Aston Martin and Porsche collaborated with Apple on brand-distinct CarPlay experiences coming to their infotainment systems in 2024.
Apple was supposed to officially announce the first vehicles to support the next-generation CarPlay experience late in 2023. While there’s still time to do so before 2023 wraps up, the Car and Driver site reports that Apple previewed the upcoming CarPlay implementations by Aston Martin and Porsche.
Apple is helping automobile manufacturers customize CarPlay to their liking and optimize the experience for specific vehicles. The story states that the next-generation CarPlay will roll out in 2024.
Next-gen CarPlay coming to Aston Martin and Porsche
Aston Martin and Porsche were the first to take advantage of this approach. And now, they shared images showcasing CarPlay interfaces in their upcoming models.
Greg S. Fink, writing for Car and Driver:
The preview of Porsche’s CarPlay interface shows that it features a trio of circular gauges in the cluster and a background wallpaper that mimics the brand’s distinct houndstooth (or Pepita in Porsche-speak) seat pattern.
What about Aston Martin?
Aston Martin, on the other hand, goes a slightly different route. Its cluster includes a central information screen bookended by a circular speedometer and tachometer, the latter of which integrates “Handbuilt in Great Britain” wraparound text.
The next-generation CarPlay integrates with Aston Martin’s latest infotainment system that launches in 2024 in the DB12 coupe and DB12 convertible.
“Given Porsche’s relation to the Volkswagen Group and Aston’s to Lucid and Mercedes, we wager it’s only a matter of time until those companies integrate this tech into other vehicles within their respective portfolios,” the site notes.
The next-generation CarPlay is real
Apple showed a preview of the next-generation CarPlay at its developers conference in June 2022. After years of minor updates to its CarPlay feature, the company demonstrated an entirely new CarPlay experience that integrates deeply with the automobile’s sensors.
This enables the driver to manage in-vehicle features like air conditioning and FM radio through the next-generation CarPlay. Perhaps most importantly, this version of CarPlay can take over a vehicle’s entire instrument cluster and spread itself across whatever number of screens the car has.
Some people didn’t believe Apple would pull this off because they thought automobile manufacturers wouldn’t relinquish control of their instruments and sensors to CarPlay. However, that’s not how the new CarPlay works anyway.
Apple on its part said that car brands like Acura, Audi, Ford, Honda, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Polestar, Porsche, Renault and Volvo all committed to supporting this new version of CarPlay.