For pure interaction, CarPlay as a generic solution is very hard to beat infotainment systems that are deeply integrated with the vehicle itself. Its advantages are mainly these:

- 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.

Surprised no one's mentioned it so far, but CarPlay / Android Auto aren't just features, they're consistency. Across makes, models, years. I know what I'm getting when I connect my phone - and if anyone uses my car with their own device, they get their own dashboard, as well. 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. CarPlay makes this easy, because the interface is linked to your own personal device.

Author says "I literally will not buy a car that does not support CarPlay."

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 am clearly in the minority here but I have driven cars with and without CarPlay and honestly do not care whether a car has it. I use my phone for navigation and mount it such that when I look at it I am not taking my eyes off the road. I find this to be far better than having to look down at the center of my dashboard but CarPlay navigation UI via Google Maps or Waze also works fine so it’s not a huge difference.

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.

I used to refuse to buy cars without carplay. For many of the reasons I expect others do.

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.

I can’t be the only one who thinks we’re going a bit too far with the attention grab of vehicle infotainment.

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.

So this goes back to the loss of the DIN in vehicles. Vehicle manufacturers shot themselves in the tire decades ago when they stopped caring about DIN space and started forcing themselves to develop and then abandon the lead position on vehicle infotainment. Carplay isn't very special when you consider any 90s and early 2000s vehicle with a DIN slot or two can have all the exact same functionality as Carplay with unlimited upgrades for around $200 in hardware. The OEMs failed to innovate and outright hubris meant they would not roll-back to what worked well for everyone. Apple deserves to eat their lunch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_7736

I think CarPlay is evidence of failure.

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.

> that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users

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.

I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I’ve had Teslas for 8 years and we currently also have car that supports CarPlay. The CarPlay interface is overall far inferior, especially with navigation. First of all, searching for destinations is terrible on CarPlay compared to Tesla! Even worse, Apple didn’t even add multi-touch support to CarPlay until iOS 26, and the vast majority of cars (including ours) don’t support it, so you have to hunt for and tap the zoom controls, which is pretty barbaric compared to the fluid pinch and zoom gestures that work on Tesla and our other devices. Also on our CarPlay car, it never seems to know the direction the car is facing until it starts moving, which becomes incredibly frustrating navigating out of a parking lot. The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back, whereas on Tesla (and Rivian) you can choose and control music while keeping navigation on your screen.

I agree with the author: CarPlay is table stakes for me. Whenever an automaker says a car won't support CarPlay, I mentally cross it off my list. Which is fine, because there are plenty of other viable options.

As an R1S owner I feel like the elephant in the room is that the Rivian developed infotainment software is just not very good. For example, the Spotify app has weird scrolling issues and the interface for offline downloads is clunky and unreliable. The maps/route planning is fine but not really any better than Apple/Google Maps (or ABRP). So I find it hard to give much credit to their argument against CarPlay when they’re not providing a better experience via their native apps.

It's simple - carplay is a financial threat to car manufacturers.

- 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.

Tried clicking the links to the Rivian web page. What a horrible experience.

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.

I’m with Casey on this: I will not buy a car without CarPlay. Of course, I haven’t bought a car since 2013. That one is a Tesla Model S and I think its UI is pretty decent for maps and playing audio, but I have rented enough cars since then to know that I would much prefer CarPlay support. If I had to replace my car today, I’d probably buy a Volvo EX90, which is the electric version of the XC90 Casey talks about.

I use CarPlay all the time in my car and love it.

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.

Like the author, CarPlay is table stakes for any vehicle purchase. I literally installed a Sony screen receiver in my 2016 F150, that was given to my by my father after he lost his license due to his age. That was a fun weekend with the dash apart reliving my younger days when I did car audio installations. The truck lasted 1 week before I had the dash apart to get CarPlay back. The native Ford infotainment system was so crap.

