Where is Apple's Next-Generation CarPlay?

[LordSpecter]

It has been over two years since Apple first previewed next-generation CarPlay at WWDC 2022, and it has still yet to become available in any vehicles.

Below, we recap the latest information about next-generation CarPlay.

Launch Timing

Apple's website continues to say that the first vehicles with next-generation CarPlay support will "arrive in 2024," but it has yet to provide a more specific timeframe. Aston Martin and Porsche previewed next-generation CarPlay vehicle designs late last year, but neither automaker has released any vehicles with support yet.

Apple continued to highlight next-generation CarPlay in WWDC 2024 coding sessions for developers, suggesting that the company remains committed to rolling out the system as of three months ago, but it is clearly taking quite some time.

Next-Generation CarPlay

Next-generation CarPlay will have deeper integration with a vehicle's instrument cluster, climate controls, FM radio, and more. It will also support multiple displays across the dashboard, and offer widgets for apps like Calendar and Weather.

In addition, next-generation CarPlay will be highly customizable, allowing automakers to tailor the design of the system to uniquely match their vehicles.

New Features

Instrument Cluster Integration

Next-generation CarPlay will integrate with a vehicle's instrument cluster, including the speedometer, tachometer, odometer, fuel gauge, engine temperature gauge, oil pressure gauge, and more. Apple says drivers will be able to choose from several gauge cluster designs and layouts, including brand‑specific options.

Climate Controls

You'll be able to access your vehicle's climate controls directly within the new CarPlay interface, allowing you to adjust the temperature of the A/C or heat, fan speed, heated seats, heated steering wheel, and other options.

Multi-Display Support

Next-generation CarPlay will be able to appear across all of the displays in a vehicle, providing a consistent experience across the infotainment system, instrument cluster, and any additional screens on the dashboard. Apple says the new CarPlay will be tailored to each vehicle model to accommodate unique screen shapes and layouts.

Widgets

Widgets will be a key part of the new CarPlay experience, offering at-a-glance information such as trip duration, fuel economy, distance traveled, calendar events, weather, phone calls, the status of a HomeKit-enabled garage door, and more. It will also be possible to view and scroll through the widgets within the instrument cluster.

FM Radio App

Next-generation CarPlay will include an all-new Media app that allows you to easily control the FM radio in your vehicle, such as to change the station.

New Apps

iOS 17.4 for the iPhone added hidden code-level references to eight new CarPlay apps:

• Auto Settings: This app will let you manage paired iPhones and adjust vehicle settings.
• Car Camera: This app will display the vehicle's rear-view camera feed.
• Charge: For electric vehicles, this app will display battery level, charging status, time remaining until the battery is fully charged, and more.
• Climate: This app will provide access to a vehicle's climate controls within CarPlay, allowing you to adjust the temperature of the A/C or heating system, fan speed, heated seats, heated steering wheel, and more.
• Closures: This app will display if any of the vehicle's doors are opened, and it might also display vehicle warning symbols.
• Media: This app will provide access to FM and AM radio station controls within CarPlay, along with other media options like SiriusXM. It is unclear if SiriusXM will offer satellite connectivity, or remain limited to internet streaming. Users will be able to select from a list of music genres, such as Top 40 and Rock.
• Tire Pressure: This app will display air pressure for each of the vehicle's tires, and provide low pressure, high pressure, and flat tire warnings.
• Trips: This app will provide a variety of driving-related data, including the vehicle's average speed, fuel efficiency or energy efficiency, the total time elapsed and distance traveled on a trip, and more.

Committed Automakers

Aston Martin's next-generation CarPlay preview from December 2023​

When it first announced next-generation CarPlay, Apple said the following automakers were committed to offering it in new vehicles:

• Acura
• Audi
• Ford
• Honda
• Infiniti
• Jaguar
• Land Rover
• Lincoln
• Mercedes-Benz
• Nissan
• Polestar
• Porsche
• Renault
• Volvo

Beyond the addition of Aston Martin, it is unclear if this list has changed since that initial announcement at WWDC 2022.

Apple has not indicated if any next-generation CarPlay apps or features will be available in existing vehicles with standard CarPlay support.

Article Link: Where is Apple's Next-Generation CarPlay?

The only manufacturers making decent operating systems in 2024 are Tesla, Rivian, and Volkswagen.

Looking at the state of other cars operating systems I can say their software will fail if they don‘t implement next-gen Carplay, especially in the future.

 

[Mr_Ed]

If relying on tech / smartphones for vehicle operating systems is so bad, then why shouldn’t we abandon all technology in cars?

If CarPlay fails while driving then the car simply reverts to its native / built-in systems, and the chances of CarPlay even failing are just as low as the built in car systems failing.

I’m not going to claim that built-in vehicle gauge displays never fail, but this (bold text) is a pretty bold claim to make, especially given the additional variables introduced by the additional device (iPhone) and the necessary connectivity. Got any data?

