CarPlay Ultra needs to be “crash tested.”

I can’t seem to find a single CarPlay Ultra hands-on where the driver tries to see what happens when you disconnect your iPhone from the vehicle. It would be interesting (and important) to see what happens to the UI of the vehicle when the phone inevitably has connection issues.

The only person to address it from what I could find: Joe Rosensteel from Six Colors:

CarPlay Ultra disconnects won’t affect the instruments and essential functions of the car because they’re rendered locally by the vehicle. I have no safety concerns about dropped connections. However, we haven’t seen how gracefully the phone-generated part of the non-essential interface degrades when there are connection issues. I don’t believe Apple wants to be the one to show people anything less than ideal function, even if we all know that’s not realistic.

I think people will find it jarring to go from an immersive Apple Maps screen with a simple digital speedometer and fuel gauge to a default instrument cluster with no maps in a split second. It’s like asking a digitally immersed, spoiled child to tell you the time after taking away his iPhone and leaving him with just a Meridian analog clock.

Lost and traumatized.

I may be exaggerating (a little), but CarPlay’s issues are multi-dimensional since it relies on Apple and the car manufacturer’s software to have good communication, which is also troublesome.

I rented a few Nissans recently, and the physical CarPlay connection was perfect. A few years ago I rented a Kia for a work trip that had wireless CarPlay, and it worked about 85% of the time. I loved the fact that it was wireless, but I hated it when it lost connection and I had to navigate to my destination while holding my phone. I’m not against CarPlay or CarPlay Ultra, but I’m happy with my current Moment MagSafe setup since it never fails.

Every car has its quirks with CarPlay, and I’m sure every car that will support CarPlay Ultra in the future will have its own quirks in terms of features, but also reliability.

There should be a POV video where the driver is driving with CarPlay Ultra fully engaged, and there should be a passenger who takes the phone and simulates a lost connection by rebooting the device just to see what elements of the interface stay functional and what features roll off a cliff.

With cars becoming more and more “tech on wheels,” the question now becomes, is this a test car reviewers should do, or tech reviewers?