind Android Auto in app support. That reduces the owner's choices for which software they want to use for their use cases.
Something that I don't believe is discussed enough, especially here, is how bad 90% of software is in general. Software from non-software companies, almost without exception, is just junk. It has stuff tacked garbage from a partner deals, confusing organization that seemed like a product or marketing guy that never used the software. I could go on.
The exceptions, of course, are Rivian and Tesla, who actually make first-class software. On them, I don't miss it, And actually, I would be slightly annoyed if they had it, simply because it breaks up the consistency with infotainment.
My aim is device independence. In the old days, to print I had to hook up my printer to a computer. To print from a computer on the network, I needed a print server. I had to administer that. Now the printer itself hooks to the network, which is far superior.
I have an older thermostat which allows me to program vacations directly on the unit. This is superior to the newer thermostat, with which I must use my phone for this.
My dishwasher requires me to use my phone to do a delayed start. This is inferior to what it replaced, which was a model that allowed me to do delayed start from the panel on the dishwasher.
Devices should work on their own. So it’s a failure if the first thing I need to do in the car is tether it to a phone. The car needs nav, it needs radio, etc. It would be better if it has those things built in.
I understand the complaint in this thread, which is that the carmakers are bad at this. I don’t own a Tesla or Rivian, but some folks are saying their interfaces are good. Those carmakers have the right idea. I begrudgingly accept CarPlay. I don’t like it. In this era when computing is as cheap as it is and where even a TV can hook directly to network to play back content, it makes no sense that the solution on a $40,000 car is to plug it in to a phone.
Also you need to connect the phone anyway if you want hands free calling.
In this regard CarPlay is evidence of success - a sufficiently interoperable car that allows users to bring their own context and ecosystems.
CarPlay is only evidence of failure if your expectation is that the car should provide a comparable ecosystem to Android or iOS - one that must also somehow follow you in your pocket when you leave the car.
The car has two proprietary tie-ins to two dominant mobile operating systems. That’s another reason this feels like failure to me. If the car had some standard way to hook a device to it to use touch screen and output sound, I might like that.
Instead my car (2016 Honda Accord) eliminated the standard 3.5mm jack and added a janky CarPlay implementation that sometimes freezes up entirely, and there’s no way to update it. This is not progress.
Car automakers are not going to support your infotainment system (for free) even just 5 years down the line.
Even just thinking about the integrations gives me a headache (will my music app work on my car? how do I transfer my trip from Google Maps on my phone to my car?)
So the solution for today and tomorrow is to just stream your entire phone to the car.
You lost me right there Rivian. Start picturing yourselves worrying more about how your users picture themselves interacting with THEIR car... and stop worrying about controlling interactions between you and your users. Switch your frame of thinking around.
Maybe I'm overthinking things, but to me "user" implies a different more subordinate role where you take what you get, there's no "the customer is always right" when it comes to "users".
If they introduced CarPlay they will essentially be taping their wallet shut themselves from their point of view when they need the money
But their current infotainment has a lot to be desired and a bunch of dumb bugs. CarPlay would allow me as a customer to have a better experience of their vehicles to sidestep their shit navigation
I hear the r2 software will help. But CarPlay would be better experience that includes apps I want to use, like overcast. Rj just wants that subscription money and power instead of what a large percent of their users want.
I hear this theory a lot but it doesn’t actually make sense given the numbers
Tesla is a great car below the from the headlights down, I love driving my dad's Y performance to the grocery store when I'm visiting home. But no way I'm going to get a car where I can't point the vent at my armpit without using a touch screen. No way I'm going to get a car where I can't talk to whatever agent I want while stuck in traffic. I much rather have a boring car that doesn't tick me off.
If Tesla (or Rivian) add Carplay, they'll really move up the my list (still want physical vent control tho). Would you stop driving your Tesla if an update added Carplay tomorrow?
Having the ability for the air stream continually moving is more valuable to me than constantly moving it by hand.
Being able to pre-cool the car before entering it is more valuable to me than sitting in a hot car and pointing the MAX A/C directly on my face.
But... you don't. Tapping on the home button once more or swiping to the right on the app page reveals the home screen which has navigation and music together:
https://devimages-cdn.apple.com/wwdc-services/images/D35E0E8...
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/wgH6RZrtKkuAQkJUjfWW8V.jpg
It even adapts to vertical screens:
CarPlay navigation shows on the instrument cluster. The speed, state of charge, etc all move to the side so the map is right in the middle for quick viewing. Then the infotainment screen can show music or the tiled music/navigation view that CarPlay supports.
Basic music controls are on the steering wheel of course, readily accessible.
The lack of multitouch is slightly annoying, but it's not something I ever use. If I ever can't see what I need on the navigation I simply look outside for the road signs, which still exist.
You know, I don’t care so much about having CarPlay as I care about having Waze or ABRP or just any routing app other than Tesla’s.
Personally I’d stick with Tesla’s nav and use CarPlay for media and messaging, and that’s the optionality and user choice I think this post is trying to get at.