 

[Brian_v11]

My $.02 (US):
If a phone manufacturer is plugging into the UX, it's most likely at the presentation layer with some integration available to the non-phone based systems. I think it's probable that Apple/Google have set up failover to revert back to the core system.
The idea of CarPlay/AndroidAuto is awesome. Instantly knowing the layout of a car's gauges when renting or borrowing a third party's car is terrific. I'm sure the CP/AA vendors have also given the ability to tweak the presentation, as well, much in the ways of Apple Watch faces.
Car companies are going to really frustrate their end users by making them pay for recurring navigation costs ($85-$800 per year) when customers can get a better experience using the maps and waypoints they own and have already paid for. I hate the BS I'm seeing with Audi, Mercedes, etc. telling me that to be able to get access to a feature, I have to pay recurring fees. I would assume I'm not the only one.

 

[ifxf]

I rent a lot of cars, and it’s always a pain when they don’t have CarPlay - having to work out navigation, media, and hands free, is not what I want to do at the start of a journey.

I’d never buy a car without CarPlay. If this next gen is even better, count me in!

every rental I had in the last few years had multiple phones registered with the previous drivers contacts. I don’t link my phone to the car since it is always a rush returning it and de registering the phone is easy to forget.

 

[randian]

Feel like that’s obvious. You replace it with a more familiar, pleasant, and consistent UX. This would be a dream for me.

But I’d be surprised as others said if many carmakers go for this level of integration. Basically replaces their look and feel completely.

The proper answer is "so what"? How many more cars does GM think they will sell by bringing us the "GM look"? I submit to you that the honest answer for GM, Mercedes, and anyone else that the "GM look" or "Mercedes look" likely has zero or negative value to consumers, quite aside from money wasted duplicating Apple's engineering.

 

[TomaxXamot]

Regarding CarPlay... I've used it for a couple years. It's superb and have yet come across any aspect that was annoying or frustrating. It just works and is smooth as silk. Clearly Apple put a ton of time and $$$ into making it that way. That's what Apple is good at.

I love CarPlay, but I’ve seen some bugs and glitches. One example is that a couple times (over the course of 2 years, so quite rare) CarPlay has frozen and it took rebooting my phone for it to come back. I’m driving a 2023 Honda with an iPhone 15 Pro so I’m not old tech.

What concerns me with CarPlay 2 is, and I may be ignorant about whether there’s already an answer to this, what happens if it freezes? Does the manufacturer have a digital layer running on the main display underneath CarPlay in case of a freeze so you can still see your speed and have access to various controls like HVAC? Regardless of whether the freeze in my case was caused by poor network reception or what doesn’t really matter as the fact is you need access to certain info and controls 100% of the time while driving for safety reasons and if CarPlay 2 is the single system in control of everything I’d be very wary.

 

[ChrisBe2]

How about, instead of Carplay 2, fixing the problems with Carplay 1?

Here are some things just off the top of my head (Ios 17)
1) Siri is still BAD. A step up from awful, but BAD (all capitals, yes).
2) Itunes music wont let me select and play an album if my car is moving. But it doesnt tell me that. I have to use Siri, and Siri is BAD, especially if used in non-english. Just ”Play album X” can result in all kinds of shenaningans that are not road safe as you try to abort.
3) if I try to send a message, Siri will baulk at any use of app names. Tried sending ”I will be home by 17:10 according to Waze.” and got the error ”Waze does not understand your command”. Thats not a command, thats a sequence of words. when Siri has previosly asked me what I want to send to someone. Just interpret the sounds into words, Siri, do not try to execute a command on those words. If there is a command there it is not for you, Siri.

 

[Mr_Ed]

The proper answer is "so what"? How many more cars does GM think they will sell by bringing us the "GM look"? I submit to you that the honest answer for GM, Mercedes, and anyone else that the "GM look" or "Mercedes look" likely has zero or negative value to consumers, quite aside from money wasted duplicating Apple's engineering.

Don’t you mean money wasted by Apple replicating the automobile’s functionality?
The autos must be usable by anyone, irrespective of any additional devices they may or may not own. The OEM UIs MUST exist, whether you happen to like them or not. Even with CarPlay, some here have indicated that they expect the car to “fall back” to the built-in UI when something goes wrong with CarPlay.

I also think it’s rather rich to try to denigrate aesthetic design approaches from car manufacturers when Apple sweats every last fraction of a millimeter on their devices and too often errs on the side of form over function.

 

[Roadster Lewis]

automakers on their own schedule, integrating this kind of technology takes years for them, unfortunately.
A vehicle launching in 2024 had its infotainment and stuff probably designed 2-3 years ago, then comes the sourcing/qualification of the individual components, then supply chain agreements and then the cars have to go through testing and finally the factories need to be re-tooled for the new vehicles ... it takes time

As an ex automotive infotainment engineer, 2-3 years would be extremely fast for a new infotainment platform. 4-5 would be more realistic.

Finally! A reason to buy an Aston Martin!

