Hyundai is the only car maker that had Android Auto on display at the North American International Auto Show, which I spent most of today at. Hyundai also has Android Wear integrated with their Blue Link software, so you are able remote start your car, unlock your car, and much more from your wrist. Which is pretty damn cool. Although they did not have that on display, as that was only at CES. But I was able to pick the brain of the engineer working on Android Auto and Apple Carplay for Hyundai for a bit today and got some pretty awesome information.
All of the 2015, and later Sonata’s, Genesis, and Azera’s from Hyundai will have both Android Auto and Apple’s Carplay available. However it may not be available when you buy your 2015 car. But as long as it has the big (around 7-inch display) it’ll be updated to work with both Android Auto and Apple’s Carplay. Which is great. Currently, there’s no word on exactly when it’ll be available at your local dealer though. It could be next month, it could be in Q4. But we’ll keep you posted on when those updates start rolling out.
Using Android Auto and Apple Carplay is really simple. You basically just plug in your phone via USB, and then tap on Android Auto or the Apple Carplay icon on the infotainment unit. After that, the UI is literally the same as we’ve seen from Google in various demos. It’s quite refreshing to see both Android and iOS in the same car, and to see it work so seemlessly. As we know many people do switch between Android and iOS, so that makes it even better.
Android Auto will be coming from a bunch of other manufacturers. Audi announced it for their Q7, Acura, Chevy, and Honda also announced it for a few of their cars this week, it’s just not quite finished yet so they weren’t on display.