Tesla and surprisingly Hyundai are outliers, the vast majority of cars have terrible infotainment systems, and them deciding to suddenly focus on it does not assure me at all.
CarPlay is definitely an improvement if you're comparing it to something like Ford Sync for example
I think this is the difference for me - I’ve decided where I’m going before I get in the car. Either I’ve planned a route (on my phone) or got a destination through a message from a friend on LINE. Either way I already have a plan.. on my phone. So having to somehow get that into the car navigation is always going to be worse than just using my phone
One of them lets me send iMessages to groups as well as non-phone recipients like my kids. The other is my Tesla.
I’m glad for you, but if Tesla supported CarPlay I could get what I wanted and you would not be affected at all. I’m baffled why people like you even bother to share your opinion. Nobody is suggesting that you be forced to use CarPlay. See also the entire topic of this discussion.
You misunderstand. I am baffled why you would share your opinion in this discussion given that the entire premise is that CarPlay is additive, not a replacement. You made an entire point that was contrasting CarPlay with the built-in infotainment as if it were an either/or proposition
Give me CarPlay on my Tesla, I will use it AND the built-in apps too. Then I get more than I would have with either one by itself.
Your opinion is not an argument for that. It’s also not an argument against that.
So I’m not terribly sure what it adds to the discussion. I’m not surprised there are people who like Tesla’s UI. I’ve seen plenty of them online over the years.
I have rented one though, so I know enough about the software experience to know that there's (currently) only one reason why I might wish for CarPlay over the integrated software experience, and that's Waze. Maybe.
I own two (petrol) cars. One has CarPlay, the other has a rigid phone mount between the steering wheel and centre console. While I appreciate the former for its nice large widescreen map, I still prefer the latter. Waze in CarPlay mode (due to the restrictions on what can be shown on the phone screen) is simply more annoying to operate. So if was in the market for a Tesla, and I had the choice between CarPlay support or a nice phone mount between the centre console and steering wheel, I'd probably choose the latter.
(I would still campaign for Tesla to support CarPlay, because why not.)
Most firms moving away from it (or who never implemented it) seem determined to either sell additional subscription services to their user base (connectivity) or sell their user base to a third-party (either as data, or eyeballs). And for a product at this price point I find myself very annoyed at the attempted payment extraction.
Either way, I’m with you. Lots of vehicle manufacturers out there that will support it.
People like us have got to be affecting GM’s sales by some measurable amount, right?
Classic car makers are not able to make decent UIs. Plus, each car would be different. So I prefer Android Auto: it's always my Android Auto, regardless of which car I'm driving.
That’s another one that phones have just solved with the integrated password manager. The friction of providing credentials on my other devices has been reduced, but all of a sudden I need to go hunting through that pwd manager, and hunting and pecking on the infotainment keyboard, to enter a 20+ char unique pwd that modern “best practices” has established. It got bad enough for a bit (swver changes resulting in needing to re-log in) that I stopped using all of these apps for 2-3yr on our Model Y because I got tired of having to do it.
I completely agree with you
- It commoditizes the car
- it eliminates upsell features/subscriptions after the sale.
- it costs money to add carplay
- like car manufacturers don't want interchangable head units, they want to own the infotainment system.
- like wireless carriers didn't want the iphone - they wanted locked-down phones where they were the only ones who could sell you ringtones or music.
I rent quite a lot of cars. I’d rather CarPlay was taken from my car and left in all the rental cars than the other way around.
The car manufacturers are awful with their interface design, and being able to get into a new car at 9pm in the dark, and have a familiar interface while navigating some unknown city is invaluable. Consistency is safety and comfort in this situation.
I have been trying to get some useful info about the cars (e.g. range), and the only option I had was to play a completely useless video which only made me dizzy.
Then, desperate, I tried asking their AI chat what’s the expected range. It told me (great success!) but then it directed me back to the useless page.
How useless.
Also I’m sure they’d be hit with a class-action lawsuit immediately if they tried it. Manufacturers sell a lot of cars which would lead to a lot of pissed off owners.
I have a holder for my phone for when I use GPS and basically never interact with it directly after it’s set. Only real interactions are media controls via the steering wheel.
The only use cases I can see car play helping with are those who take a lot of calls/texts in their car while driving and those who listen to music and want to listen to specific songs.
Then the software side just makes the whole thing useless with a terrible UX that will never be updated.
CarPlay is a great solution because the non safety critical stuff (music, navigation) gets offloaded to a competent software company.
On my previous car it never changed from the day I bought it, other than navigation getting more and more out of date.
On my current car I get software updates occasionally. I’m not sure that function ever changed though.
Meanwhile my iPhone gets better every year. And if I buy a new phone? CarPlay can get faster. My car never will even if I wanted to pay them.
The ability to just get in your car and have the phone-powered interface right there without having to take your phone out of your pocket and mount it in the holder is something I didn’t ‘niceness’ of before experiencing it.
