Damion Smy:

For Apple and Google, your car is the next digital frontier. It’s the place where drivers can’t deeply interact with their smartphones, but the computing giants want to change that by offering user-friendly, simple and intuitive infotainment systems. And it’s another way for them to influence your phone choice, and sell you apps and services.
‘The car is like the second lounge room, with the amount of time people spend there, and this presents a big opportunity,’ says T3 magazine’s Kieran Alger.

Volvo vows to be at the leading edge of CarPlay: it’ll be plumbed into the new XC90 arriving this autumn. ‘It’s not about replacing a car’s functionality, it’s about extending it,’ says Volvo’s connectivity brand manager, David Holecek. But what if you haven’t got an iPhone? You can wire your Android phone up to Volvo’s in-car interface, but you won’t be able to unlock so many features. Clunkily, your iPhone will also have to be physically attached, and it has to be by lightning cable and to an iPhone 5.

Ford, which has a long-standing supply deal with Microsoft, paints itself as ‘device agnostic’. ‘The lifecycle of a car is much longer than a smartphone’s,’ says Ford’s director of connected services, Jo Beiser. ‘We’ll work with a number of systems; we’re not gambling on one tech.’ For Ferrari, CarPlay is a natural fit – some 90% of its customers are Apple junkies.

Which car makers are choosing Apple Carplay and Android OS?

APPLE CARPLAY
Ferrari
Hyundai
Honda
Volvo
Mercedes
BMW
Chevrolet
Ford
Mitsubishi
Land Rover
Nissan
Opel/Vauxhall Subaru
Suzuki
Toyota
Peugeot Citroën
Jaguar

ANDROID (Google)
Audi
GM
Honda
Hyundai