New Apple CarPlay in iOS 16.

[Hirschaj]

Haha. Indeed. Will definitely install the beta to test the new base CarPlay however.

I do find CarPlay quite limiting since there's no seeking in audio, no syncing with ambient light, and the most glaring problem -- no synced navigation which leads to no preconditioning.

Let’s not forget one of the best uses of car play… running Waze without any active navigation so it calls out the location of police, vehicles, and objects on the roadway ahead. Use this while the PCM navigation is directing you to the next charger or destination and it’s an amazing combination.

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[Albion]

Like the look of this, also feels like the first steps towards an apple-car as a “rental service” like all electric scooters that are everywhere at the moment: keep all personalised car-setttings on your phone (Dash layout AC/Ventialation/Seats/steering wheel etc) and any car you rent/use will feel just like yours directly. On top of it they now get a lot of big manufacturers in the same eco system and can let them do the beta testing of the software.

 

[DerekS]

The Carplay dashboard UI looks pretty similar to what we've already got from Porsche TBH.

I don't expect them to change it, and I'm not even sure I'd want them to. The dashboard software is reliable and solid for me.

 

[Ambroos]

Not a chance on the current software stack. The instrument cluster in every VW group car (including Taycan) is completely separated from the infotainment. The software is very different (far more reliable, not expecting updates, limited set of interactions).

In VW group cars, Rightware Kanzi on a very light operating system (an RTOS if I'm not mistaken, might be QNX) is used for the instrument cluster. It's very very good, which is why the instrument cluster has a ton of nice animations and smooth interactions. (Switching from extended map to power meter for example has elements animating very nicely.)

The map in the instrument cluster is basically a dumb video stream from the infotainment computer (MIB3, Automotive Grade Linux), and the instrument cluster acts as a display with overlays for it.

To do this full Apple CarPlay thing, Porsche would have to significantly update the software of the instrument cluster to defer completely to the infotainment for displaying content, and I bet the software is just not there for it. There's also NO WAY that something as risky as this (in terms of reliability and accuracy) would ever be provided as an update by any reputable vehicle manufacturer. This will have to go through TONS of testing before it'd be available.

TLDR: on the current generation Taycan there's no chance you'll ever have the instrument cluster supporting this new CarPlay or anything like it.

 

[Deleted member 6348]

Pass for me. This is Apple playing catch up with full on Android showing up in cars like the Polestar and 2023 Fords.

CarPlay and Android Auto are kludges until infotainment goes full standalone. I prefer PCM navigation to running things through my phone. I let Waze run in the background without a set destination and that’s it.

 

[ThePaddyWan]

probably not - many mfg's run android based operating systems for infotainment that also support CarPlay (Honda/Toyota if memory serves). at the end of the day android is just the underpinnings, which is a lot better than a lot of the proprietary systems (like from Blackberry of all places) that have been in use for some time, since you can hire android engineers (from consumer electronics) and have their experience be applicable easily.

Yes. I Agree. Android Automotive does not exclude Car Play. We also have a Polestar which runs on the OS and it's supposed to get CarPlay support in the near future.

 

[MissionC]

In VW group cars, Rightware Kanzi on a very light operating system (an RTOS if I'm not mistaken, might be QNX) is used for the instrument cluster. It's very very good, which is why the instrument cluster has a ton of nice animations and smooth interactions. (Switching from extended map to power meter for example has elements animating very nicely.)

Yup, it’s QNX running on a Linux base to support Docker (which I can’t believe is running in my car - I pray there’s no k8s involved ).Since all the heavy lifting of CarPlay is done on the iPhone, with the in-car screen effectively being a second screen that iOS projects onto, there’s a possibility of deeper integration but not sure if iOS would know how to handle the bounding geometry of the curved dashboard screen.

 

[Ambroos]

Yup, it’s QNX running on a Linux base to support Docker (which I can’t believe is running in my car - I pray there’s no k8s involved ).Since all the heavy lifting of CarPlay is done on the iPhone, with the in-car screen effectively being a second screen that iOS projects onto, there’s a possibility of deeper integration but not sure if iOS would know how to handle the bounding geometry of the curved dashboard screen.

