Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto: Usage impressions and manufacturer tensions

What happens to manufacturers when your ability to differentiate whose vehicle you’re currently traveling in, far from piloting, disappears?

My wife’s 2018 Land Rover Discovery:

not only now has upgraded LED headlights courtesy of yours truly, I also persuaded the dealer a while ago to gratis-activate the vehicle’s previously latent Apple CarPlay and Google Android Audio facilities for us (gratis in conjunction with a fairly pricey maintenance bill, mind you…). I recently finally got around to trying them both out, and the concept’s pretty cool, with the implementation a close second. Here’s what CarPlay’s UI looks like, courtesy of Wikipedia’s topic entry:

And here’s the competitive Android Auto counterpart:

Vehicle-optimized user experiences

As you can see, this is more than just a simple mirroring of the default smartphone user interface; after the mobile device and vehicle successfully activate a bidirectional handshake, the phone switches into an alternative UI that’s more vehicle (specifically: mindful of driver-distraction potential) amenable, and tailored for its larger albeit potentially lower overall resolution dashboard-integrated display.

The baseline support for both protocols in our particular vehicle is wired, which means that you plug the phone into one of the USB-A ports located within the storage console located between the front seats. My wife’s legacy iPhone is still Lightning-based, so I’ve snagged both a set of inexpensive ($4.99 for three) coiled Lightning-to-USB-A cords for her:

and a similarly (albeit not quite as impressively) penny-pinching ($6.67 for two) suite of USB-C-to-USB-A coiled cords for my Google Pixel phones:

The wired approach is convenient because a single cord handles both communication-with-vehicle and phone charging tasks. That said, a lengthy strand of wire, even coiled, spanning the gap from the console to the magnetic mount located at the dashboard vent:

is aesthetically and otherwise unappealing, especially considering that the mount at the phone end also already redundantly supports both MagSafe (iPhone) and Qi (Pixel, in conjunction with a magnet-augmented case) charging functions:

Wireless communications

Therefore, I’ve also pressed into service a couple of inexpensive (~$10 each, sourced from Amazon’s Warehouse-now-Resale section) wireless adapters that mimic the integrated wireless facilities of newer model-year vehicles and even comprehend both the CarPlay and Android Auto protocols. One comes from a retailer called VCARLINKPLAY:

The other is from the “PakWizz Store”:

The approach here is somewhat more complicated. The phone first pairs with the adapter, already plugged into and powered by the car’s USB-A port, over Bluetooth. The adapter then switches both itself and the phone to a common and (understandably, given the aggregate data payload now involved) beefier 5 GHz Wi-Fi Direct link.

Particularly considering the interference potential from other ISM band (both 2.4 GHz for Bluetooth and 5 GHz for Wi-Fi) occupants contending for the same scarce spectrum, I’m pleasantly surprised at how reliable everything is, although initial setup admittedly wasn’t tailored for the masses and even caused techie-me to twitch a bit.

Encroaching on vehicle manufacturers’ turf

As such, I’ve been especially curious to follow recent news trends regarding both CarPlay and Android Auto. Rivian and Tesla, for example, have long resisted adding support for either protocol to their vehicles, although rumors persist that both companies are continuing to develop support internally for potential rollout in the future.

Automotive manufacturers’ broader embrace (public at least) for next-generation CarPlay Ultra has to date been muted at best. And GM is actively phasing out both CarPlay and Android Auto from new vehicle models, in favor of an internally developed entertainment software-and-display stack alternative.

What’s going on? Consider this direct quote from Apple’s May 2025 CarPlay Ultra press release:

CarPlay Ultra builds on the capabilities of CarPlay and provides the ultimate in-car experience by deeply integrating with the vehicle to deliver the best of iPhone and the best of the car. It provides information for all of the driver’s screens, including real-time content and gauges in the instrument cluster.

Granted, Apple has noted that in developing CarPlay Ultra, it’s “reflecting the automaker’s look and feel” (along with “offering drivers a customizable experience”). But given that all Apple showed last May was an Aston Martin logo next to its own:

I’d argue that Apple’s “partnership” claims are dubious, and maybe even specious. And per comments from Ford’s CEO Jim Farley in a recent interview, he seems to agree (the full interview is excellent and well worth a read):

Are you going to allow OEMs to control the vehicles? How far do you want the Apple brand to go? Do you want the Apple brand to start the car? Do you want the Apple brand to limit the speed? Do you want the Apple brand to limit access?

The bottom line, as I see it, is that Apple can pontificate all it wants that:

CarPlay Ultra allows automakers to express their distinct design philosophy with the look and feel their customers expect. Custom themes are crafted in close collaboration between Apple and the automaker’s design team, resulting in experiences that feel tailor-made for each vehicle.

But automakers like Ford and GM are obviously (and understandably so, IMHO) worried that with Apple and Google already taking over key aspects of the visual, touch (and audible; don’t forget about the Siri and Google Assistant-now-Gemini voice) interfaces, not to mention their even more aggressive aspirations (along with historical behavior in other markets as a guide to future behavior here), the manufacturer, brand and model uniqueness currently experienced by vehicle occupants will evaporate in response.

More to come

I’ll be curious to see (and cover) how this situation continues to develop. For now, I welcome your thoughts in the comments on what I’ve shared so far in this post. And FYI, I’ve also got two single-protocol wireless adapter candidates sitting in my teardown pile awaiting attention: a CarPlay-only unit from the “Luckymore Store”:

And an Android Auto-only unit, the v1 AAWireless, which I’d bought several years back in its original Indiegogo crowdfunding form:

Stay tuned for those, as well!

—Brian Dipert is the Principal at Sierra Media and a former technical editor at EDN Magazine, where he still regularly contributes as a freelancer.

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