They want to hold you captive to subscription plans. If they allow CarPlay, it gives consumers more options for cellular connectivity, music, navigation, and other apps.

I've had CarPlay on my last two cars, a 2018 VW Golf and a 2024 Ford Maverick. It's fine. Sometimes you plug your phone into the USB port (unlocked) and it refuses to connect for several minutes very frustrating when you want to start navigation and media playback before leaving the driveway. My favourite headunit experience was my aftermarket single DIN Kenwood (https://www.kenwood.com/ca/car/caraudio/receivers/kdc-bt282u...) in my MK4 Golf it was an easy swap. You could plug in any iPod or iPhone and it would play and control the audio directly from the headunit and show title information on the display. Plus, it would take any USB storage device and play music. It was such a simple and efficient experience.

Maybe it’s cause I’ve never actually used it, but I really only care about a stable / well supported Bluetooth connection.

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.

I drive a 2025 Kia Ceed and the all the infotainment does is get in my way. Id pay to have it removed. Carplay & Siri helps me stay focused on driving in a safe way.

I considered buying a new 2-DIN CarpPlay stereo for my 2003 Suzuki Grand Vitara but went with a simple 12V LENCENT Bluetooth V5.4 FM Transmitter instead that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket.

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.

All i want is car without infotainment of any kind. And a nice place to mount phone or tablet.

When I bought a Rivian I missed CarPlay. There were a few things that really stood out.

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

CarPlay is also a contract between mobile devs and automakers. It allows for things like displaying "current playing" on the dash, media buttons on the steering wheel that control apps, and turn by turn directions show on dash and HUD. A screen cast may be able to do this but not in a consistent dependable way.

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.

CarPlay is for cars with shitty software

As someone who only had 20+ year old cars and motorcycles, I don't see what's CarPlay supposed to solve? All I need is a Bluetooth-capable radio and a phone holder to display the navigation, so I can listen to my music and focus on driving. Phone doesn't need to be touched unless changing destinations. Do people seriously need to be constantly entertained while driving?

Personally I found CarPlay to be incredibly underwhelming. Very limited app support beyond navigation and music. In addition I frequently have issues switching which phone it's using thanks to terrible iOS BT and of course the ever annoying issue where someone is using the phone that is projecting, and your music suddenly cuts out to play obnoxious audio.

The only advantage over a traditional car media center/nav is the always updated and personalized map/nav.

Over 90% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. already support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

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).

I prefer my WV Up! infotainment system. It's just a dumb radio/media with a factory phone mount. The actual radio has physical buttons to navigate the config and modes and for everything else you use the phone's touch screen. With 6.8" phone screen it's really good.

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 hesitate to propose ulterior motives, but given there have been several seemingly obtuse objections to projection from Rivian, perhaps the CEO is concerned that, if Rivian supports projection, it will harm the perception of the value of their software stack? Related, I think they licensed their stack to VW.

>If Rivian’s native UI is so great, then their customers… won’t use CarPlay. It’s that simple.

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.

I've never seen a normal car infotainment system I liked (at least beyond 'put in a CD, then use next and previous track'), and Carplay is such a massive improvement over that. It's good, it's consistent, it's the same everywhere, it's up to date, it uses data from my phone. There's nothing to not like. The rest of the infotainment system could literally not exist[1] (beyond integrating buttons to actually control Carplay), and I wouldn't care. The car's infotainment system could just be a Carplay runtime and I'd be good.

[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.

This is familiar to me from an adjacent industry…smart TVs. The reason Samsung, LG, et al develop their own UIs is not because they are good at it. It’s because if they give up and let their device become a dumb host for apps, they lose their relationships with customers (i.e. ad revenue) and accelerate their race to the bottom as commodity hardware vendors.

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.

Even when CarPlay is full screen, it is possible to have a the manufacturer's UI available. My Ford Sync 3 will let me get back the the car UI via an icon that is the Ford logo - it loos like a regular app, but it's sole purpose is "go back to the car's infotainment." This is useful for controlling the radio and tweaking settings, but not a lot else.

