Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What exactly is buggy about the infotainment system?
You may not have listened to podcasts in your Tesla. I have and it's not good. The native Tesla app would frequently just start over on a podcast episode when you get back in the car. The Spotify podcast player would sometimes play a three day old podcast while displaying today's, or just become unresponsive.
 
Wait, how are you running CarPlay? Directly on the iPhone? I'd love to do that, but how?
Here's a long thread over a year old with lots of solutions. I've tried most of them. The one referenced in this MacRumors article seems like the best way to get CarPlay on a Tesla to date.

 
  • Wow
Reactions: icwhatudidthere
Not sure what you are ranting, and it's obvious you never use Tesla's system before putting it down. (Someone said something on internet and I read it, must be true). All the things you are describing can literally be done the same way how you are doing it now. Use Siri to reply message? You can do the same. Listen to Amazon music on the phone? Can do the same too. So exactly what are you missing?

So you like Ioniq5 / EV6 implementation. Have you even test drove one? You know it's not wireless right? So every time you get in the car you have to physically connect phone to the cable, press start button to turn on the car, wait for the car startup messages, then wait 10-15 seconds before CarPaly interface to show up. Then if you want to use Amazon Music, have to navigate to that icon first and hit play. Want to use Google Map or Apple Map? You need to pull out the phone again to look up POI because you can't do inputs on the screens for CarPlay. By the time you find POI you are looking for and ready to leave, the person who drives a Tesla is already gone for 5 minutes. So exactly how is this better?

Again, dont' knock it until you actually try out the implementations.
You're funny. Wow I have to charge my phone that's horrible! I ride in my friends Model 3 every week. No never have to take my phone out. Just touch Amazon Music icon pick my playlist and play. As for navigation just hit the button on my steering wheel and tell it where I want to go. Sounds like you have never been in Car with proper Carplay.

I am not going to put my iPhone on a mount like my 2011 Elantra. Which is what I would have to do in a Tesla.

The best part is I don't pay for stuff I already own! I have a phone I have a music subscription I don't have to double pay Tesla for things I already have!
 
In a nutshell, CarPlay for cars, not for gizmos. Got it!
These cars are gizmos. They’re oversized battery powered R/Cs for adult sized kids. They aren’t greener than ICE. The autonomous systems encourage you to be lazy and not to learn how to drive safely. I’ve seen people who literally use their backup camera as a replacement for putting their hand on the passenger seat and looking behind when backing up. I’m waiting for the display to seize up in one of these cell phone cars and be the cause of death for a family of six; four under the age of 16. Maybe then we can get physical knobs and gauges with a touch screen just for the infotainment system. Touch screen requires your eyes off the road, anything not solid-state can freeze, stall, crash, or be hacked. And it would be sad if it were 90 degrees outside and your control cluster failed and you couldn’t get AC in the crippling heat.

I’m still hoping I can find a real car with CarPlay just for the entertainment and navigation on a relatively small screen in the center of the dash. Hopefully in a console that looks like it was designed for my actual car. What’s the deal with a dash having a glued on tablet? That truly looks as lazy a design choice as it actually looks. Tacky!
 
Not sure what you are ranting, and it's obvious you never use Tesla's system before putting it down. (Someone said something on internet and I read it, must be true). All the things you are describing can literally be done the same way how you are doing it now. Use Siri to reply message? You can do the same. Listen to Amazon music on the phone? Can do the same too. So exactly what are you missing?

So you like Ioniq5 / EV6 implementation. Have you even test drove one? You know it's not wireless right? So every time you get in the car you have to physically connect phone to the cable, press start button to turn on the car, wait for the car startup messages, then wait 10-15 seconds before CarPaly interface to show up. Then if you want to use Amazon Music, have to navigate to that icon first and hit play. Want to use Google Map or Apple Map? You need to pull out the phone again to look up POI because you can't do inputs on the screens for CarPlay. By the time you find POI you are looking for and ready to leave, the person who drives a Tesla is already gone for 5 minutes. So exactly how is this better?

Again, dont' knock it until you actually try out the implementations.
A fair chunk of this isn’t true, the on screen inputs being available or not is a manufacturer decision, one of my previous BMWs suffered a hardware failure and the garage applied the wrong regions software when it was replaced, as a result I lost the ability to use the virtual keyboard in any of the apps, which meant I was reliant on Siri until the garage applied the correct software and the keyboard came back.

As for what you’re missing, well in theory when I’m in my wife’s car which isn’t set up for my phone in CarPlay I can use Bluetooth and it has inbuilt apps which mirror a lot of the functionality and they work ok, but they’re not the apps I used every day, they may not remember where I am and certainly if I listen to half a podcast the 2 apps don’t sync, if I want to use the same app as I do on the phone I either have to interact directly with my iPhone and use pure Bluetooth audio or accept that when I move from the vehicle to the office or back again I’m going to be scrubbing through what I was listening to.

