List of Car Brands to Ship Apple’s CarPlay This Year

Apple has been forging deals with some of the major car manufacturers from BMW to Ferrari, from Nissan to Ford and Toyota to bring its CarPlay infotainment in next gen cars that start shipping in 2014.

CarPlay allows users, pardon drivers, use the safe and intuitive access to music and messages, as well as maps using the car’s touchscreen or voice commands through Siri.

Users will be able to control CarPlay from the native interface of the vehicle or by long-pressing the voice control button located on the steering wheel to activate Siri, and save themselves the distraction.

Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Ferrari will start shipping CarPlay vehicles this week, while more car manufacturers will start bringing CarPlay containing vehicles to their customers sometime this year, and the list of the companies is pretty impressive. Check this out – Ford, General Motors, BMW Group, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Mitsubishi Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Suzuki, Subaru, Nissan Motor Company and Toyota Motor Corp. are on the list of Apple’s infotainment partners.

“CarPlay has been designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using the iPhone in the Car,” said Apple’s vice president Greg Joswiak. “iPhone users always want their content at their fingertips and CarPlay lets drivers use their iPhone in the Car with minimized distraction. We have an amazing lineup of auto partners rolling out CarPlay, and we are thrilled it will make its debut this week in Geneva.”

In vehicles with CarPlay integration, iPhones will get automatically connected to the CarPlay, allowing Siri help the driver access contacts, return missed calls, make new phone calls and listen to voicemails, as well as view Maps.

As incoming messages and push notifications would arrive to users’ iPhones, Siri would provide a completely eye – free experience, responding to voice commands of the user to read messages and let the users dictate responses or dial phone numbers.

One of the greatest features of CarPlay is its integration with Maps, which powers the vehicle with the force of anticipating destinations based on recent trips via emails, texts and contacts. CarPlay will provide users with routing instructions and traffic conditions along with ETA. Drivers will be able to ask Siri for turn-by-turn directions along with Maps display on the touchscreen. Siri will literally be your co-pilot and the personal secretary – all for the price of an iPhone and a vehicle with CarPlay integration.

Drivers will be able to use voice commands to navigate iTunes and ask Siri to playback media content they would like to hear on the go. CarPlay supports a limited number of third-party audio apps, including IHeartRadio and Spotify.

CarPlay compatibility has already been rolled out last week in the new iOS 7.1 update, and it is currently functional on Lightning-enabled devices, including iPhone 5, iPhone 5s and iPhone5c.