- Apple CarPlay Ultra is available on new 2025 Aston Martin vehicles, and controls both the main infotainment screen and the instrument cluster.
- It requires an iPhone 12 or newer running iOS 18.5 or later.
- Porsche and Genesis may end up using CarPlay Ultra in the near future.
Apple CarPlay is a hot-button topic in today’s vehicle infotainment discourse. It’s odd; surveys show that consumers do prefer the generally seamless phone-mirroring, but automakers don’t always see eye to eye. Some automakers don’t like how much access it has to its drivers’ data. Others feel the CarPlay experience isn’t as bespoke as it should be for the branding. The first part might not necessarily be addressed yet, but the second looks like it just may be. Apple has released details on its new product: Apple CarPlay Ultra. This may have been announced in 2022, but it’s finally here and on the road in 2025.
CarPlay Ultra is more than just the standard CarPlay phone mirroring software. With this setup, Apple has reached its tentacles beyond the car’s center infotainment screen. Now, CarPlay can control the driver’s information screen, too. It’s all wrapped up in one neat little bow.
It’s debuting on Aston Martin’s latest crop of cars but will soon be available on other models from other car brands.
At its core, the CarPlay Ultra experience appears to be not super different from the standard CarPlay experience. If you’ve used any iOS product in the last few years, Apple’s characteristic flat and simple graphic design choices will look pretty familiar. But that design is no longer confined to just a handful of music or navigation apps within the CarPlay experience.
Now, any sort of vehicle control can be used with CarPlay Ultra. For example, the touchscreen-integrated heating and air conditioning controls are now integrated and controlled in this new experience.
The biggest story is the integration of the vehicle’s main infotainment cluster, which has been fully Apple-ized and is now uniform with the infotainment screen. Apple says that the driver can customize their own driving experience, albeit via a handful of curated gauge and information cluster themes. Think Apple Watch faces. The colors and wallpaper backgrounds of those themes can be customized, though. Whatever the case, Apple says CarPlay Ultra’s instrument cluster will be as full-featured as the standard non-CarPlay experience. Information like tire pressure, coolant temperature and battery voltage can all be displayed.
I can’t help but think the whole experience feels a bit too Apple, and not very Aston Martin. Apple says that it worked with Aston Martin (and will work with other brands who opt into the experience) to craft a product that it called tailor-made. Yet, Apple’s graphic design language is so distinctive. I’m not entirely convinced that this is all as bespoke as it sounds.
This new experience won’t be for every iPhone. CarPlay Ultra will only be compatible with iPhone 12 or newer, running iOS 18.5. Reporting from Car And Driver says the initial setup takes a short bit of time, as your iPhone needs to download a bit of data to run the vehicle-specific setup.
CarPlay Ultra is available right now for Aston Martin’s core lineup in the U.S. and Canada, with plans to expand to more global markets within the next 12 months. Other manufacturers have confirmed that they’re experimenting with the tech, namely Genesis and Porsche. It will be exciting to see just how much things change from Aston Martin’s implementation to another brand's.
Contact the author: Kevin.Williams@InsideEVs.com
