Hands on with Apple CarPlay on the 2016 Chevrolet Volt

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Scott, Quebec - Part of Chevy's technology push with their new models, most specially the upcoming 2016 Chevy Volt, is the inclusion of onboard 4G-LTE as well as smart infotainment connectivity with Apple's CarPlay as standard features.

My first glimpse of Apple's CarPlay technology was in 2014 during Apple's World Wide Development Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Back then the CarPlay functionality was on a US $300,000 Ferrarri FF and it looked quite good.

Apple has since been quite mum about CarPlay as well as its other, previously heavily promoted, ecosystems. CarPlay, HomeKit and HealthKit barely got mentioned in this year's WWDC and were not even part of any demonstration during their huge Fall event in September. Chevrolet is actually the first manufacturer that has really played up CarPlay as standard on their new cars and I had a few hours to test it on their impressive new Chevy Volt Hybrid.

 The Chevy Volt is one big gadget. Everything about the car's interior and the way you interact with it is high-tech. I was thrilled to have an opportunity to test out a vehicle in the CAD $40,000.00 range that carried many exciting technologies. As I soon found out during the course of my test drive, however, was that $40,000 worth of hybrid EV vehicle doesn't include a GPS satnav.

So as I drove around the mesmerizingly beautiful Quebec countryside, it was inevitable that I would miss a turn and get completely lost. Since my French is hopeless, I really had only two options, either I could call a friend or plug in my iPhone 6S. I opted for the latter and was glad I did.

Smooth Operator

Thanks to an included lightning connector, all I needed to do was plug my iPhone 6S as if to charge it and press the CarPlay logo on the 8-inch touchscreen. This suddenly converted the unfamiliar Chevy MyLink display into an analog of my own iPhone screen displayed in CarPlay style. I had access to Siri, Maps, Messages, Now Playing, Podcasts, Audiobooks and Podcasts (which must have appeared in that order because they are the most logical apps for use in a vehicle. Makes sense except I use Spotify and not Apple Music, so it is not related to usage or frequency).

Apple Maps was the feature I really wanted and it suddenly converted the once lost Chevy Volt into an aware and navigation-enabled car. I punched in the coordinates of my destination on the phone (while parked, of course) and let the lovely voice of British Siri guide me along the motorway. While the plug and play ease of using Apple Maps on CarPlay is superb, but I ran into a problem pretty quickly.

There was massive construction happening up ahead and, unlike Google Maps, which has Waze and realtime data built-in, Apple Maps kept telling me to follow a path that just wasn't open to me, so I kept driving on and Maps kept recalculating....it felt like using my Magellan GPS from five years ago, so not intuitive.

Once I did find a suitable alternate route, however, everything worked as expected with British Siri even bothering to pronounce French street names properly (I was very impressed).

The rest of CarPlay integrated with my iPhone 6S seamlessly. The faster iOS 9 version of Siri is more responsive and appears to aniticipate things better. Being in a new place, it was great for discovering nearby places to eat and shop (even if I had no time to do so, a return to La Belle Province for leisure is imminent!).

I like how CarPlay turns any compatible vehicle into a fully-interactive smart car and if I do get the opportunity to spend more time with vehicles that feature it, I'd be happy to test all the apps that run on it via the iPhone.

Some of the things I noticed were that, if you were to enter information via the phone, the onboard display goes blank or reverts to the MyLink screen. Scrolling across menus is super-smooth and I wonder if this is because of the iPhone's processor, the MyLink hardware in the car, or a bit of both. Using Siri to respond to communications hands-free is perhaps one of the most exciting capabilities that CarPlay offers.

I was quite impressed with my hands on of CarPlay on the 2016 Chevy Volt, it brought familiar apps and services to the forefront of what felt to me to be an alien and new experience and the user interface is really thought out. I don't see much difference from what I saw a year ago and what I experienced first hand, but CarPlay trumps most factory and third-party infotainment systems I have tried so far.