Why CarPlay?

[sleepydoc]

Once again this is why we have competition if you find something not to your liking in Tesla to the point you complain about every little thing maybe Tesla is not for you. Easy fix right? Next purchase will be mega CarPlay car with knobs and buttons for defog, seat warmers and whatever else is upsetting dear fellow Tesla owners lately. Oh and no PBing
I personally don’t like CarPlay or android auto and I like Tesla native UI.

Or Tesla could add CarPlay (or even a decent podcast and audiobook app) and none of the fanboys would have to use it but others would be happy.

In hindsight, a Tesla may not have the best car. I asked a coworker about CarPlay and he made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal, but he only uses Spotify and the UI was actually Pretty good before V11.

As far as phantom braking goes, It amazes me how some people are willing to overlook anything and everything just because it’s a Tesla. Sorry if it offends our savior Elon, but no passes from me. I have no issues with Tesla doing things differently as long as they’re better, or at least equivalent. TACC fails here, pure and simple. As does their UI.

In spite of its shortcomings, I do like the car, but either way, I own it now and replacing it isn’t an option. The good news is there’s at least hope that things can be improved with a future update.

 

[drtimhill]

In spite of its shortcomings, I do like the car, but either way, I own it now and replacing it isn’t an option. The good news is there’s at least hope that things can be improved with a future update.

Which, at the end of the day, is something you can ONLY say about a Tesla today.

My better half has a Honda that has no end of problems with Spotify .. has she ever got an OTA update to fix that? Of course not! The dealers suggestion, "but a new model".

 

[sleepydoc]

Which, at the end of the day, is something you can ONLY say about a Tesla today.

My better half has a Honda that has no end of problems with Spotify .. has she ever got an OTA update to fix that? Of course not! The dealers suggestion, "but a new model".

...but she can use Spotify on CarPlay!

 

[sleepydoc]

Just saw this thread:

Tesla App Store Concept

Twitter user @DeleetDesign shares their own custom, polished & working concept for a Tesla App Store! ”This literally looks like something Tesla would ship.” Thoughts?

teslamotorsclub.com

Something like that could potentially make CarPlay a moot point.

 

[Packfan]

Not without Steve Jobs....

You’re right. Why rely on anything Apple without Steve Jobs. Lock the thread.

 

[FastEddieB]

On our first road trip with our 2-week-old Model 3LR.

We don’t miss Carplay as much as we thought we might. Main reason is that the Bluetooth is pretty much transparent, allowing us to pretty seamlessly stream music and podcasts from our phones. In our other car with Bluetooth, a 2011 Ford Flex, the Bluetooth can be made to work, but often with some futzing around to get it to work right.

Still would like a CarPlay option, but like I said, not that big a deal.

 

[Assquatch]

So many reasons:

Tesla navigation is lagging far behind Apple Maps (yes Apple Maps) with its robotic voice and failure to give input at crucial moments. For example, Apple Maps would say something like "Take the exit, then stay in the left two lanes" or "Go past this light, then make a right.". Tesla, gmaps, and Waze all do the typical basic "turn left" "turn right" etc. It's far less helpful especially when the roads are complex. I've been on dicey interchanges with multiple options to bear left or right and Tesla just misses them. Part of this is that it doesn't prep for next steps by letting you know which lane you should be in. Tesla maps is missing a now 1 year old bridge in my major US city, so every route in/out is wrong while other apps have this mapped out.

The whole UI is in general more sluggish, buggy, and feels like less of a polished piece of software. Don't get me wrong, it clobbers other car infotainment, but falls short of CarPlay. Examples: waiting 30+ seconds for a route, failed lookups, fiddling with adding/removing charge stops, nav bouncing between needing a charge and not. General jankiness with UI swipes and animation, frequent crash/restarts roughly 2x a month.

Podcasts progress and library are not synced with the podcasts app on phone. Same for audio books. Can't really do without this for long form content where progress is important. Can't carry my music/podcast in and out of my car and maintain progress.

When listening to any spoken audio vs music, it does not pause or lower the volume respectively for guidance, so you just miss hearing one or the other.

Zero texting integration. CarPlay will read you your messages (if you want) and let you respond via voice. I can rarely get the Tesla voice assistant to do anything right. When I say "Call John Smith", it presents me with a pick-list of 10 similar names sorted randomly. If this were CarPlay+siri it would know I want to call the John Smith I had called 5 other times this week.

Even the basics, when I say FOLD SIDE MIRRORS it interprets OLD SIDE MIRRORS. I have to enunciate the F like Mike Tyson or something. it's infuriating and I dare say just as bad as the voice assistant in any other car. I'm not exactly a fan of voice assistants but the way Siri works in a car with CarPlay is quite good.

The upshot is I use my phone a LOT more in my Tesla than I did with my prior car. Good thing it has AP and various nannies to compensate.

 

[laservet]

Now that Apple is working on their own EV with autonomous driving, Tesla would be foolish to allow Apple even a toe in the door of the Tesla system.

 

[sleepydoc]

So I broke down and got a Spotify subscription about six months ago. of course I also needed to pay for premium connectivity, too. After I started using Spotify on my Tesla I realized that having it open on my computer or phone would hijack the connection, so then I needed to upgrade my Spotify account to a family account so I could have a dedicated connection for my car. But then my play history and playlists don’t automatically transfer over. Nor do my subscribe podcasts. But that doesn’t actually matter because Spotify doesn’t remember which podcasts you’ve listened to or where you are in the podcast so if you leave the podcast (or if my wife drives the car) and come back it goes all the way back to the beginning. Even that doesn’t matter, though, because 30 to 50% of the time I go to use Spotify in my car and I’m greeted with a spinning wheel and it refuses to load any content.