CarPlay is a nightmare for many because its premise only considers 2 options: use CarPlay, don’t use CarPlay.

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.

Is the mechanism through which CarPlay/Android Auto works locked down? Could a third party make a competing app for iOS or android that would connect to cars and run on the screen? Or perhaps a special piece of hardware to hook in to older cars?

Casey is right, but the whole point for the Rivian position is they see themselves as the car software platform of the future. The idea we want primarily phone UIs in our cars is antithetical to their very existence, or why VW invested in them.

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.

All CarPlay is is sending video and audio (like a Moonlight stream) over USB Ethernet. It should be a recognized standard at this point so that you can have a custom device plug in to your car, and have your own UI. But regulations (think watching YouTube while you drive) unfortunately prevent this

The strangest part is that this should be an easy win for car makers. If your native system is better, people will use it. If it isn't, forcing them to use it doesn't make it better, it just makes the car feel worse

Android Auto has upgraded Google Assistant to Gemini recently. Huge improvement. All the AI conversations are now available with a single button on your steering wheel. You can say "play that song about [something]" and it will get it most of the time.

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.

I don't own a car, and I found the article mildly interesting, but I can't get over the sentence

> 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.

CarPlay is great. Generally much better than the interface offered by traditional manufacturers.

But Tesla and Rivian both have excellent UIs. I don’t find myself missing CarPlay in a Tesla.

Read about half of the article wondering when it was going to explain why carplay is addictive

I’ll buy an accessory display that supports CarPlay/Android Auto and attach it to the dashboard and still won’t use the navigation in the infotainment system.

Software in cars ages like milk, and car manufacturers are not good at software. I would much rather just have a dumb screen my phone pairs with.

Won’t buy a car without CarPlay is crazy… lol CarPlay head units are like $200 tops

carPlay is a horrible every time you sit down inside of the car, you need to care about connectivity, if your phone charged etc. It's a neurotic habit.

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.

“Stop being so intransigent” / “I will NEVER buy a car that doesn’t support CarPlay” is pretty funny.

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.

carPlay is Stockholm syndrome on wheels.

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 interesting thing is that there is a lot of evidence that Tesla is about to embed Carplay. Rivian has taken over the privileged insanely expensive EV car market, as the Model Y is the closest thing to the old Honda/Toyota dominance, just in the EV space.

Personally, I avoid all cars that have CarPlay. This technology has nothing to do with a car. It's just a phone on a bigger screen, pure marketing by Apple that stifles innovation within the car manufacturing industry. I love Apple products, but CarPlay is boring af. And don't get me wrong i do understand why people love CarPlay. Problem is, majority of people don't know why CarPlay is so bad - many haven't used anything better, and they won't, because Apple stifles innovation in this space. It's a loop.

"You can read Wassym’s full answer at the episode link, but here’s the part that stuck out to me:

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.

Rivian refusing to bend the knee to Apple should be met with more respect. You are free to force yourself to never buy a vehicle without Apple software, however you're just adding another shackle between your life and their massive walled garden. Should Rivian continue to innovate as Tesla did, your choice will become hard to maintain. Never is quite a long time.

I have a chapter in my book Kill the HiPPO titled “Cupholders vs CarPlay”.

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.

https://killthehippo.com/

Isn't it dangerous and illegal to do stuff on your phone while driving? In this case it's on a bigger screen so it's okay somehow? (I haven't experienced one of these in person though, so I might be missing something.)

The amount of confusive naming of CarPlay vs CarPlay Ultra and Android Auto vs Android Automotive brings into this conversation is amazing.

Author: I literally will not buy a car that does not support CarPlay.

Me: I literally will not buy a car that does.

