May 15, 2025 UPDATE CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, begins rolling out today CarPlay Ultra brings the best of iPhone and the best of the car together for a deeply integrated experience,…
May 15, 2025
UPDATE
CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, begins rolling out today
CarPlay Ultra brings the best of iPhone and the best of the car together for a deeply integrated experience, beginning with Aston Martin vehicles
Starting today, CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, is available with new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the U.S. and Canada, and will be available for existing models that feature the brand’s next-generation infotainment system through a software update in the coming weeks. CarPlay Ultra builds on the capabilities of CarPlay and provides the ultimate in-car experience by deeply integrating with the vehicle to deliver the best of iPhone and the best of the car. It provides information for all of the driver’s screens, including real-time content and gauges in the instrument cluster, while reflecting the automaker’s look and feel and offering drivers a customizable experience. Many other automakers around the world are working to bring CarPlay Ultra to drivers, including newly committed brands Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis.
“iPhone users love CarPlay, and it has transformed how people connect with their vehicles. With CarPlay Ultra, together with automakers, we are reimagining the in-car experience, making it even more unified and consistent,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “This next generation of CarPlay gives drivers a smarter, safer way to use their iPhone in the car, while deeply integrating with the car’s systems and showcasing the unique look and feel of each automaker. We are excited to kick off the rollout of CarPlay Ultra with Aston Martin — and this is just the beginning, with more automakers on the way.”
Deeper Integration Than Ever Before
CarPlay Ultra provides content for all the driver’s screens, including the instrument cluster, with dynamic and beautiful options for the speedometer, tachometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, and more, bringing a consistent look and feel to the entire driving experience. Drivers can choose to show information from their iPhone, like maps and media, along with information that comes from the car, such as advanced driver assistance systems and tire pressure, right in the instrument cluster.
Drivers can also use onscreen controls, physical buttons, or Siri to manage both standard vehicle functions like the car’s radio and climate, as well as advanced, vehicle-specific features and controls like audio system configurations or performance settings, right from CarPlay, giving them a more fluid and seamless experience. CarPlay Ultra also introduces widgets powered by iPhone that perfectly fit the car’s screen or gauge cluster to provide information at a glance.
A Design Unique to Each Automaker
CarPlay Ultra allows automakers to express their distinct design philosophy with the look and feel their customers expect. Custom themes are crafted in close collaboration between Apple and the automaker’s design team, resulting in experiences that feel tailor-made for each vehicle. Drivers can also personalize the colors and wallpapers of themes to match their individual tastes.
“Aston Martin is delighted to have collaborated with Apple and to be first to launch CarPlay Ultra,” said Adrian Hallmark, Aston Martin’s CEO. “As a brand, our focus on world-leading performance goes beyond the traditional attributes associated with powertrains, dynamic performance, and craftsmanship. The integration of CarPlay Ultra is a clear example of the dedication to collaborate with the best companies in the world to bring unique experiences and in-vehicle capabilities to our customers. Building on our in-house state-of-the-art infotainment system, CarPlay Ultra will provide additional functionality and personalization opportunities, which place Aston Martin at the forefront of infotainment in the sector.”
CarPlay Ultra joins CarPlay, which is beloved by drivers around the world and has fundamentally changed the way people interact with their vehicles, providing a safer, smarter way to use iPhone in the car. And just like with CarPlay, rigorous privacy measures built into iPhone apply to CarPlay Ultra.
Availability
- Beginning in the U.S. and Canada, CarPlay Ultra will be available for Aston Martin’s core model lineup, and will expand to include vehicles globally in the next 12 months.
- The experience is available in new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the U.S. and Canada starting today, and will be available for existing Aston Martin vehicles in the U.S. and Canada featuring the brand’s next-generation infotainment system in the coming weeks through a software update available at local dealers.
- CarPlay Ultra works with iPhone 12 or later running iOS 18.5 or later.
- For more information on availability across Aston Martin’s vehicle lineup and information on updating at Aston Martin dealerships, visit media.astonmartin.com.
