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I have a boring Mercedes mid-size SUV. Carplay works. I can skip/repeat tracks using the standard control on the steering wheel; the instrument cluster shows the current track the same way it's done with connected phones forever. On the center console screen, we use the Carplay view with 3 splits - one for Spotify, two for navigation (map & next direction). Google Maps and Apple Maps are both reliable where I drive (Miami).

Tesla is a great car below the from the headlights down, I love driving my dad's Y performance to the grocery store when I'm visiting home. But no way I'm going to get a car where I can't point the vent at my armpit without using a touch screen. No way I'm going to get a car where I can't talk to whatever agent I want while stuck in traffic. I much rather have a boring car that doesn't tick me off.

If Tesla (or Rivian) add Carplay, they'll really move up the my list (still want physical vent control tho). Would you stop driving your Tesla if an update added Carplay tomorrow?

See my comment below. I think they should add CarPlay support but I personally don’t see myself ever using it.

Personally I find the feeling of air blowing on me, no matter how pleasant initially, to quickly become grating. In most cars I adjust the air to blow where I am not, and compensate with a notch higher fan speed.

Having the ability for the air stream continually moving is more valuable to me than constantly moving it by hand.

Being able to pre-cool the car before entering it is more valuable to me than sitting in a hot car and pointing the MAX A/C directly on my face.

Cars have had remote start with the ability to cool down (or warm up) the car before getting into them for decades before the Tesla was ever invented.

Yes I know, one of my cars has this. My comment had nothing to do with Tesla. I'm only speaking in principle.

I wouldn't stop driving my Tesla if they swapped the UI for Carplay but I'd be incredibly disappointed at the downgrade

why would they swap. add

Apple product users don't believe in free will.

> The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back,

But... you don't. Tapping on the home button once more or swiping to the right on the app page reveals the home screen which has navigation and music together:

https://devimages-cdn.apple.com/wwdc-services/images/D35E0E8...

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/wgH6RZrtKkuAQkJUjfWW8V.jpg

It even adapts to vertical screens:

https://i.redd.it/n7e0st8ebyh81.jpg

Our CarPlay car has a small screen, so I prefer to keep navigation full screen most of the time. In split mode, it’s way too tiny for me, but I occasionally leave it there if I know my way around anyways. It’s definitely not a well designed experience.

I believe iOS 27 brings a MiniPlayer, but I don’t know the rules about when it does/doesn’t show.

I mean, you choosing not to use the feature doesn't mean the feature doesn't exist and fulfill your needs.

It sounds like the issue is mostly your CarPlay cars small screen compared to Tesla's large one. This didn't seen to be a CarPlay problem beyond maybr Apple trying their best with the screens most of their customers are given.

Would this not be an issue with any interface if the screen is that small?

I have a Polestar 2, 2022 model even so it's not fresh off the lot.

CarPlay navigation shows on the instrument cluster. The speed, state of charge, etc all move to the side so the map is right in the middle for quick viewing. Then the infotainment screen can show music or the tiled music/navigation view that CarPlay supports.

Basic music controls are on the steering wheel of course, readily accessible.

The lack of multitouch is slightly annoying, but it's not something I ever use. If I ever can't see what I need on the navigation I simply look outside for the road signs, which still exist.

Can’t you do split screen navigation via the home screen (Dashboard View)? At least on cars I’ve rented I could have navigation on one side and music on the other in CarPlay.

Split screen can be finicky and kinda sucks on the small screen we have. Also, I don’t think I can browse music with split screen…

Is Siri this horrible? I do most of picking music with Gemini. How are you not distracted from driving while scrolling through things?

Curiously, being herded onto tesla's software is the number one reason I won't buy one. I don't like the navigation or media software and the rest would feel better as a physical control or just seems useless in a car.

I find the media stuff all works just fine - gotta say I control it all almost exclusively by voice, and it Just Works - but the navigation… sucks donkey ass. I hate that it only treats superchargers as possible charging stops - where I live they are few and far between, yet other high speed chargers are common. The routing is often abysmal. It’ll be like “heavy traffic ahead. Taking you into it.” The traffic camera database is incomplete. The behaviour between the mobile and in car app is wildly inconsistent.

You know, I don’t care so much about having CarPlay as I care about having Waze or ABRP or just any routing app other than Tesla’s.

You can control music and still navigate while in CarPlay. I do it all the time.

When I first started using CarPlay, the screen that has the music and map showing simultaneously was not obvious and it wasn’t until well into my third long trip with CarPlay that I finally discovered it. I had thought the only display options were app full screen and app list. I think there was a change sometime in the last 3 years that made that the default starting display (or maybe I’m just a little less dumb now).