I’m not even that old, but I’d really love to argue to simplify the entire auto infotainment stack. I don’t even need a screen. I just bring my own by magnetically attaching my phone that I’ll use to navigate and Bluetooth music or podcasts. If CarPlay becomes the standard that allows me to not pay for whatever crappy tablet UI automakers are pushing, fine. But that doesn’t make CarPlay a necessity, it just makes it the least bad option.

There's so many comments on the lines of "I would never buy a car without android auto/car play support". I 100% used to be on this camp, "A car without android auto, what am I, a caveman!?".

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)

Just give me a head unit with an aux in and a cd player and I'll be happy

I imagine the Venn Diagram of Rivian buyers and Apple users is basically a circle (or one small circle inside a much larger one), this seems like a wildly obtuse position for them to take.

If the cainfotainment system is good enough, I don't use CarPlay - at most I just connect Bluetooth to make calls.

The reason CarPlay and Android Auto exist is that car infotainment systems used to suck.

>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.

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.

Rivian should buy overcast.

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

but what do people actually use carplay for? Navigation, music and calls?

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.

It's a strange feeling reading these comments because not only have I never used carplay or android auto, I don't think I've ever noticed anyone else using it in a car someone's driven me in. Everyone I know just has their phone in a dash mount. I don't think it's that small a sample size either! I drive a 2014 Accord and it auto connects to my android with Bluetooth when I turn on the car. 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.

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.

> I literally will not buy a car that does not support CarPlay.

I think you mean addictive.

Can anyone recommend a good aftermarket CarPlay unit manufacturer (or stand alone unit that I can mount on dash? Wary of cheating out and getting an overheating cpu or bad touch screen

I will not buy a car.

There should be a standard. (Yes I know the XKCD) Apple and Android each having their own is ridiculous and actively prevents smaller competitors(one can dream)

Every time I've used CarPlay or Android Auto, I just remember how much better the experience was with a tablet velcro'd over the main display. Immediately obviously better in every single way, and dramatically cheaper and easier to replace if desired.

I get the goal, and I'm glad there's at least some semblance of a standard. But it's still bad.

At this point it's very easy: no CarPlay, no buy. So no Tesla (obv), no Rivian.

The car industry is currently in the "rodeo" phase that the telcos where in when it came to the internet. Loosing power- and very soon tamed, because the Chinese competition has no such qualms.

What the auto industry should have really woken up to is the idea of a singular carplay for both android and ios. I have a 2021 BMW that only supported carplay and was fine for many years. It is wireless even. I love it. But now i have a pixel.

Maybe someone already said this but my pet peeve is restrictions on wireless CarPlay. We have a top of the line Kia Telluride that only has wired CarPlay. Then we rented a crappy Kia sedan on vacation and it had wireless. Apparently the developer of Telluride’s fancy built in navigation system prohibits wireless CarPlay

As an Apple fanboy I have to say I’ve never been impressed with CarPlay. I’ve used it in rentals quite a bit but have found it generally infuriating.

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.

Rivian sees Apple (CarPlay) as competition. So what is surprising?

Carplay is a convenient - FREE solution to car infotainment that car makers cannot control. They cannot sell you subscription based services for in-car stuff if you can get that from another app, and that's not in their interest. The CEO here knows well what he's saying is BS. We are lucky if something like Carplay will survive in the car subscription based era. They might charge you for the use of Carplay in the future, or free access to their infotainment that is complemented by subscritions. Car makers sell cars with thin margins so they need to find ways to increase them.

I am also in this camp. As soon as GM announced they weren’t going to support CarPlay, I scratched GM off of the list.

Ford Mach E it was then.

I don't listen to the opinions of people who try to sell me a podcast subscription

Why do people want so much to be distracted from and while driving? Is there still a single responsible driver left on the road?

I'm still angry that I can't just run Android Auto directly anymore on my phone when I'm in a vehicle that doesn't have Android Auto support and my phone is just dash-mounted (or handlebar-mounted).

Usedtacould.