Given Aston Martin use a slightly reskinned Mercedes Benz infotainment platform, and have a tiny infotainment team, I seriously doubt they would be anywhere near first to market with this. (Although I would love to see it)

Typically you're correct in how Apple operates however in this situation it's almost impossible for Apple to require a phone in the car for the system to run. Read the article and look at the screen shots ....It's too deeply integrated into virtually all the vehicle operations. For the majority of car buyers who don't have Apple devices nearly all of the vehicles systems wouldn't operate if they were required to have an Apple device in the car and didn't....

And that may indeed be a core reason for the extended delay in the rollout. Apple may be having trouble in crafting license agreements and hardware requirements with auto companies that is acceptable to both parties....

I agree that this is most likely reason, the integration is going to be a lot more complex that the current CarPlay implementations.

I agree the instrument cluster is absolutely THE feedback tool we rely on for all things related to vehicle motion and “system status”. Where I probably see things differently is on the reasons for, and frequency of glances. I’m NOT saying we don’t look at it. When I first drive an unfamiliar car, I do glance at the speed more frequently as you said, but that behavior is short-lived. Much of what you mention is accompanied by additional cues or rarely require checking.

• RPM - sound is a pretty good indicator on its own, and if driving standard transmission, there is also feedback in the way of throttle response. I don’t recall owning a car in recent memory that did not have a rev limiter if you get careless.
• Gear - in automatic, not an issue moving forward. in general, whether driving manual or automatic, you put the car in gear yourself. You know what gear you are in, and you certainly don’t need reminding on a regular basis.
• Lights & high beams - once you turn them on, how often do you ask yourself if they are on? And that’s assuming the car does not have automatic headlights (the last car I owned without this was back in the late 80’s). If you have high beams on accidentally, you’ll catch that the next time you glance at the cluster (or when an oncoming driver flashes you).
• Gas - again, checked very infrequently. I look at this before I get underway and if you are getting low on gas while driving, the car will let you know with multiple cues.
• Tire Pressure - I check that before I get underway. If it goes abnormal while driving, the car lets you know with multiple cues.
• Blinkers and Cruise Control status - You don’t constantly check for that. You just update your own awareness of the status on your next casual glance at the cluster.
• All other ‘warnings’ (driver aids, check engine, etc.) are accompanied by multiple cues, in some cases, including haptic (steering wheel vibrations). You don’t regularly check for those.

I would rather focus whatever awareness I have on the visual scanning of the road ahead and the mirrors while the vehicle is in motion. More and more, new cars are including a HUD, which provide a lot of the information mentioned above without glancing away from the road. I think that is great from a safety perspective, but it also makes how “pretty” the instrument cluster looks less relevant.

All of this information comes to the cluster by network messages, the same as it gets to the HUD/any other screen in the car. So the information could easy get to wherever Apple generate the UI.

This would be great for car devs. I could see where you buy a stock EV online and choose Apple as the CarOS.

It will certainly be a lot of work for automotive engineers, at least initially…

Because I think they've pretty much hit a plateau as to what CarPlay can do

That being said, something that I'd love to see is a built-in weather app so you don't have to ask Siri about that

Sure, pretty much every car has its own built-in temperature readout, but it would be nice just to have access to mostly the same functionality of the built-in Weather app (or 3rd party ones) without having to invoke Siri

Temperature read outs in the car are the measured temperature at the car, not a prediction based on a rough geographical estimate. I’m fairly sure that the readout from the temperature sensor would be one of the inputs to CarPlay 2.0.

If relying on tech / smartphones for vehicle operating systems is so bad, then why shouldn’t we abandon all technology in cars?

If CarPlay fails while driving then the car simply reverts to its native / built-in systems, and the chances of CarPlay even failing are just as low as the built in car systems failing.

As someone who has moved from automotive software development to the tech industry, automotive software is significantly more robust, with way higher standards to meet, especially anything safety rated (look up ASIL ratings), instrument clusters fall into that category.

I was more involved in the software side of things, but hardware generally has more stringent requirements for automotive too, things like temperature ranges it will work at (think car left outside in Sweden in winter, or in the sun in Dubai). A touchscreen has to withstand a head impact without shattering/detaching, so is built more robustly than an iPad for example. So the chances of CarPlay failing are higher than whatever is in the car as standard.

 

[person s]

Actually, I'm glad my car (Tesla Model 3) doesn't have CarPlay. It would be messy at best and the more people use car-play, the less work is going into improving the actual software of the car.

I’m living without Carplay and I’m happy with Apple Music, but I wish Tesla would fix the music player interface
it’s quite primitive

 

[MRrainer]

I’m living without Carplay and I’m happy with Apple Music, but I wish Tesla would fix the music player interface
it’s quite primitive

I only listen to DAB radio and maybe a podcast or two. I only listen to one channel, which has news during the day and classical music at night. Often, I just don't play anything and enjoy the relative silence.

My previous car had a FM radio and a cassette player (which I never used).