That car ended up sucking in other ways too. I quickly sold it and went back to buying old Lexuses. Wireless charging phone holder, and off you go. The siren call of infotainment is powerful, but actually living with it is just more fiddly bullshit I don't need in my life.
The reason was that the original stereo has a custom shape that fits the dashboard, it's rounded and the fascia is apparently easy to crack when removing.
I attach my phone with a CD-mount that goes into the CD-player (I hate those vent-mounts) and then I just connect the radio to whatever frequency the FM transmitter is set to.
It works surprisingly well, I was skeptical at first reading some negative reviews but I'm super satisfied.
The signal never cracks but YMMV, I have it set to 87.5 in rural Sweden and it sounds perfectly clear in the domain of 128 kbit MP3.
I'm a sound guy but I think with the poor sound isolation of the car and the OK speakers it sounds perfectly adequate and even a bit nostalgic— it's how I remember car trips in the 90s and early 2000s.
It costs €30-40 and I also get a USB-C PD and a second USB-QC 3.0 on the device.
Simple and keeps everything original in the car.
1. Proper Voice Texting
2. Google maps for routing with (good) traffic data.
The Voice Texting just a release or two ago - its okay so far but not as good as CarPlay. Google traffic landed a while back (in Rivian's map which I prefer over Google Maps)
I'll take the voice texting for what is otherwise a very elegant and well designed UI - that keeps getting better.
Full disclosure. Even when I have a rental with CarPlay I just use Spotify and google maps. Both of which are integrated into the Rivian UI. So YMMV
Also no one is mentioning that maybe we should not encourage users to use 1000s of apps in their car? It would be irresponsible to easily allow users to watch youtube while driving. Keeping the set of apps usable through the car is a responsibility in automobiles that are already becoming too distracting as is.
I could easily afford better, but have little interest in doing so. It’s low miles, paid for, handles well in the snow, and is in decent shape. A car gets me from Point A to Point B, and I want it to do so reliably and safely. I couldn’t care any less, what people think of me. Life’s too short.
I also write iOS apps; ones that make a lot of use of navigation stuff.
I like being able to use my app to determine a destination, plug it into CarPlay, and immediately get a map to where I want. Point A, meet Point B.
I’m sure that some of the systems fancier cars use, may be fine for this kind of thing, but CarPlay does it very smoothly.
I’m with the author. No CarPlay, no sale.
I really don’t think any manufacturer is concerned about what I think, though. There’s a lot of fish in the sea.
For a budget car, I’d be perfectly happy if they had a screen for CarPlay/Android Auto that didn’t do anything else if a phone wasn’t connected. I think this makes a lot of sense as a cost cutting measure. Maybe it would just be used for the mandated backup camera.
I also love it for rental cars. I can get in any rental, and instead of having to learn my way around or figure out a Garmin add-on, CarPlay can make the navigation and music instantly familiar with all the data I need.
You shouldn't be doing this while driving. If you're doing this while not driving, you still can. Carplay doesn't make your phone inert while connected. You can still use Google Maps on your phone to punch in a location or look around the area, while still connected to Carplay.
> vastly superior and convenient way to view the same map you can see on your iPhone.
The map and the interface is vastly superior on my phone. Google Maps on iOS is barely usable while connected to CarPlay.
You shouldn’t operate anything while driving. Do that before you leave.
When browsing? I guess. When driving? I have a hard time agreeing with that.
> You shouldn’t operate anything while driving. Do that before you leave.
Exactly, so you not being able to do anything with Google Maps on the Carplay screen doesn't matter, since you don't need to do anything through there to begin with. Set your destination on your phone before you set of (whose functionality isn't reduced by being connected to Carplay), then the screen is naught more than a display after that.
Huh. That doesn't happen with wired carplay (at least for me), and I can't see why this would be different.
> I also disliked the Google Maps spam I got on CarPlay while using other navigation apps.
I haven't noticed that either for that matter. When you say 'spam' here, what exactly do you mean?
This was about a year ago, I completely stopped using Google Maps since.
So instead of trying to look at a tiny screen that’s clipped onto an air vent, I can use the screens and integrated controls, keeping my hands on the wheel and my eyes more in the road.
Also, the biggest battery drain is having the screen on. CarPlay allows me to have the screen on the phone off while still accessing all the data. With a wireless adapter, I can also leave the phone in my pocket, so I don’t need to set it up every time I get in the car or remember to grab it when getting out. So it feels more like the native experience of using the car.
I don't know that I believe that.
It's pretty much like any new car as far as entertainment and maps. Plus, it's got physical buttons for everything else. I think recent cars may well be coming back to what I have on my old car.
ps. not mentioned, Anrdoid auto and Carplay are H264, later H265, video players with touch control and buttons in a return channel. The phones render the display internally and project it as video to the display. That's all. This is why much older generation displays with at least reasonable SOCs can run them near perfectly. They are not running Anrdoid themselves. In fact some of them are operating system-less SOCs that have nearly no firmware but a video player and the support for the touchscreen and buttons. Much like that crappy video player built into old TVs ten years ago.
