Cant wait for car play to roll out in all cars.. Apple are doing theses car manufactures a favour because 99% of them have terrible infotainment systems. BMW has the best but id still prefer car play integration with their cars.
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Volvo's First CarPlay Vehicle in the U.S. is the 2016 XC90, Available Now
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First off, the design is like many other current models of SUV but cleaner. It really doesn't even look much different from current Jeep SUV's. Second, you are in the extreme minority if you think the XC90 is ugly, and that's not because you have better taste.
Oh, and it drives like virtually nothing else in its class or above, smooth and fast with great gas mileage. I guess that's not a factor in what you drive?
No, they aren't an "excuse" - they're a reminder to stop trying to coddle people. This is beginning to remind me of those people who insisted we shouldn't be able to use electronic devices during take off and landing because we need to hear the "safety instructions" again. Most functionality is locked while driving, you are encouraged to only use Siri, and no apps are available that even relate to social media. As I mentioned earlier, the biggest distraction is getting into a rental car or borrowing someone else's. Everything in there is alien, you're fumbling to do even the simplest things these days. This uniformity of UI can only help.
No, nor will any other Volvo car sold outside of China. The company has been given complete autonomy, unlike what Ford put them through and helped to mar Volvo's image. XC90's are designed and built in Sweden right now, XC90 Classic (a model like the pre-2016 models) are built in North Carolina for now - that will be eventually be a factory that builds the S90 and XC90 from what I understand. All current Volvo's will be built using this same platform by 2018 - that includes XC60/XC70/S60/S90 etc. They will all get "Thor's Hammer headlights", 4 cylinder turbo and super charged engines, multiple drive profiles, the 9" touch screen, CarPlay, similar design, etc. It's pretty exciting to see a company reinvent itself like this and it really reminds me of early 2000's Apple.
Seems like a silky-smooth implementation. My biggest concern is the distraction factor. Even with Siri. We humans just can't effectively concentrate on two things simultaneously; countless research has proven that. And I somehow doubt most people are going to pull over to interact with their iToys via CarPlay.
Almost every day I see people driving their vehicles while being on the phone via their Bluetooth headpieces, and then having dangerously delayed reactions to changing conditions in front of them, often resulting in perilous last-second manoeuvres.
Almost every day I see people driving their vehicles while being on the phone via their Bluetooth headpieces, and then having dangerously delayed reactions to changing conditions in front of them, often resulting in perilous last-second manoeuvres.
This is maybe the 4th time this has come up. If it were really a safety concern, Volvo would have been the last company to implement it. Fumbling with your console is a hell of a lot better than fumbling with a console and a phone.
I am looking to purchase a 2nd gen Acura TSX, but the tech is lacking and I figured I could throw this exact pioneer model into it to help give it a tech boost. Would you recommend it? Did you retain all your steering wheel controls?
I'll never be able to afford a car with CarPlay... just putting it out there. I don't borrow for cars and if I had $50k+ sitting around doing bothing, I'd probably upgrade my apartment to something with a bigger veggie patch.
Home automation for a balcony water tank and some sun powered watering equipment anybody?
Home automation for a balcony water tank and some sun powered watering equipment anybody?
To put it simply 'borrowing/renting' should not be an issue as you shouldn't be looking down at any of this stuff unless you're stationary. If you can't do it without keeping your eyes on the road then it is a distraction and thus takes away from your ability to drive. Nobody is important enough to need to risk other people's lives by looking at any sort of in car touchscreen device. Not to mention that the research by people who are actually experts in driver safety, actually shows that even using siri typed interfaces in cars is also very distracting, and as I said, I'm sick of seeing near accidents caused by people not paying attention to the road, because of distractions and carplay, no matter how better it is then other systems, is just another distraction.
Not in my experience. The current generation of S80s are rock solid, reliable cars.
I'm assuming that you're using an older phone having not that smooth experience. If you can afford a car with CarPlay integration, then I assume you can afford the latest phone that works smoothly with this system.
Look at you, a product of epically misinformed world.