Is the instrument cluster on Linux with Docker too? I know the MIB3 infotainment makes heavy use of Docker to support updates and the various apps. The instrument cluster I thought was still on the older MIB2-style QNX-only setup.

 

[npx]

QNX (at least as it stood a few years ago) is fucking terrible. One of my colleagues used to work on that and described how awful it is to be a dev for it (never what you want, development should be easy which is why Google and Apple spend so much on developer focused tools). Android is in almost every respect a huge step up and actually should be encouraged for automotive as they have invested a lot in making certain distributions automotive qualified. Apple I think is very happy to not have to run the base of the car's OS and to simply be a client app on that platform.

The absolute best thing about CarPlay is portability. My whole setup pops up in the Kia rental car with a 5 inch touch screen or my mom's Mini Cooper, just as it does on the Taycan.

I used to work on automotive imaging and automotive qual software (that runs in the ECU) is no joke, it's very similar to flight software used in aerospace. We used to have a spec that if our image processor went down, it had to crash to zero, hard reboot, and restart the video stream within half a second. on infotainment nobody dies if your stream goes down for a minute and a half during reboot like when you hard reset PCM.

 

[Torv]

I actually like the new Apple Carplay implementation and I hope (though I very much doubt) it will be backward compatible to our current Taycans. It will be interesting to see if Porsche and other manufacturers are able to “push” their specific corporate design philosophy onto the Apple CarPlay app. I seriously question whether Porsche or any other manufacturers will cede to Apple a company’s UI.

 

[evn00b]

This is still in fluffy stage given they want to reveal more late *next year*. Hence, don't expect this in any Taycans any time soon. It's interesting that they listed Polestar as a partner given Polestar was Google's 1st GAS implementation (after many struggles and effort). The announcement sounded like a shot across the bows of Google. Personally, I am hoping it results in the reveal of an Apple Car in Q4 next year.

On a technical level - given that the instrument cluster requires functional safety (typically ASIL-B) compliance, I am curious how Apple plans to meet that via CarPlay where the device driving the projection mode is not functional safety compliant (and quite infeasible to make it so). Another reason I am skeptical that this feature moves beyond just integrating CarPlay driven content within the OEM's instrument cluster UI (vs taking it over completely) - that feature I would love to have on the Taycan now.

 

[andrewket]

Not a chance this will come to current cars. I’m guessing 2024. It looks great.

 

[bah1590]

Haha. Indeed. Will definitely install the beta to test the new base CarPlay however.

I do find CarPlay quite limiting since there's no seeking in audio, no syncing with ambient light, and the most glaring problem -- no synced navigation which leads to no preconditioning.

CarPlay does sync with ambient lighting at least in matching with album art displayed. There is an option in the ambient light selections that changes color depending on the color of the album art being displayed and it works for CarPlay.

 

[Oink]

... The instrument cluster in every VW group car (including Taycan) is completely separated from the infotainment. ...

Not saying you're wrong, but considering the IC can show current song, and you control what's visible on there via the center screen, I don't think that is completely right.

Polestar will be bringing this new CarPlay to their cars. Will be interesting to see if they also bring it to the Polestar 2 and not just the upcoming Polestar 3.

I'm reminded of the story of how one World of Warcraft player was so fed up with something in the game that he applied for a job there, got it, pushed for, and fixed whatever it was, then promptly left the place. We need a hero like that in Porsche/VAG. I live too far away to do this myself. Someone else be our hero.

 

[Ambroos]

Not saying you're wrong, but considering the IC can show current song, and you control what's visible on there via the center screen, I don't think that is completely right.

Polestar will be bringing this new CarPlay to their cars. Will be interesting to see if they also bring it to the Polestar 2 and not just the upcoming Polestar 3.

I'm reminded of the story of how one World of Warcraft player was so fed up with something in the game that he applied for a job there, got it, pushed for, and fixed whatever it was, then promptly left the place. We need a hero like that in Porsche. I live too far away to do this myself. Someone else be our hero.

There's a limited ethernet connection for media / track info and LVDS connection for map display. That and CAN/FlexRay are the only communication channels between the instrument cluster and infotainment.

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