It’s 2025 and ‘CarPlay 2.0’ Is Still Missing in Action
Credit: Apple
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Two and a half years ago, Apple announced a revolutionary upgrade to CarPlay during its June 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). While the company was clear from the outset that it would take time for vehicles to be equipped with the new technology, we’re now entering 2025, and “CarPlay 2.0” still can’t be found on any new cars.
Apple initially promised that the first vehicles to get the new CarPlay integration would be announced by the end of 2023. The company said it was working with a substantial list of carmakers to make this happen, including Ford, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, Honda, Acura, Jaguar, Land Rover, Audi, Nissan, Volvo, Porsche, and more. Yet we still hadn’t heard a peep from anyone by mid-2023.
When asked about their plans, only BMW, Volvo, Polestar, and Mercedes-Benz admitted they were even considering the new CarPlay technology; the rest were noncommittal, at best. Still, Apple managed to come in just under the wire on its 2023 deadline when Porsche and Aston Martin previewed the new interface to Car and Driver.
While those aren’t exactly household automotive brands, the news offered some hope that we’d see at least some vehicles arrive in 2024 to show off what CarPlay 2.0 was capable of — and Apple’s CarPlay website promised the same. However, as MacRumors recently pointed out, neither Porsche nor Aston Martin introduced the system in any of their 2025 models — at least not the whole package.
The Porsche Taycan is already one of the most Apple-integrated vehicles on the market, so it was a likely candidate to get CarPlay 2.0. However, the automaker has only gone partway in its 2025 model, with what some reviewers are calling “CarPlay+” — a solution that allows CarPlay to control some in-vehicle systems but fails to extend it beyond the infotainment screen.
As Porsche describes it, “Apple CarPlay has been more deeply integrated into the vehicle displays and functions,” allowing for features like adjusting climate control, radio stations, and ambient lighting from the CarPlay UI. That’s a nice enhancement, but it falls far short of the full promise of “CarPlay 2.0,” which effectively becomes the entire car UI.
This next generation of CarPlay is the ultimate iPhone experience for the car. It provides content for all the driver’s screens including the instrument cluster. This ensures a cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone — with designs for each automaker that express your vehicle’s character and brand. Vehicle functions like radio and temperature controls are handled right from CarPlay. And personalization options ranging from widgets to selecting curated gauge cluster designs make it unique to the driver.
Apple
Under that description on its CarPlay page, Apple still says, “First models arrive in 2024.” That obviously hasn’t happened — at least not how it was supposed to. Now that it’s 2025, we expect Apple to do something with that “2024” tag in the next few days, but it will be interesting to see whether it simply becomes “2025” or if Apple revises or scales back the plan somehow.
Perhaps what Porsche has done is the most we’ll ever see. After all, as much as Apple promised an experience tailored for each vehicle brand, it still requires carmakers to give up their entire dashboards to Apple for the full next-generation experience. Integrating car functions into the CarPlay UI on the standard infotainment screen is easier and safer. On the other hand, the enhanced “CarPlay 1.5” may just be a stepping stone toward the full package. There’s a lot of complexity in making all this work correctly, so Apple and its automotive partners may simply need more time to perfect it.