I have them on my motorcycles too. It's way better than a phone, in that the user interface is designed to be less interactive and more focusses with larger buttons.
The only advantage over a traditional car media center/nav is the always updated and personalized map/nav.
So it is kinda expected to be there: if it is not there then a car needs to be something special. So I think buyers don’t even ask for it because they assume it will be there (and absence becomes much more noticeable than its presence).
The correct route for someone with interview access to Rivian to clarify whether this scenario applies would be to review their legal terms for owners and then point-blank ask in a recorded interview ‘whether Rivian’s vehicles are reporting to Rivian what music their buyers play in Rivian vehicles’. This is a nuanced sentence: whether is yes/no; information is too broad to weasel out of; ‘on what music’ focuses on a private aspect of car ownership and is a callback to the VHS rental rulings; ‘in their vehicles’ is not only restricted to what’s connected to the headunit by usb or Bluetooth or radio, but also covers the headunit-connected microphones in the vehicle as well. If they say yes, the questions become obvious. If they say no, the followup should be to ask if Rivian contractually guarantees that they will not someday issue a software update that begins doing so. Either it does not, or it does. Two questions max to either confirm or refute a suspicion.
GM cited ‘the ability to improve cars’ as why it’s refusing CarPlay, but as the OP article clearly shows, GM could simply continue to improve the cars and the screen surrounding the CarPlay dedicated window, while continuing to improve their own built-in functions using the data from those who do not use it for the benefit of those same users. GM’s justifications last year in this regard are just as obtuse as Rivian’s this year. Given that similarity, I suspect you’re right: Rivian does indeed seem to be trying not to appear desperately in need of cash by reselling user data for subscription revenue profit: ‘buy our three-ton six-figure vehicle so that we can make $1/year off of you to keep our business afloat’ is horrendous optics and would lead to open mockery of their business.
* The GM/FTC 2026 case only prevents GM from selling data associated with vehicle driving. Headunit usage cannot be readily assumed to be ‘driving’ data in the case context of vehicle insurers, and so continued sale of radio usage data to (for imaginary example) Nielsen would be unaffected by the specific, narrow, and temporary 2026 ruling.
The car's own cellular connection can still report large amounts of telemetry, such as the car's location in real time, how many people are in it, etc. And if modern cars are anything like smart TVs, send "content recognition" screenshots home to infer what drivers use the onboard screen for.
I refuse to drive a car without first unplugging the cell modem; this is more or less easy depending on the make and model, so do your research.
Every car I have purchased has satellite radio factory installed. And each time SiriusXM will not shut up about trying to get me to sign up. Over and over. It takes years before they give up.
I don’t want it. So why is it in the car? Because they pay Ford and Honda and everyone else to put it there.
Why did they both have Spotify? And iHeartRadio? Who even uses that? All sorts of other things. There’s a kickback for every one.
But unlike satellite none of them work without a cell connection. And they won’t use your phone. You have to pay the car maker for their overpriced connectivity. That’s what they want you to do.
Money money everywhere. But if I use CarPlay or android auto guess who doesn’t get a cut.
“People will think our software is bad.” It is, that’s why I want CarPlay.
If you try to put a gate in front of it of a $25/mo car data plan, forget it.
It’s 4G? Wow. My phone is only 5G. It’s a hotspot? So is my phone. And I’m the only one here anyway. I get updates to your maps? I don’t like your maps.
It’s like they’re trying to sell flavoring to make dirty water taste better, without ever stopping to think most people don’t like dirty water.
But they certainly get a lot more if you use their maps and entertainment apps.
This is the CEO of Rivian's software arm -- his job is to create and sell software that runs in the car. Carplay and Android Auto effectively make him unnecessary.
If you listen to the interview, he has bold ideas about how the car should somehow be the center of one's computing ecosystem. It's ridiculous because the smartphone is already the center! And people like that! And it just makes sense! They're fighting this dumb battle because they have to. But ultimately every car manufacturer wants to get away from Carplay so they can own that tiny fraction of computing that happens on the drive to and from work.
A good middle ground would be to have physical buttons to interact with the manufacturer interface and the touch screen to interact exclusively with CarPlay
I kind of disagree with this. Airpods are purely additive, customers can just choose to use different headphones with their iPhone if they want. But they don't want, because Apple lets Airpods interact with the iPhone in a way that other manufacturers can't.
So no, carplay wouldn't be mandatory but it's likely that Apple's leverage will kill their in house offering.
[1] There are probably some features I'm forgetting that probably count as part of the infotainment, but which Carplay doesn't touch, like AC and battery info and management. The AC in my own car is completely separate from the infotainment system, but that probably doesn't apply to all cars. But even in those cases, it'd be better if integrated into Carplay, or just left out of what's happening on screen, and instead be given seperate manual controls.