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Comments
By neogodless 2025-05-1513:273 reply Ideally, this is the logical progression that balances automakers desire for having some level of influence on the experience, while still giving drivers the phone-driven CarPlay experience they prefer. Though if the balance isn't quite right, the automakers could gain "too much" control over it (and ruin it). It will be interesting to see what the real world experience is with it, though.
Android Automotive, pay attention. GM, I'm looking at you.
This is really sad. Just as the original iPhone launch broke through carriers trying to monopolize control over phones (remember having to pay for ringtones?) and instead gradually transferred to a new monopolist, we welcome our phone monopolist against the car industry. Because, as you say, the carmakers will try to customize it, and make it worse, just as PC and printer manufacturers ship bloatware and Microsoft put Candy Crush in the start menu.
I'm guessing that user customization is waay down the list here.
By neogodless 2025-05-1513:53 I agree in some ways, that phone software pushing itself into the dashboard is more worrisome. Just today I was skimming an Equinox EV review that said there's a weird interplay between the center screen and dashboard, where you'd have to reach over to the center to "push" certain modules into the dashboard.
What I guess I don't agree with is that Apple has a monopoly on car interfaces. There's a similar duopoly here between Google and Android.
Still I think the ideal might be... light integration with the automotive operating system, with that mostly controlled by the automaker, while the entertainment center is largely user-controlled, including options to use the phone-provided in-screen systems like CarPlay and Android Auto.
It hasn't, historically, been a strength of automakers to make great integrated automotive operating systems, but it is somewhat of a differentiator for buyers so we can hope that competition improves things. If someone like Mazda continues to make a fast, fluid, intuitive operating system that also supports Android Auto and CarPlay, that's great.
But... the auto sales model, I think, works against proper competition. Because there are other major factors that buyers use to make their decisions. While every GM electric car article has a few vocal "no carplay, no buy" comments, GM is still steadily increasing their EV market share. It'll never be fully... discrete.
(Not like when it was more popular to rip the whole radio out of the dashboard and put your own Pioneer/JBL/etc system in there.)
By ramses0 2025-05-1513:38 I think this is matching some of their Apple Watch co-branding, eg: you can't pick the Hermes watchface unless you also buy the Hermes strap: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-hermes/
...in all, I think it should make leaning on CarPlay more palatable for auto manufacturers. Exclusive "Ferrari Red" speedometers (aka: CSS-for-CarPlay), and there's the bland-ish basics that can be provided by Apple and used in any car.
> phone-driven CarPlay experience they prefer.
Oh god, no.
Not only is this awful, it gives the big tech companies huge leverage over the automakers. It's another industry where they'll embrace-extend-extinguish.
These companies will use smartphones as leverage to crush the automotive giants. It's another reason why we need antitrust enforcement to catch up with 30 years of being asleep at the wheel.
The automotive companies should be in charge of their industry and their destinies. Tech companies shouldn't be ensnaring them.
The phone giants already control how software is made and distributed (and they tax it 15-30%), insert themselves into digital payments and communications, place ads on your maps and navigation, etc. Soon they'll be taxing the car companies for integration, forcing the car companies to do what they want, and those car companies will pass that pain onto you, the consumer.
By alphabettsy 2025-05-1513:552 reply I thought it might be satire, but you’re worried about the poor car companies?
You’re right that phone giants have too much power, but car companies are already selling our data and injecting ads or preferred partners into the infotainment. It’s CarPlay that currently lets you avoid the abysmal and often subscription-based experiences they’re pushing.
I would love to see more open systems that would allow third-parties or users to provide software for vehicles.
I knew who had posted the parent comment without even looking. It's almost identical to many of their other comments, which I've also mistaken for satire in the past too.
By echelon 2025-05-1517:18 These two companies are putting a ceiling on you and everyone else. You can choose to accept that, perhaps even benefit from their stock or employment, but the fact is that they are invasive species that are trophically malinvesting and snuffing out the most salient gradients of innovation and competition because we haven't policed them.
