Enjoy CarPlay While You Still Can

I love CarPlay, but I do feel like I'm risking my family's life when it fails to connect and I'm left fiddling with it while driving. It seems like what GM's doing would at least eliminate that risk factor.

Wired CarPlay FTW

> I do feel like I'm risking my family's life when it fails to connect and I'm left fiddling with it while driving.

Wireless connectivity may be frustrating (though I've never had connectivity issues plugged in to the USB port), but this is a really bizarre framing.

Just pull over.

How about no. I don't want to pull over and "reboot" the car (like I had to with the Mach-E). My daily for 15 years has been a 2006 Mazda 3 with an added AUX port and a magsafe phone holder on my dash. No software crashes, no nonsense.

Implementation still varies between car to car. Example: Mach-e interrupts the song playing and takes many seconds before it resumes. Sometimes this leads to multiple driving instructions preventing the song from resuming for a long time.

Other implementations (looking at you Hyundai) crash requiring you to pull over, disconnect the phone, reboot the infotainment and then re-enter your navigation destination.

The best implementation is no carplay: instead use an AUX port and mount the phone on the dash.

Second best is Tesla's custom navigation. They do something other car companies should: use one of the million speakers in the car to focus on navigation directions while allowing audio content to continue playing on all the other speakers. Such a simple idea but so good.

My phone is much smaller and harder to read than my car's screen. Also, my phone overheats when I'm driving in the hot sun, which causes it to dim the screen. I've had a dash-mounted phone for many years; Carplay has been much better for me (though yes, it has occasionally crashed).

> I don't want to pull over and "reboot" the car (like I had to with the Mach-E).

Next time, try holding Volume down+forward buttons.

That being said, Ford makes great vehicles, but terrible software. My car has so many stupid bugs (all just annoyances).

> ...use one of the million speakers in the car to focus on navigation directions while allowing audio content to continue playing on all the other speakers.

My previous-gen Kia Sedona does this as well (at least when using the built-in maps).

I’ve spent a lot of time with both, and hands down the wired one is far more flakey. Granted I think that’s more a Mazda software issue, but a solid 10% of the time I get “CarPlay failed” and the only way to fix it is to turn the car on and off. Never once had an issue with wireless in a Hyundai.

In my Mazda the wired CarPlay also seems to fail a lot. But whenever I rent a car with wireless CarPlay it's been fine. Take this one anecdote for what it's worth.

My Mazda’s wired carplay has never once failed so…take this one anecdote for what it’s worth.