The most distracting thing you can have in the car is a PASSENGER. All of your brain drain BS nonsense is just FUD crud.
They were 1999 and 2002...both terrible, were in the shop at least once a month (and my now wife had a 1999 which was as bad). Constantly going into "limp mode", engine lights, problems starting. When I asked the dealer if the current generation (this was 12+ years ago) of Volvo was the same, they said "Oh yes" - this wasn't the service people, but the sales people. I said "sorry to hear that", left, and went and purchase a MB SUV, and have had 4 of them since...wasn't willing to give them another shot when they were so shoddy previously.
BTW, when they were working, they were great, but at the time they were just unreliable. Hopefully now that Ford is gone they'll be back to the old reliable Volvos - we had 3 before the S80s which were great - 200k plus miles.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say... All I know is that the Pilot starts at $29,995 for the LX and goes up to $46,420 for the Elite. (www.honda.com/pilot).
The Highlander stars at $29,990 for the LE and tops out at $40,415 for the petrol Limited trim. Yes, if you include a Hybrid Highlander, you're looking at a whopping $7,xxx more ($47,870). source: www.toyota.com/highlander
Both still coming in below the $49,800 starting price of the XC90 (www.volvocars.com/xc90)
I'm not sure why you're bringing up the Lexus RX as that is not what was mentioned initially (Pilot and Highlander were). Of course the Luxury Volvo is going to compare more with the Luxury Lexus...
I stand by my initial statement that the Pilot/Highlander are not in the same class as the Volvo XC90 (and I am a big fan of the new-gen Pilot).
Well I've already been soundly corrected in connection with this specific car. But I'm not sure that a passenger is quite as distracting. Maybe little kids are. But most passengers can basically do their thing in the car without direct and immediate attention. The electronic devices still need visual focus a lot of the time in order to work. Look at that video where it pulls up a list of text messages pr maybe email and seems to suggest that you pick one out and touch the screen to access that thread. Or the map that pulls up all these words and information about places. Unless that stuff is set to not happen when the car is in motion, it seems very distracting.
And by the way, these cars and devices don't have to be more distracting than passengers to make my point true. They just have to be an additional distraction that other cars do not have. And remember cars are not all that safe. About 100 Americans die in a wreck every day. Many more people than that get seriously hurt. Cars are just super useful so we put up with them.
It's a great system for a Double DIN entry level price. It's screen is resistive but no worse than the Wii U gamepad which is pretty good. You can swipe without problem. It can be a tad slow at times to switch between CarPlay and the NEX UI but I believe a lot of that has to do with CarPlay as others are complaining about that on other systems. When you stay in one or their other it's fine. There's a mode button that switches between the two.
It supports my steering wheel controls (2015 Dodge Journey) exactly as I had them but there's a separate adapter that's required. I believe it's a Metra. Some are programmable some aren't. I'd love to change my change source button to play/pause personally as I'd use that a lot more. I haven't had time to find out if that's possible with my adapter.
I love that the alert, CarPlay, and NEX Audio volume are all easily changeable independently. It allows you to tweak it to your liking. Wish iOS 9 was that independent (why is my media volume tied to my Notification volume!?).
The only thing I'm not too fond of is the young adult male UI. It's cheesy. I've set it to as low key as possible (black background, haven't had the time to add an elegant wallpaper) and generally stay in CarPay which looks a lot classier. I do like that you can change the hard buttons' color to anything you want. I have it matching my car's illuminated buttons.
Something you may like is that the faceplate is removable for security. I know in certain areas it isn't smart to leave it in the dash.
The audio is what you'd expect from Pioneer. It has a 13 band EQ and supports an Auto-EQ mic which people swear by. Either way it sounds worlds better than the stock radio.
Overall, there's a good reason it's 4.5 stars on Amazon. It's pretty cheap and supports a ton of features including CarPlay and Android Auto. Ex. I've got a backup camera that integrates perfectly. Put it in Reverse and it kicks in on the screen no matter if it's still booting or not yet you can select it as an option and use it as a rear view mirror while driving.
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