If you're pro-consumer, you want an end to this. If you're pro-business, pro-entrepreneur, pro-innovation capital seeing upside of labor and invention, then you also want an end to this.
These two companies would be worth more as separate entities than the sum of their parts. Their value is being squandered as gigantic conglomerate platform plays. They piss away so many resources and grow fat on the areas they've lodged themselves into and peerlessly destroyed any competition.
I've consistently echoed this sentiment for years. Now lots of people are saying the same thing.
Break them up, and competition will become relentlessly breakneck to fill out the new, healthier ecosystem. It would be a forest fire yielding to new growth.
> the poor car companies?
Google and Apple are the monopolies, here. Mega monopolies the world has never seen the likes of before. It's unreal how big and how much power they have. Apple and Google are practically God and more powerful than Christianity.
> car companies are already selling our data
It's wild that this is being thrown out as being even within the same order of magnitude as bad. Google and Apple are doing this 1000x worse. And for those that think Apple is a "privacy play", just look what they do to bend over to authoritarian regimes. They're still leveraging your data for advertising, and that play is bringing Apple more and more money year over year.
The phone giants have way too much power. They control people trying to write software, people trying to run software. They control every payment, all the payment rails. They control the communication. The defaults. The search. 98% of your life flows through them.
Your car is a pittance to that.
We need to break up the phone companies or limit what they can do with the devices after they've sold them to you.
Imagine if your car could tell you where you could drive. Or if businesses had to pay a tax to be visible from looking out your windshield. Or if they collected a percentage of everything you bought while you were out driving and shopping. Because that's phones. Google and Apple are our -- and everybody else's -- pimps and masters. You're nothing, I'm nothing. They're gods.
By senordevnyc 2025-05-1518:311 reply So much fear.
It’s not that I think Google or Apple are altruistic, or that we wouldn’t be better off if they were broken up, but as far as I can tell, the only space where it’s hard to avoid both of them is the mobile phone OS. And I think that’s mainly a function of the fact that generally people are happy with those two options. In every other category there’s other solid options and Google and Apple are easily avoided.
There’s a million things that I’m more worried about than the mobile OS duopoly. It’s going to be OK.
> generally people are happy with those two options.
There isn't enough market surface area left to compete for. Anyone trying will spend tens of billions of dollars and still lose.
This has cemented Apple and Google as the eternal victors of mobile. There is no hope in competing. If Facebook and Microsoft gave up, all hope is lost.
Unfortunately, since there hasn't been any regulation against this anti-competitive duopolization, Apple and Google are complete assholes to everyone on "their" platform. It's one of the least free, most extractive markets in the world. And it touches everything and everyone. You cannot avoid it.
The only hope is regulation. Governments telling Apple and Google "no more app store, no more payment rails, no more defaults". That'll bring balance back to the universe.
By senordevnyc 2025-05-1610:42 Meh, it’s not that I totally disagree with you, I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. And I say that as both a consumer and a mobile engineer.
Lots of market categories are duopolies. Even monopolies sometimes. Somehow the world keeps turning. Apple and Google won’t be the largest and most powerful companies forever, just like the companies that came before them.
It’s going to be OK.
By drcongo 2025-05-1515:13 Imagine if your car ejected you out the sunroof because you had green bubbles! Imagine if the tyres automatically deflated every time you pass a tyre shop! Imagine a million other made up things!
By neogodless 2025-05-1513:371 reply Is your argument that automakers should not support Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and should instead each individually create their own software and digital interfaces?
A dream world would define a standard for video/audio/controls interface with a vehicle/device and it would just "work" - like how connecting your TV over HDMI to your laptop just works (usually).
Of course, that will never happen, because standards take centuries to develop and the cars need to be sold now NOW NOW.
By echelon 2025-05-1514:31 A next best thing would be antitrust action from the DOJ and every other country telling these companies that they can't play in this sandbox too and continue bullying all the kids.