Customers don’t want this stuff. They want to launch Netflix or Prime Video or Disney and watch. But the premium hardware brands need to fight to stay alive, and giving customers what they want is a death sentence.
Like car infotainment, they figure out how to use it, bitch about it, and some connect an Apple device and use that instead.
If you want to mix and match features across what your car offers and CarPlay offers (e.g. use Podcasts app but stick with native navigation), the UX starts to breakdown very quickly.
The idea customers should have control over the interfaces they use needs to be reinforced. If anything this is why the AI wave has gained so much hype as now people get to bypass so much nonsense masquerading as UX.
Preference for Android Auto/Carplay is much more than (subjectively) better navigation/media. It's about all the other apps that Tesla/Rivian don't support like WhatsApp, Waze, etc.
> Our last three cars, the eldest of which was from the 2017 model year [...].
Is it common to buy three cars in let's say 10 years? That seems like a large amount of spend (afaik cars depreciate in value rather quick?) and -- barring accidents -- a really short time to have to replace something as sturdy as a car; If I get less than three years out of a phone it feels like a waste and it feels like the main barrier for phone longevity (besides batteries, which are replaceable) is security updates.
IDK, since I don't see any comments on it, it must not be that strange, it just struck me as odd.
I believe his family owns 2 cars, but had to replace one of them recently when a pebble caused a freak accident, essentially totaling the engine in one of the cars. Hence 3 cars purchased in 10 years.
Edit: Episode #592, at the very end: https://overcast.fm/+ABQnv4mYCFc/1:40:38
If you do the first, you end up not being out a terrible amount of money, especially these days with the high value of used.
But Tesla and Rivian both have excellent UIs. I don’t find myself missing CarPlay in a Tesla.
That said, I agree with the author. Autos are not software companies and they are only locking us in for their own benefit. Anybody not supporting other common standards is probably not telling the whole truth about the reasoning.
As a tesla owner, i feel carPlay is such a dumb idea. you buy a car that cost ~$50k+ to rely on every drive on your phone. It's a freedom to be phone free.
And yeah, it's still integrated. My profiles are in sync, if my wife sit down in the car, it adjust the seat height, wheel, temperature , music etc. If I'm listening Spotify using my headphones it switches to car the moment i open the door etc.
people have suffered through its clunky handshake for so long that they've started defending their captor.
My friend's $100k Audi makes him spend five minutes accepting terms of service just to enter a GPS destination. On contrary, he can hop into my Tesla and drive off instantly ...location already sent from my phone, key shared from the phone, but wow, no car play involved. One my friends owns android. No problem at all.
The challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users."
I kept reading past this part thinking I didn't misread the title, because as he explained, a mirroring solution that takes up every pixel could potentially be addictive, and it made sense that he didn't want the UX to fundamentally change when people drive Rivian's cars. And for that, kudos.
But now I realize your case is that CarPlay is additive. Ok, great! I do wish I could use Android on my car, which is newer than your 2017 one but only features Bluetooth, music and Phone, pairing, rather than a full OS mirror.
Do I wish it had more? Yes. But am I less distracted on the road? Yes. So I would buy a Rivian.
You should be not distracted at all.
The premise of the chapter is that some features in software are like CarPlay when looking for a new car - they become an important must-have for the buying decision - as opposed to “cupholder” features, those features which are a mere minor improvement for existing users.
I'm confused about the cupholder example though: I'd MUCH rather skip CarPlay (which I love) than cupholders in a car, but I wouldn't shop for a car based on whether it has cupholders because surely they all do, right? It seems like shopping based on whether the car has A/C or something.
Thank you!
The point is that you must make sure your product has the “CarPlay” type of features in order to get new customers for whom those features are must-haves.
Beware of spending your time only on adding new “cupholder” style features, which make existing customers slightly happier but don’t attract new customers.
Especially be aware that when you launched your product X years ago, some of today’s “CarPlay”-style features didn’t even exist. Your current customers are not asking for them, because they are mostly happy with your product as it is.
If you only listen to what existing customers are asking for, you might not even realise that these new “CarPlay” features are stopping you from getting certain new customers.
Not to mention that yes, a bigger screen probably is better. Bigger target = easier to hit. The legality can become a lessened problem, depending on jurisdiction. Using your phone while driving is often specifically illegal, but using your car's infotainment system might not be automatically illegal (it might count as distracted driving or whatever, but the threshold of proof is higher).
Me: I literally will not buy a car that does.
That doesn't mean they have to ship most of the infotainment system though. They could just leave that hole there for Carplay to fill. But that would be admiring defeat, and we can't have that.
Anyway, separately to anything car related, I got fed up of some of google's treatment of android and switched to Murena's /e/os which is a de-googled spin of android. It doesn't support android auto, and that held me back from switching for ages.
Long story short, I don't miss android auto at all. Bluetooth is absolutely fine for playing media from my phone etc.
(my car does already have functionality like google maps built in though, so I might feel differently if it didn't)
See if you care in 5 years when the maps are out of date.
