Audi could be first to adopt all-new Apple CarPlay, with leaked images found

The all-encompassing Apple CarPlay experience has something of a holy grail feeling about it. Having been previewed with much excitement and then promised to arrive in 2024, there’s been very little said about it since WWDC 2024, when Apple provided some more details on designing for the next-gen CarPlay.

For those who missed the news, the plans to take over all the screen in your car officially surfaced in late 2023. Porsche and Aston Martin showed off customised versions of Apple CarPlay, carrying respective logos and designs, so it felt like a natural extension of the car, rather than just an overlay.

Little else has been said since then: neither Porsche nor Aston Martin spoke about it any more and Apple has been tight-lipped too. It’s strange for an Apple project to fall off the timeline like this, so unless there’s a plan to release this as we run into December, it’s a bit of an enigma.

Enter some new images stage left, courtesy of MacRumors. These are sourced from the EU’s Intellectual Property Office, where you can see a new images file by Apple, but this time showing the Audi logo.

There’s a whole collection of Audi-specific images filed, suggesting that these are the designs that will make up the Apple CarPlay experience for Audi cars. Audi was one of the brands listed as being involved with the project alongside many others – although some have rejected this move from Apple to take over all the screens in the car, like GM, Mercedes and BMW.

What advantages and disadvantages will Apple CarPlay bring?

Currently, Apple CarPlay gets to run on one screen in the car, the central infotainment display. It provides an interface that’s similar to your phone, allowing access to apps on your handset that are useful when driving, such as maps and music. That’s really the appeal of these systems, because it means you don’t have to sign into anything on the car and you have access to everything on your phone, like downloaded music or previous maps search history.

It's also a reflection of how mapping and navigation has changed. Google Maps and apps like Waze really pushed the envelope when it came to navigation, with things like live searching and updated maps and addresses that car manufacturers struggled to keep up with. Although many cars now offer Google Maps directly, many drivers just accept the phone’s prompt to launch into Apple CarPlay.

The next-generation of CarPlay aims to extend that visual design to the driver’s display, so the instrument cluster is then part of the system too. That will potentially provide better integration between information on your phone and the driver display, but it also means consistency. With displays getting larger, having one uniform design makes sense.

The downside, of course, is that Apple is then running the experience rather than the car manufacturer. While that will save the manufacturer development costs in coming up with some fancy user interface, it potentially means that Apple is then getting access to all the driving data instead – that’s been one of the arguments that BMW has used against adopting next-gen CarPlay.

There’s also the risk that all car user interfaces become generic, with safe Apple design meaning it barely matters what car you buy, because you’re interacting the same way with systems via Apple design. For some that might sound like a dream come true, for others it might just be a little boring.

Whatever your thoughts, the absence of a launch announcement or showcase vehicle is surprising, but these Audi images suggest something is still happening to prepare for launch.