As punishment for what they've been up to over the past few decades of running amok, the DOJ might tell these companies they have to open up app distribution, loosen up on the default payments/messaging/platform services, and allow third party vendors first class software and hardware access that is capable of car automation without needing Apple and Google to "help" (read: dictate and control).
Honestly who else would use it but Apple and Google (Android)?
There is no one else with enough market share for any automaker to even begin to think about. They already have what’s needed for those two so implementing a hypothetical standard only wastes time.
The other stuff that could use that interface (video game consoles, etc) don’t need to work while driving or be integrated in any special way. So the existing USB-C or HDMI video standards would be fine since they’d just use the car as a pseudo-TV screen and maybe Internet connection.
By int_19h 2025-05-1521:04 Some future competitor to either?
The point is that open standards make it possible for one to appear.
I like my simple analog controls next to the infotainment system. Lucky for me I can’t afford a new car, especially an Aston Martin , so I won’t be affected .
It looks like this will support physical buttons. From the article: "Drivers can also use onscreen controls, physical buttons, or Siri to manage both standard vehicle functions like the car’s radio and climate, as well as advanced, vehicle-specific features and controls like audio system configurations or performance settings, right from CarPlay, giving them a more fluid and seamless experience."
And if you look at the picture from the article, all the physical buttons are there.
Sorry. Maybe I should clarify. I meant isolated in that I could upgrade or still drive if the infortainmemt system went kaput.
By senordevnyc 2025-05-1518:33 Is there any reason to think analog gauges are more reliable than a digital version of the same?
It really helps streamline the car shopping process. Insisting on physical buttons and knobs for everything narrowed my search down to Mazda quite nicely.
The problem is that you can only really have a single one of these “streamlining” requirements, or your potential vehicle list ends up empty. I’d have preferred a compact pickup (a Maverick or Santa Cruz) in manual (only a couple of cars per manufacturer) with physical buttons (Mazda) and modern structural safety (so no old vehicle) - so I had to compromise on a couple of those wants.
Tacoma's probably as close as you can get, compromising on compact and buttons.
What did you end up in?
By Marsymars 2025-05-1514:31 Maverick. Tacoma seems great for what you get, but is just more truck than I need. And they’re totally different price points - the cheapest hybrid Tacoma (which is still much worse on gas than the hybrid Mav) is nearly double the price of the base hybrid Maverick.
By throwfaraway4 2025-05-1513:341 reply "Drivers can also use onscreen controls, physical buttons..."
I love CarPlay. Seamless integration with any car I rent. Gone are those days where you need to carry a car phone-holder and distractions. Game changer imo
By nicolaslem 2025-05-1514:062 reply Do you know what would be better than CarPlay? An open protocol. It's my phone and my car, why do I need both companies' blessings for connecting them?
By MBCook 2025-05-1519:55 For who? There are no other phone OSes for the car makers to bother caring about. They’re way way too small.
By theshrike79 2025-05-164:561 reply How can the car manufacturer cover their ass if your Blorg OS phone takes over the car infotainment and gauges and shows you complete bullshit.
Then you wrap your car around a pole, who is to blame?
This is why certification is needed on both sides for integration this deep.
By nicolaslem 2025-05-1616:121 reply Gauges I agree. Infotainment, who cares? It's not like CarPlay today is perfect. It routinely crashes on me mid-drive and requires a series of reboots to go back to working conditions.
By theshrike79 2025-05-198:33 Example: Having movies playing on infotainment wile the car is not parked is illegal in many countries, thus car companies want to make sure no 1st party integration will do that without the customer explicitly circumventing something.
If someone crashes when watching Alaskan Housewives or something on the infotainment screen, the car company wants to CYA by saying their system wasn't involved in the crash, it was an unauthorised 3rd party modification.
By sifar 2025-05-160:22 unless one uses a phone that cannot connect using Carplay/AA. (grapheneos on pixel)
Like the sibling comment said, I should be able to choose to be able to pair my phone with my car.