The reason CarPlay and Android Auto exist is that car infotainment systems used to suck.
Wassym Bensaid sounds like an incompetent person to be a chief software officer working on cars if he does not understand this is not how carplay works. It's either this, or he's just weaseling out of saying "we want to capture all our users data, and we want to put in rent seeking subscriptions into our cars, which is going to be hard if we enable carplay".
Do not buy cars from companies like this.
That way they can silence people being too vocal about what they want. The tech way.
In all seriousness though, Tesla can’t include CarPlay fast enough to make companies like rivian take a moment and actually consider carplay.
Also atp is one of the best podcasts out there
I suspect that 90% of the people that "need" carplay are actually just using it as a bluetooth speaker and would be fine with a good phoneholder and bluetooth/aux connection.
I always feel strange connecting to someone else their carlpay or to a rental car.
Is it unreasonable to have this functionality built in to the car? I can't see any good reasons not to have it from the consumer's point of view. Carplay doesn't even have a licence fee, so it's basically free to implement.
And it's not like there's a shortage of options. Removing the cars that don't have it of your shortlist is an easy way to filter off the options that don't even pretend to respect you as a user.
Honest question, why? It is literally remote desktop + some pipes for audio and screen touches. It's no different than connecting an external touchscreen to a smartphone, lapdock-style.
I imagine everyone who is fully involved with the carplay ecosystem feels equally as strongly in the other direction and has for a long time.
Anyone I know that has one, will immediately either plugin or connect whenever they go live.
There's other benefits like (in the aforementioned article), CarPlay Ultra being able to send data to multiple screens like the front dash. Where having my directions right next to me speed means I don't have to check two screens.
But just getting into you car and having it project your phone interface instantly from your pocket on a screen that is part of the car is really nice. I don't even have a super large screen (10.5 inches, widescreen) but it's significantly better than looking at my phone. It even integrates with the heads up display.
> It's hard to really imagine the experience of maps or music being improved by seeing it on my dashboard screen compared to right next to it on the phone.
It might be hard to imagine but it shouldn't be. I would find it very hard to go back to fiddling with my phone rather than have it nicely integrated into all the buttons and dials on my car. Never taking my phone out of my pocket and forgetting it in the car -- I did that a lot. The audio integration across the radio, phone apps, and navigation is perfect -- Bluetooth doesn't come close and was always a frustration. It's just better in every way, that's why people like it.
How about instead of your phone? You don't need your phone dash mount if you have Carplay.
You should be able to have it only show the music app or whatever if that's what bothers you. My cars default infotainment shows the map by default too, so this is more or less the same from my point of view (other than the fact that the car's maps are out of date).
> The last time I tried it I didn't like that I couldn't switch between different music apps without exiting the entire system.
As in you need to exit one app to open another? You can add whatever apps to the home(?) screen if you need to see them both at the same time, but if you want two apps to be fully open at the same time, that's not happening, as that's probably a hold-over from phone UI. Or am I misunderstanding you here?
When I tried Android Auto it actually took over my car's infotainment system and made my phone slightly slower having to drive another screen? I dunno it's been years. I just don't see the value in it personally.
For maps, having up to date maps is an enormous relief compared to relying on the outdated maps that came with your car (at least in my experience).
> When I tried Android Auto it actually took over my car's infotainment system
Yes. I prefer it that way. The car's default infotainment system might as well not exist for all I care, since I prefer the Carplay experience.
> and made my phone slightly slower having to drive another screen?
I haven't noticed this problem.
For context, I drive a ‘91 GMC pickup, so neither cars nor car audio are super important to me. I still bought a CarPlay-enabled Android head unit because it’s less of a hassle to use.
I think you mean addictive.
I don’t know whether the auto makers actually forced them to be compatible or it was a choice in Google’s part to get into cars that already had CarPlay.
But it really doesn’t seem like it’s a big hassle. Most of it is probably just certification testing to be allowed to use the names/logos.
These things contain a whole System-on-a-Chip board. I presume what it's acting like a middle box; pretending to be the headunit to the phone, and then sending the phone's output to the headunit, pretending to be a phone.
Since they need a quite beefy CPU to do that, I'm guessing they don't just pass along packets, but actually speak the protocol on both ends, and perhaps transcode the a/v stream.
I get the goal, and I'm glad there's at least some semblance of a standard. But it's still bad.
The thing with CarPlay that I hate the most is that it is laggy. I have it on a Series 5 BMW and Spotify has a delay of at least 4s when you select a song and when it actually starts playing. Same thing when you rapidly skip tracks - the interface changes but the speakers (or any other non-CarPlay interface) can't really keep up. It really is a joke, especially on that kind of vehicle.
Primary reason is the map. On the Tesla you have this beautiful map that you can pan around and pinch zoom in and out of.
On the versions of CarPlay that I’ve used, you can this minimal map that can’t be pinch zoomed. Seems like you have to tap the pan buttons by hand to get it to slide around.