OK you don’t like it. How is that an argument against allowing people to choose?

Quite the contrary, I’ve long thought Tesla should add support for CarPlay to alleviate the concerns of many buyers over it not being supported. I think it would have been starkly worse than Tesla’s interface before they supported multi-touch this past year, but nonetheless they should have supported it by now. Better late than never that they’re finally adding support for it, it’ll especially make Rivian look kinda silly for continuing to be so stubborn about it. I think only a small fraction will actually use CarPlay on their Teslas, but it’s still pretty dumb to let that missing feature hurt their sales.

Most OEM infotainment sucks, and it's taken a while for things to improve. I'd be willing to say your older car has a resistive touchscreen and physically couldn't support multitouch

CarPlay is definitely an improvement if you're comparing it to something like Ford Sync for example

My car supports multitouch in factory nav but not CarPlay (24 plate VAG).

> I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I’ve had Teslas for 8 years and we currently also have car that supports CarPlay. The CarPlay interface is overall far inferior, especially with navigation. First of all, searching for destinations is terrible on CarPlay compared to Tesla

Tesla and surprisingly Hyundai are outliers, the vast majority of cars have terrible infotainment systems, and them deciding to suddenly focus on it does not assure me at all.

I find Tesla’s interface to be inferior as soon as you want to use an app they haven’t built. Like my podcasts app. Or receiving / replying to a WhatsApp message. Even the built-in text message support can’t handle replying to a group text.

Personally I’d stick with Tesla’s nav and use CarPlay for media and messaging, and that’s the optionality and user choice I think this post is trying to get at.

The main dashboard screen of CarPlay lets you navigate, manage music, and view the calendar and take calls all at once. Have you used that before?

“Searching for destinations on CarPlay”

I think this is the difference for me - I’ve decided where I’m going before I get in the car. Either I’ve planned a route (on my phone) or got a destination through a message from a friend on LINE. Either way I already have a plan.. on my phone. So having to somehow get that into the car navigation is always going to be worse than just using my phone

Like the author said, if your built in is good, then great you don’t need CarPlay. Literally nobody is asking you to switch.

I have a Tesla and a Lightning.

One of them lets me send iMessages to groups as well as non-phone recipients like my kids. The other is my Tesla.

I’m glad for you, but if Tesla supported CarPlay I could get what I wanted and you would not be affected at all. I’m baffled why people like you even bother to share your opinion. Nobody is suggesting that you be forced to use CarPlay. See also the entire topic of this discussion.

I’m baffled you think sharing a well-sourced opinion on a discussion thread is a bad thing, or that you think I believe Tesla adding support for CarPlay would somehow force me to use it. As I said in other replies, I’ve long thought Tesla should add support for it, but that few people would actually use it much.

I don't own a Tesla.

I have rented one though, so I know enough about the software experience to know that there's (currently) only one reason why I might wish for CarPlay over the integrated software experience, and that's Waze. Maybe.

I own two (petrol) cars. One has CarPlay, the other has a rigid phone mount between the steering wheel and centre console. While I appreciate the former for its nice large widescreen map, I still prefer the latter. Waze in CarPlay mode (due to the restrictions on what can be shown on the phone screen) is simply more annoying to operate. So if was in the market for a Tesla, and I had the choice between CarPlay support or a nice phone mount between the centre console and steering wheel, I'd probably choose the latter.

(I would still campaign for Tesla to support CarPlay, because why not.)

The author of the original piece is asking for a choice.

Your opinion is not an argument for that. It’s also not an argument against that.

So I’m not terribly sure what it adds to the discussion. I’m not surprised there are people who like Tesla’s UI. I’ve seen plenty of them online over the years.

> you think sharing a well-sourced opinion

You misunderstand. I am baffled why you would share your opinion in this discussion given that the entire premise is that CarPlay is additive, not a replacement. You made an entire point that was contrasting CarPlay with the built-in infotainment as if it were an either/or proposition

Give me CarPlay on my Tesla, I will use it AND the built-in apps too. Then I get more than I would have with either one by itself.

"The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back". That's no longer true for CarPlay. It now has a mode where you see Maps and Music at the same time.

Second all these points! No multitouch is such a bad experience on maps!

All of this nonsense critique is massively outweighed by 1. having a HUD (your tesla will never get one because Elon is an idiot) and 2. having carplay/android auto sync your turn-by-turn directions into that HUD.

I honestly cannot believe how bad CarPlay is — I can't believe how many rave reviews it gets, I think it's absolutely awful compared to Rivian or Tesla software.