CarPlay Integration May Be Possible in Older Vehicles, Mercedes-Benz Working on Aftermarket Solution

[Gav Mack]

Older Mercedes vehicles maybe.

To really support older vehicles, or frankly even most new vehicles, we just need a double DIN solution from the usual folk (Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer, Jensen, JVC, Alpine, etc.).

My 2007 E Class will no doubt be too old, it will be for the 2010/11 models onwards with the newer Comand software. Not that fussed, for those like me who have the official MB iPod FireWire dock plug I'm very happy with the Tune2Air WMA1000 bluetooth dongle and the iPhone or iPad controls the music.

I use a Plantronics Voyager Legend for in car calls.

 

[deluxeshredder]

My car doesn't even have a radio.

Don't worry much. With iOS 7's CarPlay, many people will get a chance to enjoy Lada-quality UI on their vehicles.

 

[FoxFifth]

You might want to look into that. I have a 2010 ML350 that let me import my contacts from my iPhone 5 (I'm connected via Bluetooth.) I don't recall if there was a trick to it or not, so you may have to google around about it a bit.

Thanks -- I had done a ton of research on the issue as I just could not believe it. In addition to google, I contacted both my dealer and Mercedes directly. Also, they have a bluetooth connectivity website which confirmed it would not import contacts from an iPhone 4 but will from many other phones including a Samsung Galaxy. I finally connected a very old Motorola RAZR flip phone which would receive one contact at a time; tedious but better than entering them manually.

I just checked the Mercedes site again and it still shows the same information for the iPhone 4. However, for the 5S it says it will not receive individual contacts, will not receive multiple contacts, but it will display entries in the phone book that have multiple phone numbers for a single contact. That seems to be an error (at least it seems illogical to me) but I will try later today to see what it will do with my new 5S -- haven't tried with that since I updated from the 4.