It’s not that I couldn’t get an approximation to the functionality I get with CarPlay in a Tesla, I can obviously play my music, my podcasts, see calendars etc, but it’s another system to learn, another sets of quirks to work out and ux decisions get used to.

CarPlay is far more than Apple Music it is your entire phone, the one single device that likely follows you from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, if you love your Tesla enough to not care, or you get into your car, set a playlist and that’s you set for the journey then Bluetooth will provide you with everything you need, if you interact far more with your phone during a journey losing CarPlay as you move from one vehicle to another is an extremely jarring experience
 
These cars are gizmos. They’re oversized battery powered R/Cs for adult sized kids. They aren’t greener than ICE.
Wrong. The powerplant is more efficient than combustion per unit of energy, and the 'greenness' of power source scales with the energy mix, all the way up to fully renewable.

Maybe listen to the EPA

The autonomous systems encourage you to be lazy and not to learn how to drive safely.
Remember when cruise control technology caused everyone to not learn how to drive safety?

I’ve seen people who literally use their backup camera as a replacement for putting their hand on the passenger seat and looking behind when backing up.
The backup camera reveals blind spots that can't be seen just looking behind. This is why the NHTSA mandated that all cars be equipped with them.


I’m waiting for the display to seize up in one of these cell phone cars and be the cause of death for a family of six; four under the age of 16.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety determined that cameras saves lives, so glad you're on board.


Maybe then we can get physical knobs and gauges with a touch screen just for the infotainment system. Touch screen requires your eyes off the road, anything not solid-state can freeze, stall, crash, or be hacked. And it would be sad if it were 90 degrees outside and your control cluster failed and you couldn’t get AC in the crippling heat.
You're a bit confused about what solid-state are. Solid-state are non-mechanical systems, like your laptop circuit board, or the Tesla computer. You're thinking of electromechanical switches with "hard" contacts, with no longer exists in a car.

The 'physical' buttons in a car today are connected to digital circuits, and when the underlying circuit fails -- what do you think the buttons do? nothing. And yes, the iDrive and Mercedes MBUX and HondaLink do crash and reboot like everything else.
 
  • Like
Reactions: can$rules
I love my Model 3. But, when the lease is up in December, I will not be replacing it with a Tesla. Lack of CarPlay, buggy software, updates that consistently reset all my settings, ride quality, lower than advertised mileage, $6K for glorified cruise control, a messy interface that displays critical messages and camera turn images behind my right hand while on the wheel and a now dated look have me exploring other options.
I'm looking forward to how smooth your other brand EV is for all those items. Keep me posted.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pbdnr
I'm looking forward to how smooth your other brand EV is for all those items. Keep me posted.

people who think tesla software is buggy are going to love the ford, lucid, rivian, gm experience!

one is reminded of churchill's quote, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried"
 
Last edited:
I own a Model 3 and the interface/navigation is the best I've ever experienced in a car. I have almost never used Android Auto or Carplay other then very briefly (minutes) in some rentals. Can someone tell me what I am missing?
 
Huh? What’s that even mean? Gimped OS? Sounds like you have no idea what you’re talking about. Funny too, that people think Tesla and Rivian even make their own core operating systems. They don’t. They build (or try to build) fancy user interfaces on top, along with all the requisite applications. Unfortunately they don’t have the resources to go as deep, feature-wise, as either an Apple or a Google. Granted Apple and Google are creating interfaces they think will largely work for everyone, but greater degrees of customization by automakers will likely be coming in the near future. For now, though, that consistency is wonderful. I just recently drove my car, with CarPlay, to the airport. Directions and music and audiobooks all worked beautifully. Got on a flight, landed, got into a rental car and plugged by phone in. Continued using maps, music, audio-books, etc. Everything was easy, consistent and used my data - and provided highly reliable mapping. And, if I wanted to use Google Maps or Waze, I could have. Not sure why Tesla or Rivian would care what I use *iff* they can deliver the experience that isn’t so jarring from a UI standpoint. Considering almost every other car manufacturer has already navigated this landscape, it’s hard to understand the resistance. Incidentally, Volvo’s new car management interface uses Google’s Android as a base OS and they just, this week, announced Apple CarPlay support - which people have been waiting a year for. Older Volvos, which were not based on Android, already supported the CarPlay and Android Auto mirroring capability.

Tesla's infotainment is far superior to that of Carplay, it's an objective fact. Gimped because it has very limited capabilities. It's not hard to understand the resistance, quite the contrary. Carplay was made for legacy auto OEM's who cannot do software, Tesla definitely can do software. Maybe it will be different when the more capable Carplay 2.0 comes along but so far it is no contest.
 
I own a Model 3 and the interface/navigation is the best I've ever experienced in a car. I have almost never used Android Auto or Carplay other then very briefly (minutes) in some rentals. Can someone tell me what I am missing?

Nothing, just a mix of Apple fanboys and people who suffer from Elon Musk derangement syndrome (two things that usually go hand in hand).
 
