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Volkswagen Debuts Connected Car App on Apple Watch

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macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Following in the line of automobile companies offering connected Apple Watch apps to control aspects of their vehicle, like Porsche Car Connect, German car manufacturer Volkswagen today announced a similar Apple Watch app that will bring most of the features of the company's Car-Net mobile app to a user's wrist.

volkswagen-watch-app-800x477.jpg
The app will allow customers to lock and unlock a car's doors (on 2016-and-later models), open and close windows and the sunroof, provide a map of the vehicle's current parked location, and even set off a minor alarm when locating the vehicle is proving tiresome. Interestingly, the app will also bring over Car-Net's feature of tracking speed and set boundary notifications, allowing parents to monitor a child's top driving speed and send notifications if they break from a pre-set geofencing boundary area right to the Apple Watch.
"These high-tech features, available through the Car-Net® app for Apple Watch, are paving the way to Volkswagen's future of connected vehicles," said Abdallah Shanti, Executive Vice President and Group Chief Information Officer for Region Americas. "As a part of Volkswagen's Digital Vehicle Management Platform, this was a truly collaborative effort between our Technical Development and Group IT teams."
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The Volkswagen Apple Watch app also brings the ability to check fuel on gasoline and TDI Clean Diesel engines and even the charge on the all-electric e-Golf. The full suite of Car-Net features is available on "select trims" of the 2014 and later Beetle, CC, Eos, Jetta, Passat and Tiguan models and on all trims of 2015 and later Golf, Golf GTI, Golf R, Golf SportWagen and e-Golf models.

Article Link: Volkswagen Debuts Connected Car App on Apple Watch
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/05/volkswagen-app-apple-watch/
furi0usbee

furi0usbee

macrumors 68000
Jul 11, 2008
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Wait until states pass laws against all of this in the car... some already do even with "hands-free" phone calls.
 
X

xizdun

macrumors 6502
Nov 13, 2011
272
478
I think UI designers keep forgetting the Apple Watch doesn't have an edge-to-edge display.

This is the extent of Apple Watch's display:
YuOo93f.jpg
 
H

hetz8500

macrumors newbie
Nov 28, 2006
8
0
Los Angeles, CA
I hope they work on making the existing car-net app functional before adding features or developing a watch version. I have an e-Golf and the current Car-Net app is a joke- constant errors and timeouts.
 
J

jpiett

macrumors newbie
Aug 22, 2014
18
3
Canada
Can you walk up to the car and open the doors when in range or do you have to open up the app every time on your watch to open your doors?
 
macduke

macduke

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,142
19,682
profets said:
Looks like most 2016 MY VW models with MIBII entertainment platform will have CarPlay enabled.
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Men In Black II? :D

On a serious note, I'm kinda glad I've waited so many years to trade-in my long paid off car. Now I get to do cool stuff like controlling my car with my watch! But then I hear rumors about Apple Cars in 2020 and wonder "How long can this car really keep going?"
 
P

profets

macrumors 603
Mar 18, 2009
5,115
6,146
macduke said:
Men In Black II? :D

On a serious note, I'm kinda glad I've waited so many years to trade-in my long paid off car. Now I get to do cool stuff like controlling my car with my watch! But then I hear rumors about Apple Cars in 2020 and wonder "How long can this car really keep going?"
Click to expand...

Lol. That's what I think about when I see the watch app - I'd be happy just to get a phone app to connect to my car to control locks, windows and see any other info.
 
JeffyTheQuik

JeffyTheQuik

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2014
2,468
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Charleston, SC and Everett, WA
furi0usbee said:
Wait until states pass laws against all of this in the car... some already do even with "hands-free" phone calls.
Click to expand...

That is akin to making it illegal to talk to the person next to you in the car, or to tune the radio while you are driving.

I get it. Driving a car is serious business.

However, show me statistical evidence (ha! That is using a group of people doing something to convict someone of doing the same thing...) that is reliable that shows that there is a correlation between having this dashboard:
tesla_model_s_dashboard_touchscreen-580x383.jpg

and this one, that shows that the latter is safer, because it doesn't have all of those newfangled gizmos on it.
dashboard.jpg
 
furi0usbee

furi0usbee

macrumors 68000
Jul 11, 2008
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JeffyTheQuik said:
That is akin to making it illegal to talk to the person next to you in the car, or to tune the radio while you are driving
Click to expand...

I get it. You can't stop all distractions. I'll be more people crash their car from daydreaming than they do talking on the phone. But by adding all this gear in the car, they need to hurry up and automate the driving process so you *can* do all this good stuff safely. I know that if I have a great Apple GUI staring at me in my face, I'm gonna want to toy with it.

What really gets me is that when I'm a passenger, I can't pair my Phone to the stereo because the car thinks I'm the driver, and that it's dangerous. So they need to figure stuff like that out first...
 
JeffyTheQuik

JeffyTheQuik

macrumors 68020
Aug 27, 2014
2,468
2,407
Charleston, SC and Everett, WA
furi0usbee said:
I get it. You can't stop all distractions. I'll bet more people crash their car from daydreaming than they do talking on the phone. But by adding all this gear in the car, they need to hurry up and automate the driving process so you *can* do all this good stuff safely. I know that if I have a great Apple GUI staring at me in my face, I'm gonna want to toy with it.

What really gets me is that when I'm a passenger, I can't pair my Phone to the stereo because the car thinks I'm the driver, and that it's dangerous. So they need to figure stuff like that out first...
Click to expand...
From what I've heard and seen, sleepy drivers are one of the biggest causes of crashes, but I don't see the cattle prods built into the seats to prevent this.

And, thank you for the nice response!
 
furi0usbee

furi0usbee

macrumors 68000
Jul 11, 2008
1,790
1,382
JeffyTheQuik said:
From what I've heard and seen, sleepy drivers are one of the biggest causes of crashes, but I don't see the cattle prods built into the seats to prevent this.

And, thank you for the nice response!
Click to expand...

Maybe add a shock sensor under the seat. You can set it to shock you every 30 seconds when you feel a sleep coming on.
 
alfonsog

alfonsog

Contributor
Jul 17, 2002
534
528
Cape Coral, FL
Some cars detect if you're sleepy driving and alert you. I saw that on a friends Mercedes. Also Tesla is introducing its auto pilot in a few months as an added option with radar and cameras. Such cool things for those with $$$.
 
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