Featured Toyota Announces 2020 Prius Prime With CarPlay Support

Still no Android auto? Just ignore half the cell phone market...

 

Almost all my acquaintances, relatives and friends use Android. Most people I know who use APPLE, they're work or business phones - where APPLE seems to be King.

 

I think Android is bigger outside of the US.

 

I'm perfectly content to navigate via my phone and its updated traffic and maps with phone screen display on the car's big screen and audio via it's multiple speaks with radio audio muted when she who is navigating is announcing directions. I'm not willing to be forced to buy a new phone of a different ecosystem/OS.

The auto makers (or at least some) are trying to duplicate the quickly evolving phone app experiences and are fighting with the app and phone OS makers over control of the user data. Can they become experts at building cars, new propulsion technologies, user interfaces, app creation, data exploitation all at the same time?

How will the current trend to break up the Apple, Alphabet/Google monopolies affect the automotive experience going forward?

 

Android has a higher adoption rate due to so many different cell phone manufactures availing themselves of the opens source OS whereas iOS is proprietary so obviously only one company making phones using it. Yet even so, Apple still had just over 44% of the US market share as of last year. Pretty impressive I guess

 

Not saying don't support Car Play. Just don't neglect the other 56%. Find a way Toyota.

 

I agree 100%. Toyota absolutely should be supporting both Android and Apple. They have to be completely obtuse to not see that we, the consumers have been demanding this for some time now.

 

Toyota Finally Caves, Adds Android Auto to Select Vehicles - ExtremeTech

 

RAV4 was released in Australia with both Apple and Android Auto. BUT - it's not quite available and will be retrofitted free in a few months time when it actually arrives.

"... new RAV4 will also be the first Toyota sold in Australia with Apple Car Play and Android Auto."

2019 Toyota RAV4 pricing and specs | CarAdvice

 

Kinda funny how the toyota aygo has had carplay for a year, but not the more expensive models lol.

 

I’m just wondering when we will see the first video of CarPlay on the 11” screen...? I know from the graphic on the Press Release that it appears to run in a smaller ~7” window at the top of the display (like the backup cam) but will this also apply to the Map through CarPlay? (I suspect it will). That would be disappointing.... better than nothing of course, but would seem like a waste of such a nice large display.

 

More announcement today here in Australia - not sure if it is worldwide (in Practical Motoring in their release of RAV4):

 

Here’s the link

New Toyota RAV4 to offer Apple and Android connectivity…Corolla and Camry to follow | Practical Motoring

We previously heard about the Camry and Sienna infotainment update here:

2018 Camry and Sienna Get Spring Makeover Thanks to CarPlay and Amazon Alexa Retrofit | Toyota USA Newsroom

Still no word on an update for existing Prius infotainment.

 

Just got this reply from Toyota - no retrofit for Prius:

While we will soon be providing an update to retrofit the Apple CarPlay® and Amazon Alexa® features in our 2018 Toyota Camry and 2018 Sienna models, please note the multimedia update is only compatible with vehicles equipped with our Entune™ 3.0 interface and head units. Previous model year vehicles and models that are equipped with our previous Entune™ head units and software are not compatible and will not be updated with the features.

The update is not available for the 2019 Prius Prime nor are there any plans on launching an update for any additional model vehicles without the Entune™ 3.0 platform.

 

Being a software engineer, one who has worked very closely with many rollout challenges in large enterprise, that type of announcement raised red flags. Why the hold back? What weren't we being told?

Today, that omitted vital bit of info became obvious. Toyota didn't want to commit to an outdated version. Android Auto hasn't been upgraded for 4 years. Pushing that out with the 2020 Prius Prime as an introductory offering would have been absurd. Toyota would have been lambasted for using such outdated software.

Google just began rolling out the new version today. Think about how complex software upgrades to just phones are. Carriers routinely take a very long time to provide a new OS. Having to wait 6 to 9 months is quite common... and quite unrealistic for a vehicle model-year. See where I'm going with this?