Luke, Emily’s husband, came into the office and said “what’s up with Don – traded his Infiniti for a CHEVY?”. Well, yes I did. I picked up a new Chevy Volt this week. I wanted better gas mileage than the Infiniti hybrid so set the bar at 40mpg. Then again I am fascinated by electric cars and couldn’t think of affording a Tesla so the Volt became more and more interesting. The fact that it had CarPlay and automatic parallel parking didn’t hurt, either.
This morning after charging all night I had 53 miles of EV range on the battery. It is about 12 miles to the office so I figured I would have about 40 left. Well, it turns out it is all downhill from Prickly Mountain so I actually gained EV range due to regenerative braking and the Volt has 67 miles left on the battery now.
Yeah, but what about CarPlay? I went to Boston to pick up the car and driving back I was able to play around with CarPlay. I asked Siri some hands-free questions, tuned into MLB to listen to the Cubs, played some Reggae music and used Maps to navigate home. My first CarPlay experience was great!
As I searched for cars I went to the Apple web site that lists all the CarPlay compatible cars and made it one of the most important criteria. You can check out the current list here. In addition to these equipped cars there are 3rd-party after-market receivers that support CarPlay.
CarPlay is the smarter, safer way to use your iPhone in the car. CarPlay takes the things you want to do with your iPhone while driving and puts them right on your car’s built-in display. You can get directions, make calls, send and receive messages, ask Siri for the latest Cubs score and listen to music, all in a way that allows you to stay focused on the road.
Activating CarPlay was simple in the Volt. It was merely a matter of plugging my iPhone into the USB port in the car and I was ready to go. I could dictate messages, listen to a wide variety of content in addition to my music library. CarPlay Apps include Spotify, Pandora, Tunein Radio, Audible, Slacker, etc. More and more are coming as Apple opens CarPlay for developers, too. You install CarPlay apps on your iPhone and they will automatically be reflected on your CarPlay screen.
When I left the dealership I told Siri to take me home. Maps launched immediately and I was given turn-by-turn directions to Prickly Mountain. I am sure that more and more car manufacturers will be incorporating CarPlay and with all the attention to cars these days, I am pretty sure we will see a lot more features coming. But for right now, it is very handy and a great safety feature to keep the iPhone in the cup holder and be able to use so much of it eyes-free in the car.
It is not perfect though. I want wireless CarPlay because I do not want to even take my iPhone out of my pocket. It would be nice if Mail was a supported app. Let’s say you are waiting for that important eMail about a new job. You are going to be tempted to take your eyes off the road and fiddle around with your iPhone but if Mail was supported on CarPlay you could have Siri read that mail to you and you could dictate your response. Find my Friends would be another handy one so you can meet your buds at the right watering hole. While my car has weather from Sirius XM it would be handy if Apple’s Weather app came on CarPlay or Darksky.
Hmm…what else is on my wish list. Movie listings, Stocks, Open Table, Calculator, The Score — all would be great to have on CarPlay. So far, I am giving Apple CarPlay high marks and for this Apple fanboy it was an important consideration in buying my car.