It’s just generally unusable. Like I don’t even know why people like this. Oh and then the nanny aspect of your phone becoming a black screen of just enumerated turns with no way to actually see the map yourself (if the car screen is unwilling to work right, my first instinct was to go to my phone but alas no they brick it).
Before I owned a Tesla I remember thinking what a mistake it was that it didn’t have CarPlay because I assumed it was the best. Well it’s not. Not by a long shot.
Ford Mach E it was then.
However making sure everyone knows on various forums is a much more powerful way in the long run. It will take more time, but I'm not alone.
Even Tesla said they started working on CarPlay support when their sales started to suffer for unrelated reasons.
C8 corvette has been car of the year since 2020 and will remain that way until the C9.
And at this point it seems like 80% of car manufacturers just ship android automotive anyway. You really think they’re gonna do that and turn off android auto support?
When I plug it into the USB socket, my Peugeot 207 starts playing a random podcast track on my phone. No way of stopping it. If I stop it, it starts again. I can't select a different audio output, e.g. the phone speaker. There are plenty of people complaining about this on the forums.
Yes, it's a bug in either the iPhone or the car. Yes the bug shouldn't be there, but it is. I should be able to disable it.
I'm in the habit of bringing a spare battery with me so I can use phone sat-nav.
But why can't my iPhone let me set permissions for the thing I plug it into? It's unreasonable to prevent me from changing the audio output.
Examples:
- https://www.peugeotforums.com/threads/mp3-ipod-random-play-p...
- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254051162?sortBy=rank
Presumably it's been a problem since day 1. Meaning it was broken on day 1.
> But why can't my iPhone let me set permissions for the thing I plug it into?
There's the 'trust this device?' popup that should prevent the problem if you don't want the car to do anything with your device. If you want finder control, then from Apple's point of view, it's probably that this would needlessly clutter the UI, given that it shouldn't be an issue in the first place. Then again, I don't think Android supports finer controls either way.
Usedtacould.
I have an old Honda Fit that I installed one of Pioneer’s “app radio” units into, which included replacing the dash facia. I use CarPlay on it almost exclusively, but if I want Pioneer’s incredibly mediocre UI/UX, it’s a single button-tap away - either on the left side of the radio via a capacitance button, or on the first page of CarPlay’s app icons.
When I rented a car to drive to visit family, it had CarPlay. The infotainment experience was familiar, so I could focus more on the road ahead instead of fussing with some newfangled vendor-specific infotainment shitshow.
When I rented Nissan in Canada, it too had CarPlay - but with a nasty bug where using voice commands or making a call would crash the whole unit. I figured out very quickly not to do that, and the rest of CarPlay worked a treat for the trip - a far cry better from Nissan’s UI/UX.
This is why I didn’t hop on board infotainment systems until CarPlay and Android Auto were mature options, opting to stick with my phone over USB for audio/iPod controls instead: none of the major manufacturers except maybe Panasonic actually give a shit about the UI/UX. They don’t build intuitive systems that can be operated without looking, and they scoop up far too much superfluous data to enable simple features. I refuse to buy the vehicle maker excuse of “superior experience” anymore when time after time, the reality is these car companies think the infotainment data is some sort of goldmine of revenue and letting Apple or Google have any say over the experience is tantamount to leaving money on the table.
If I cannot have CarPlay, and your EV or vehicle won’t let me swap the infotainment unit for an aftermarket one that does, then I am not buying your fucking spyware on wheels. I don’t think anyone else should tolerate that bullshit either, especially on what averages to be a $70k+ purchase nowadays.
Like I said, it's not because I'm a fan of Apple. Honestly, fuck Apple. Fuck their stupid walled garden and their $99/yr developer fee and their planned obsolesence and their lack of a headphone jack and everything else. But fuck Google too. And especially fuck all the car makers with their crappy infotainment software.
The truth is, I put up with an iPhone and with CarPlay simply because it is slightly less shitty than all the other shitty options.
I wish a Linux phone was a viable option but they are years away from being truly usable and decades away from any hope of mass integration with cars.
Once that happens we all know what comes next: enshittification.
If the car infotainment market is what counts as 'thriving' with 'unique options', then I don't want a thriving market, because that's apparently a bad thing. Sure, there are plenty of unique options. Outside of Carplay, Android Auto and Tesla (and maybe a few other very recent models), they're all shit.
I don't want hundreds of bad options. I want one (at least, more is preferable) good option.
Anything else can wait until I stop.
MAYBE in the rare case it has wireless CarPlay only, but can play music over USB from my phone. Maybe.
The cars primary UI is the screen. Car Clay defers the cars experience to Apple .
Customers have been demanding CarPlay because most car UIs are poor. But if done properly, they can exceed CarPlay while being consistent and well integrated
One of the more irritating parts of late stage capitalism is the complete inability of its scions (CEOs, etc.) to say any of this. The gaslighting is insufferable.
The one that interests me now is the one that selectively takes over the Tesla screen.