I don't particularly care about Android Auto (I generally prefer standard bluetooth for audio, and directly setting the phone up for navigation), but if a manufacturer supports CarPlay and not Android Auto, they can get lost. I hate how Apple stuff is an assumed default.

Am I the only person who hates plugging their iPhone into their car to charge and completely losing control of it?

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.

I’m with OP, here: CarPlay is additive to the experience, but also is something that provides me a degree of consistency across my automotive experiences - when vendors bother to implement it properly.

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.

CarPlay is subtractive for the car manufacturer who wants to track you and sell your data. That's all you need to know about this debate. Of course CarPlay is the far superior UX. It's entertaining to see car manufacturers bend over and come up with ridiculous justifications for why they "cannot" give you the option to just use CarPlay.

And here I am, ideally not wanting any screen in my car, but just the good ole buttons and knobs of yesteryear... sigh...

Wonder how GM is doing it

It's difficult for me to admit - because I really dislike Apple, Google, and the other predatory monopolies - but I wouldn't buy a car without CarPlay either.

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 love how people are pushing for Android Auto and CarPlay on the basis of consistency and ubiquity and control, yet fail to realize that their advocacy will reduce what is currently a thriving marketplace filled with unique options to a duopoly.

Once that happens we all know what comes next: enshittification.

"My one walled garden won't let my other walled garden in."

It boils down to "who owns the field". Facebook and Apple killed Flash because they wanted control. Rivian is trying to say "we will own the users eyes, their phones be damned".

iPod, aux cable, phone holder for maps.

Anything else can wait until I stop.

Quite interesting, particularly with statistics shared in comments. Personally I hate CarPlay because of it's limitations - oh you can't respond to messages, oh you can't watch videos and sorts. Much easier to have a tablet there free of these "safety" limitations.

Imagine if customers demanded MacBooks boot into Android when an android phone was connected .

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

I don't think I can honestly say I've seen a car UI done so well I'd forego CarPlay on the same vehicle.

MAYBE in the rare case it has wireless CarPlay only, but can play music over USB from my phone. Maybe.

Car manufacturers don't want this because it gives Apple/Google leverage over their products. The alternative is some kind of open standard, but that undercuts the ability of manufacturers to hard fuck you on trim options.

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.

Don't like Siri but want CarPlay? oops, nope.

There are a bunch of CarPlay devices on Amazon, for example, with all kinds of screens, designed for Tesla and other cars that don't support it, that cost about $200 for a nice one. Why not just buy one of those and who cares if it's natively supported?

I get where the author is coming from, but it seems to me that the core issue here isn't CarPlay, it's that car manufacturers are absolute dogshit at software. Most Tesla owners don't seem that upset about the lack of CarPlay, I'm assuming because the native Tesla experience is really good. I'm not sure people would care as much if that were the case more often.

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!

Slightly off topic. Is it just me, or do others also feel it's horrendously difficult to read these AI written articles?

The author is in a podcast that I classify as Apple apologist. They feel because they have used Apple products for 8+ years the world should bend to their knee. And anytime new non-apple tech comes up on the podcast they do not give any opportunity to acclimate to new tech, because they drink the apple kool-aid. Which is fine, but just admit some products are not for you then if you want the Apple ecosphere, where they dont respect their customers, their developers or their partners.

> I literally will not buy a car that does not support 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.

> Let me help you, [Rivian Chief Software Officer] Wassym

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.

CarPlay is bad for the car manufacturer and is far worse than the modern car software. People who complain about loosing CarPlay are not using the new software but reacting in fear thinking the old car software will come back.

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.

For a blog named with a wordplay on "Less is more", this text sure has a loooooot of unncessary bullshit before getting to the point.

I've never seen CarPlay work properly. 2026 and they still can't make a car play music without jittering like a CD. Every car brand I've rented, every iPhone I've owned, gotta turn that junk off every time.

> There exists a flavor of CarPlay — CarPlay Ultra — that does take over every screen of the car.

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.