Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis will be the first mainstream marques to adopt Apple’s new CarPlay Ultra system, which is more deeply integrated into a car’s systems than regular CarPlay. The core advantage is providing full access to all the car’s features, including climate control, from a single interface.
The first company to use CarPlay Ultra will be Aston Martin, a small-scale automaker whose vehicles start at around a quarter-million dollars. Aston will make the system available within the next few weeks, while Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis plan to phase in CarPlay Ultra within the next year.
The full list of automakers who signed on to Ultra three years ago is much longer, and lacking Stellantis and General Motors; however, some may have backed out, as Mercedes did.
Apple does customize each implementation of CarPlay Ultra to match the automaker’s specifications, but car companies have discovered that selling personal data on its customers (where they go, what they listen to, and so forth) is a lucrative business—much as television makers did, making every TV into a spy. Letting the privacy-sensitive Apple “take over the dashboard” cuts into that income, and presumably offends the people who design cars’ user interfaces.

David Zatz started what was to become the world’s biggest, most comprehensive Mopar site in 1994 as he pursued a career in organizational research and change. After a chemo-induced break, during which he wrote car books covering Vipers, minivans, and Jeeps, he returned with Patrick Rall to create StellPower.com for daily news, and to set up MoTales for mo’ tales.
David Zatz has around 30 years of experience in covering Chrysler/Mopar news and history, and most recently wrote Century of Chrysler, a 100-year retrospective on the Chrysler marque.
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