Those are a great solution for a car that doesn’t have an infotainment screen.
But Teslas, Rivians, and GMs all do. So why should anyone have to do that?
And cars are increasingly a software-bound experience that CarPlay can only get you out of so far. I have a Volvo XC40 EV, and even though it's a decent car and I've had multiple Volvos that I've loved, I probably won't buy another one because the software experience is so bad. And that's WITH CarPlay!
This is silly. I have installed Android Auto head units into each of my last three cars. It costs a few hundred bucks and takes an afternoon.
I simply will not buy a car that won't easily accept a double DIN head unit.
My last car could accept a double DIN head unit but I never put one in because then I'd lose any way to control all the settings in the car. And that was a car from 2014! The integration is even tighter now.
Are those even a thing anymore? The vast majority of new cars have some sort of custom all-in-one dashboard display.
Casey Liss, let me help you:
Apple and Google are monopolies.
You are boot licking an invasive species trillion dollar company.
These two megacorps are trying to put their greedy tendrils into the automotive industry and extract even more money from an industry that is not healthy and very difficult to succeed at.
It's high time the governments of the world told Google and Apple to fuck off and leave both consumers and other industries alone. Told the both of them that it's time for their platforms to become an open standard.
That phones themselves must be an open standards. With open web installs without scare walls and deeply hidden settings.
The inversion of control needs to make Apple and Google the bitch here. Not the automotive industry that can't even dream of the insane margins the tech industry has.
Cars should be able to interface with any phone without having to subjugate themselves to Google and Apple. Because this is a perverted inversion of control.
People own cars. Not two tech titans.
Bluetooth?
The author acts like manufacturers get CarPlay for free when it has a high cost, high constraints, and gives over most or all of the dash over to another company.
The dash isn't the manufacturer's property. It's the car owner's.
This was covered in the article, that’s just CarPlay Ultra, which is still fairly new and hardly any companies have implemented it. That’s not what’s being asked for.
> fear thinking the old car software will come back.
Why would this not be a concern? Condition forces higher quality. If these car companies are competing against Apple and Google, they need to stop phoning it in. If they block them out, they can ship more junk and drivers are just stuck with it.
If they believe it what they ship, they shouldn’t be afraid to also build in CarPlay/Android Auto support. Have the sales people go over the built in system so people give it a chance. Impress the customers with it. Advertise how good it is. Eliminating the competition and claiming it’s for the best, does not inspire confidence.
And Apple doesn’t just take it over. It requires a per-model design package the OEM makes with Apple’s help. So they can keep all their logos and design elements they care about.
They still don’t do it, as you pointed out. But it’s not like using an AppleTV to avoid the terrible built in smart TV interface. The OEM is still there.
I have a new car with actually pretty decent modern car software; far better than the decades of crap software I put up with my last car. Carplay is still better. And in another decade, Carplay will be even better and my decent car software will be the same.
(And the car software and Carplay actually play very nicely together -- it is not all or nothing)
The one in my car sucks, and to use the most basic features (navigation, music) that cost nothing on CarPlay (beyond my phone bill) cost $15-25/month from Toyota.
This is satire. I refuse to believe anything else.
Plus various rental cars!
Rented a number of GMs for sure, maybe a Nissan? Some of that is more fuzzy.
I wish software leaning Internet people stop framing that center console tablet as "the car". It's worse than people pointing at display monitors and calling it computers. They're just cheap complimentary tablets attached to the car. If we were to fully embrace the line of thinking that frame the touchscreen being the car, the Slate Truck cannot exist, since it lacks the car of the car. In reality it does exist, because that thing is just a tiny add-on unit of a car.
The reason why there's been zero cars with CarPlay Ultra is because those cheap tablets remote controlling features of the actual car that hosts it, like speedometer, is weird, and way too complicated, and plain unworkable, on top of being too controlling.
I'm not defending car brands, I find conversations with misunderstandings like this less than ideally productive. The 5.25" DVD drive unit is not the computer.
> that does take over every screen of the car.
I promise, he knows exactly what it is.
What I've been saying is that the infotainment is external to the car, not significantly more connected and integrated than the spare tire, and that everyone needs to understand that.
There's only a couple of Aston Martin cars that support it, but there's supposed to be more coming. See: https://www.stuff.tv/features/apple-carplay-ultra-compatibil...
The "infotainment" (the display on the middle of the car) controls a lot of things now. On my car I can change things like lane departure or collision warning, changing the car's behaviour, for example that it brakes itself if it thinks it's about to hit something. You can even set a speed limiter, changing the behaviour of the car when you put pedal to the metal. Instead of going faster and faster up to 220km/h, you can modify the car to go faster and faster, but only to e.g. 120 km/h. How's that "external to the car".
CarPlay Ultra is just an extension of that where the gauge cluster is now just another infotainment screen that displays the received telemetry data. It does not have access to the ECU, cannot interfere, can be rebooted with impunity, etc.
But it exists. And is available in at least one production car.