So now I’m back to the place I started. The Tesla map app is very good but the rest of the interface generally stinks and I really wish I had CarPlay.

 

[tangible1]

So I broke down and got a Spotify subscription about six months ago. of course I also needed to pay for premium connectivity, too. After I started using Spotify on my Tesla I realized that having it open on my computer or phone would hijack the connection, so then I needed to upgrade my Spotify account to a family account so I could have a dedicated connection for my car. But then my play history and playlists don’t automatically transfer over. Nor do my subscribe podcasts. But that doesn’t actually matter because Spotify doesn’t remember which podcasts you’ve listened to or where you are in the podcast so if you leave the podcast (or if my wife drives the car) and come back it goes all the way back to the beginning. Even that doesn’t matter, though, because 30 to 50% of the time I go to use Spotify in my car and I’m greeted with a spinning wheel and it refuses to load any content.

So now I’m back to the place I started. The Tesla map app is very good but the rest of the interface generally stinks and I really wish I had CarPlay.

I've just started learning some Voice Commands.
The fussing with the screen is greatly diminished.

 

[DanDi58]

So I broke down and got a Spotify subscription about six months ago. of course I also needed to pay for premium connectivity, too. After I started using Spotify on my Tesla I realized that having it open on my computer or phone would hijack the connection, so then I needed to upgrade my Spotify account to a family account so I could have a dedicated connection for my car. But then my play history and playlists don’t automatically transfer over. Nor do my subscribe podcasts. But that doesn’t actually matter because Spotify doesn’t remember which podcasts you’ve listened to or where you are in the podcast so if you leave the podcast (or if my wife drives the car) and come back it goes all the way back to the beginning. Even that doesn’t matter, though, because 30 to 50% of the time I go to use Spotify in my car and I’m greeted with a spinning wheel and it refuses to load any content.

So now I’m back to the place I started. The Tesla map app is very good but the rest of the interface generally stinks and I really wish I had CarPlay.

I assume you signed into the account on the car? There is a thread here somewhere where folks (including myself) discuss various issues with Spotify and potential solutions. It works well for me. Only issue I have is if my wife is driving the car and listening, and I try to play a podcast - tries to play in the car and my wife doesn't like what I listen to so tries to change it back to music.....

 

[sleepydoc]

I've just started learning some Voice Commands.
The fussing with the screen is greatly diminished.

How do voice commands help with Spotify?

I assume you signed into the account on the car? There is a thread here somewhere where folks (including myself) discuss various issues with Spotify and potential solutions. It works well for me. Only issue I have is if my wife is driving the car and listening, and I try to play a podcast - tries to play in the car and my wife doesn't like what I listen to so tries to change it back to music.....

Yes - I had to upgrade to the spotify family plan so I could have a separate account for the car. That eliminated the issue of one ‘device’ hijacking another but then made it so my playlists & preferences were different from the car’s.

 

[tangible1]

How do voice commands help with Spotify?

Yes - I had to upgrade to the spotify family plan so I could have a separate account for the car. That eliminated the issue of one ‘device’ hijacking another but then made it so my playlists & preferences were different from the car’s.

"the rest of the interface generally stinks and I really wish I had CarPlay"

is what I was replying to

 

[sleepydoc]

"the rest of the interface generally stinks and I really wish I had CarPlay"

is what I was replying to

Ah, got it. Yes, voice commands can definitely help. Of course, anything you're listening to gets interrupted when you use them.

 

[tangible1]

Ah, got it. Yes, voice commands can definitely help. Of course, anything you're listening to gets interrupted when you use them.

yeah, for several seconds.

 

[Assquatch]

What are you all using voice commands for? I found it to work like garbage. “Fold side mirrors” turns into “old side mirrors”. Only one letter off. System is too stupid to map that to a real command.

 

[laservet]

What are you all using voice commands for? I found it to work like garbage. “Fold side mirrors” turns into “old side mirrors”. Only one letter off. System is too stupid to map that to a real command.

Odd. That command works fine for me, as does Unfold Side Mirrors.

 

[HellsKitchen]

I use CarPlay on my ICE car and I thought not having CarPlay was going to be a much bigger deal. Now I've had the Y for almost a month and I don't miss it. I also see how running CarPlay over Tesla's system would be like running two OS versions on one computer and could be a big nightmare. My phone calls work just fine and I was never a speech-to-text guy anyway.

I'm not debating the finer points of whose system is better, just saying that I don't miss CarPlay even though I totally expected to.

 

[BitJam]

So I broke down and got a Spotify subscription about six months ago. of course I also needed to pay for premium connectivity, too.

I tried Spotify for free for 3 months to use in my Tesla. I don't care about using Spotify elsewhere (except to make playlists and select favorites). But the Tesla Spotify app seemed horribly broken. Playlists would take many days to show up in the car. Some never showed up. Perhaps worse, the playlists were mostly broken. I'd select a playlist and the first song I select from the list plays fine but then Spotify goes off the reservation and starts playing songs that are not even on the list.

It was almost always an extremely frustrating experience so I let the subscription expire when the free part was over. BTW: the Spotify site in the Tesla browser worked much much better. I could listen while driving and even the scroll wheel worked. The problem though was the minuscule fonts.

Spotify was in sync on all my devices and on my computer and in the Tesla browser but the Tesla app was a nightmare. IMO it was smart for Spotify to let you use it for 3 months before you have to pay because it takes a while for it to figure out your tastes. If the Tesla app wasn't so broken I probably would have paid $10/month just to use it in my car.