Apple CarPlay Ultra: The Coolest Features (And Which Cars Get It First)

In a move sure to delight car enthusiasts and iPhone devotees alike, Apple has released its latest iteration of its popular infotainment system: CarPlay Ultra. Since the company's initial announcement in 2022,  pundits have exclaimed that the new infotainment system would put Google and other competitors on notice. Touted by Apple as bringing "the best of iPhone and the best of the car together," the system delivers a whole new design to your car dashboard. 

Apple CarPlay Ultra introduces an instrument cluster system that centralizes your car and phone's functions, giving drivers greater control over their driving and entertainment experience. According to Apple's vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Bob Borchers, the new 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."

A major selling point of the new infotainment display is its customizability — not only will the application be designed with each car brand in mind, but users will have greater control over their displays. While the bespoke nature of these designs limits the initial rollout to new Aston Martin owners, several brands are working with the tech giant to bring the next generation of Apple CarPlay to their customers. In the meantime, buyers hoping to find an affordable vehicle featuring CarPlay will unfortunately have to wait. 

The main selling point of the new CarPlay Ultra is its dynamic instrument clusters, which centralize all of a driver's car and phone information into a customizable dashboard. With this new design, drivers can toggle between typical speedometer and tachometer displays and more advanced performance metrics, including fuel and temperature gauges, tire pressure, and advanced driver assistance systems. Driver's phone applications are seamlessly integrated using new iPhone widgets, enabling music, maps, and other systems to be shown alongside the car's metrics.

Another benefit of the new CarPlay is that it enables drivers to easily gauge and adjust their vehicle's standard and advanced functions. With Ultra, drivers can tailor everything from their car's air conditioning to performance settings hands-free through Siri's voice command functions. Onscreen controls and compatibility with the vehicle's physical buttons give users the much-desired flexibility to safely and efficiently control their driving experience.

All this amounts to an infotainment system that Apple champions as providing a more integrated experience than its previous model. This integration goes beyond CarPlay's functions, however. The visual displays themselves are tailored to match the aesthetics of the vehicle, using custom themes that Apple built in collaboration with the manufacturer's design team. Drivers can further customize the colors and wallpapers of these themes, creating a bespoke visual display unique to the individual vehicle and driver.

While this tailored experience may be Apple CarPlay Ultra's greatest strength, it is also a roadblock to its timely availability. Because the infotainment system is highly tailored to each automaker, it may be some time before the application is widely used. As it stands, Apple CarPlay Ultra is only available to new Aston Martin owners in the United States and Canada, with a global rollout expected within a year. 

Models sporting the next-generation infotainment system, which debuted in the 2023 , include the British manufacturer's Vantage, DB12, Vanquish, and DBX SUV. Current owners of these models will be able to add Apple CarPlay Ultra through a software update at their local dealership within a few weeks. Apple confirmed in its press release that Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis are committed to integrating the new system. 

How quickly other brands integrate Ultra, if at all, has been a point of contention. For example, although Porsche was included in the initial list of CarPlay Ultra partnerships, the German company was curiously left out of the tech giant's list of future partners.  Other German luxury brand Mercedes-Benz made headlines in April 2024 when its CEO Ola Källenius flatly stated in an interview with The Verge that its vehicles won't incorporate next-gen CarPlay. Instead, Mercedes is working to provide a "holistic customer experience" designed in-house, mirroring a similar move by GM.

For those able to use the new CarPlay, it's important to be aware that the oldest phone able to connect to the infotainment system is the iPhone 12. Users must also ensure that their iPhone is running at least the iOS 18.5 operating system to access its new features.