Android Auto and Apple CarPlay revolutionized the way vehicle owners use navigation, listen to music and communicate. For many people, their phone is their device of choice for most daily technology-related activities. They have a data plan, in some cases unlimited or practically unlimited, and they have no extra costs by using their phones in their vehicles compared to using the phone outside the vehicle. Unfortunately, many vehicle owners have reported that they struggle to get the technology to work perfectly every time.

JD Power and the multimedia study
To find out how owners struggle with their vehicles, various groups conduct owner surveys to determine in which areas owners experience “problems”. Note the term “problem”. A problem does not necessarily mean that something is broken in the vehicle. Just that the owner can’t get it to work or is frustrated trying to get it to work. By conducting surveys of vehicle owners, JD Power can rank individual models based on having the highest and lowest problems.

Car manufacturers buy this information from the group and use it in many ways. Some use it in advertising and brag about high scores. Many people use it to change the design of their vehicles for better user-friendliness or simply for better reliability and durability. JD Power publishes many of its study summaries. Not that one whole study, which costs money because it has great value. But summaries are still very valuable tools for writers like myself who cover vehicle reliability and engineering topics.

The JD Power Multimedia Quality and Satisfaction Study is an important study that helps measure which makes and models are doing the best job of making technology useful and usable for owners. This study was last updated in September. There was some information in that study summary that piqued our interest. The study found and reported that for the first time in many years, the number of problems reported by owners related to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay had not increased, but had actually decreased slightly. That’s good news if you use Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And more than half of vehicle owners report using one or the other every time they use their vehicle.

How bad were the Android Auto and Apple CarPlay issues
For many years, JD Power reported that phone integration issues ranked in the top ten of all issues across all models. In fact, in a conversation we had with a JD Power auto benchmarking director, we were told that issues with phones were the overall problem. Just over 5% of all issues reported by respondents were phone integration related. It sounds very bad. So we asked for some details on the types of issues reported.

What are the issues being reported
Our contact at JD Power described the issues as mainly failures to connect, disconnected connections and blank screens. Unfortunately, the surveys don’t offer much more than that. We don’t know if the dealer solved the problems over the phone or in person, or if the problem was simply due to a lack of understanding of how the system is supposed to work. Our contact said that many of the issues they became aware of were “self correctable”. This could mean that a proper cord may have been needed or a user may have had to take a step to initiate phone pairing that they didn’t know about and then discovered later.

What do reviews of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay reveal
We visited the Google Play store and checked out the reviews for Android Auto, an app found on all modern Android Samsung (Google) phones. An amazing 4.73 million reviews were posted, and the overall average score is 4.2 out of five. The site doesn’t allow you to extract much data from the reviews, but a 5-star review is by far the most common.

Apple doesn’t offer an easy-to-use review summary like Google, so we turned to PC Magazine. The publication gives Apple CarPlay a score of 4.0, which it calls “Excellent.”

Among the professionals listed by this source were

1. Intuitive interface.
2. Reliable voice activation.
3. Robust cloud-connected search.

Among the negatives were:

• Voice activation is not available for everything.
• Dated map graphics.

We would agree with the summary of PC Mag.

Our results from more than a decade of new vehicle testing
Your author has been testing new cars for twelve years. In a typical year, I test and review a total of about 55 vehicles, and I have short-term access to a dozen more. In all my years of testing, I’ve never had a problem with Android Auto that I couldn’t fix myself in under five minutes.

Typically, when I get a new 2024 or 2025 model year vehicle, my phone integration follows these steps:

1. Connect the phone with a USB-A or C cable to the car data port (not a battery port).
2. Press “Yes” or “Accept” on the vehicle screen once. – Often this is the last step.
3. In some cases I also have to say “Accept” on the phone screen.
4. That’s all.

As you can see, I can usually pair my Samsung S24 (Android phone) with a newly delivered test vehicle in under 10 seconds. In most models, the cord is not needed after the initial interface, and Android Auto automatically loads Google Maps and my music or audiobook selection when you enter and start the vehicle subsequent times. In more than a decade of testing, I haven’t had any individual models or brands fail (as long as they had the technology.) In the past two years, I haven’t had any failures or goofs that I can recall. The technology is very reliable, and it is the same from model to model.

Tesla as control group
We have discussed the use of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as if they were universal. They are almost universal. There is only one manufacturer that doesn’t offer it that builds cars in volume. That manufacturer is Tesla. No Tesla has ever shipped from the Tesla factory with the technology. It’s nice that Tesla provided us with this real-world control group to show how the number of problems for a vehicle brand without the technology compares to one with the technology. Let’s compare:

• The best brands at JD Power Reliability Study are Lexus and Toyota. They have the lowest reported problems per 100 vehicles at 135 and 147 respectively. This is the gold standard in the industry today. Every modern Toyota model has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
• Among the very worst brands for reliability is Tesla. This brand has a PP100 score of 252. If it has helped Tesla omit Android Auto and Apple Car Play, it is not reflected in the results of the reliability study.

Another study that JD Power is conducting its Initial quality study. This study reports problems experienced by new car buyers. This seems to be an ideal gauge of how Android Auto and Apple CarPlay work. In this study, all the top brands offer Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Both Tesla and Rivian are included in the ranking, and are ranked among the very worst brands. Neither brand offers Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Again, our true control group failed to result in better reliability or to offer a better initial quality score.

What is Google’s built-in
Automakers don’t profit from providing vehicle owners with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. There are no updates to sell, as automakers have done for a decade with built-in navigation. There is no subscription they can earn from, as there is with satellite radio. So automakers are starting to move away from Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in favor of offering built-in Google Maps. This sounds good, except that the system will take forever to respond to a subscription to a data service. The first period is almost always free of charge. But eventually users will have to pay to use it.

Our colleague Jill Ciminillo is a very tech-savvy vehicle reviewer. She recently tested GM’s Google Built-in system. How long did it take her to get it working? Over four hours. You can see her review here. She mentions the 4 hour fight at the 19:25 time stamp. Which system would you prefer? The free system that takes 10 seconds to use. Or the system with a monthly subscription cost that takes four hours for an expert to set up?

The secret to never struggling with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay
The very best thing about Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is that if you don’t like it, you never have to use it. You can kick it old fashioned and navigate using the lousy built-in cartoon maps that manufacturers still often provide. You can buy a Tom Tom and suction cup it to the dashboard or windshield. You can navigate using a paper map in your lap. You can listen to the satellite radio that cuts in and out as you walk under trees and bridges. Using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in a vehicle that offers it completely optional and costs you nothing to have. We’ve never seen an optional package that charges for Android Auto or AppleCar Play, although some base trims omitted it in the past. Other than Tesla and Rivian vehicles, we have not seen a new vehicle without this technology in many years of testing. The final solution if you’re anti-Android Auto and CarPlay is “don’t use it.”

Summary – Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are improving
The good news is that the reported problems with phone integration have leveled off and started to decrease. We think it’s very bad news that some manufacturers now want to make money selling subscription-based Google built-in rather than offering a technology that gets very high reviews as standard equipment. Tell us below what you think about the technology. We value your comments.

John Goreham is a chartered member of the New England Motor Press Association and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high tech, biopharma and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news writer. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews on American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on automotive topics. You can connect with John at LinkedIn and follow his work further our X channel. Note that stories carrying John’s by-line are Never AI generated, but he uses grammatical grammar and punctuation software when proofreading.