I own a Model 3 and the interface/navigation is the best I've ever experienced in a car. I have almost never used Android Auto or Carplay other then very briefly (minutes) in some rentals. Can someone tell me what I am missing?
Also have a Model 3 and I only recently used CarPlay for the first time in a rental car and found some cool integrations. Set your destination before you get in the car and the destination is automatically set when you start driving. When you get out of the car, it seamlessly continues on your Apple Watch. In practice, say your destination is in a city but you have to park somewhere else. You can drive to a parking lot, get out of the car and the directions continue on your watch.

Media playback was probably the best for me. My trip took me through lots of places that didn't have cell coverage so having downloaded songs, audiobooks and podcasts on the phone was much easier than in my Model 3. Plus there's the side benefit of everything staying in sync. Using Bluetooth in a Tesla is fine but then you're using the phone to browse through media while driving or Siri if you've memorized the commands to find what you want.

It's not the end of the world that it's missing from Tesla, but it smooths over some of the rough patches and makes some things more convenient. SiriusXM has CarPlay integration for example, something Tesla left out from the Model 3/Y. And ABetterRoutePlanner supports CarPlay, which is an app lots of Tesla users like. Can you use it without CarPlay? Yes. Would it be more convenient with CarPlay? Absolutely.
 
Nothing, just a mix of Apple fanboys and people who suffer from Elon Musk derangement syndrome (two things that usually go hand in hand).
Lol, he has many successful companies. When people don’t understand UX they tend to make comments like these.
 
Nothing, just a mix of Apple fanboys and people who suffer from Elon Musk derangement syndrome (two things that usually go hand in hand).
I would have said the opposite, the level of borderline toxic Tesla fanboyism on display in this thread is quite breath taking.

Is it so hard to believe that just because you like what Tesla offer others just don’t? And how one person judges what car they want to buy isn’t the same as next.

I don’t really like Teslas, nothing to do with Elon Musk and it’s not some weird deep seated EV envy, it’s the same reason I don’t get on with Mercedes, I don’t like the styling, I dont really enjoy the ride and I don’t like the way you interact with the car, the technology underpinning them is fantastic, the package as a whole I find is extremely underwhelming, CarPlay is just another check against it, because even if the rest were to stack up better for me I’d probably get a polestar 2 or a BMW i4 over it knowing it had CarPlay because I use it everyday and if I’m spending that much money I want to know I can live with the system in the car.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe if I bought a Tesla I’d see the light, but it’s not going to happen and CarPlay is one of a number of reasons I’m not interested in them at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: icwhatudidthere
I would have said the opposite, the level of borderline toxic Tesla fanboyism on display in this thread is quite breath taking.

Is it so hard to believe that just because you like what Tesla offer others just don’t? And how one person judges what car they want to buy isn’t the same as next.

I don’t really like Teslas, nothing to do with Elon Musk and it’s not some weird deep seated EV envy, it’s the same reason I don’t get on with Mercedes, I don’t like the styling, I dont really enjoy the ride and I don’t like the way you interact with the car, the technology underpinning them is fantastic, the package as a whole I find is extremely underwhelming, CarPlay is just another check against it, because even if the rest were to stack up better for me I’d probably get a polestar 2 or a BMW i4 over it knowing it had CarPlay because I use it everyday and if I’m spending that much money I want to know I can live with the system in the car.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe if I bought a Tesla I’d see the light, but it’s not going to happen and CarPlay is one of a number of reasons I’m not interested in them at all.
I think a lot of it is tribalism.

The other part at least with respect to Tesla in the US is the charging network is better. In the EU you guys have a pretty good charging system and thus Tesla charging network really doesn't help or change much.
 
Lol tesla does not need car play.

A lot of Tesla owners apparently feel differently. According to the MacRumors article and others, CarPlay and/or Android Auto are among the most requested features by Tesla owners.

They'd also like to see the level of FSD functionality that had been promised years ago but that's another discussion. Even GM was able to deliver on robotaxis before Tesla. Musk had said he was "very confident" that Tesla would have robotaxis on the road in 2020. It's 2022 and nothing yet.

Of course. the new Roadster, Cybertruck and Semi have also been delayed.
 
Wow, here we go again, same topic, same comments. Here is my nearly same comment from the last time we covered this...

I never, ever, thought I would buy a new vehicle with ACP. Its been 6-months since I picked up a Model Y, however, and I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. Now, when I do use ACP in other vehicles (work truck, family CRV, rentals, etc) ACP looks like a cheap children's tablet. Tesla's UI is clean and easy to use.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pugxiwawa
No, it is not. What is rubbish is software on top a software that Apple offers as a solution instead of partnering with top car manufacturers and work on deep iPhone integration into the car systems.

I mean, it IS rubbish - and CarPlay is the most integration you're ever going to get from an infotainment system.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: imola.zhp
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.