Earlier this month, Apple unveiled their new vehicle initiative called CarPlay. This was basically a rebranding of iOS in the Car that was shown off last year. CarPlay is a good idea but unfortunately it requires vehicle manufacturers to participate in the program and install the system into vehicles.
Apple has done a good job of getting a variety of manufacturers to come on board CarPlay, but unfortunately not all vehicle models will get it, so even if there are many manufacturers, there aren’t that many supported vehicles, which is something that Pioneer is hoping to rectify.
According to the reports, Pioneer is apparently working on bringing CarPlay to other vehicles that might not necessarily be one of Apple’s partners or one of the support vehicle models. How Pioneer plans on achieving this is by creating some kind of adapter for the iPhone that will allow it to connect to Pioneer’s car stereos.
We’re not sure how this will work since connecting an iPhone to a car stereo is different from CarPlay, which actually includes dedicated buttons on the car’s infotainment system, as well as a button on the steering wheel that will activate Siri.
There’s also no telling if Apple will be pleased by this move since it could possibly do away with the need for CarPlay if there is an alternative available. Then again some speculate it could be one of the programs that Apple has yet to reveal, but either way we’ll be keeping an eye out for more details. In the meantime how does Pioneer’s CarPlay alternative sound to you guys?