Roger Fingas
Mazda on Tuesday said that starting in September, people with a 2018 Mazda6 sedan will be able to get a free dealer-installed upgrade to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto — as long as they paid for one of the right trims.
The upgrade will only be free to people who paid for Touring, Grand Touring, Grand Touring Reserve, or Signature options packages — also called trims — according to the automaker. It should take about two hours, and include a faster-charging 2.1-amp USB port as well as a newer version of Mazda Connect.
CarPlay and Android Auto will come included with the same trims beginning in November.
Mazda noted that the Mazda6 will be its first vehicle in North America to get those platforms via dealer installation.
The automaker only revealed plans to support CarPlay this March, having been a holdout since Apple launched the platform in 2014. The technology is also coming to the 2019 CX-9 SUV.
Another Japanese firm, Toyota, likewise recently caved, adding CarPlay to the 2019 Corolla Hatchback.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
7 Comments
This is nice if there is an upgrade available for older 2017 models.
Good for Mazda customers. Some Toyota Camry customers hoped Toyota will do the same for 2018 Camry already having Entune 3.0, once 2019 Camry releases with CarPlay. More I think, why anyone would want to buy new vehicle without CarPlay(&AA) ? You are stuck with that car for next over 10 years. Now a days seamless phone connectivity to the car's infotainment system is must feature. Moreover, IOS 12 will support CarPlay 3rd party MAP Apps..
Mazda has been promising this upgrade for owners of older cars too for over a year (I think back as far as 2014 models). So now they announce this, but don't address those older models? We recently dumped our Mazda3, in no small part because the infotainment system absolutely sucked - lousy sound from the Bose-branded speakers/amp, glacially slow operation, hideously cumbersome navigation with the imitation BMW iDrive interface, and generally buggy operation. CarPlay would have solved some of that, but not all. They really need to start from scratch. Oh and get rid of that "iPad taped to the dash" design cue that they and so many other automakers are rocking these days. It's hideous.
Are Mazda and Ford still the same company or did they split?
as for the ‘iPad taped to the dash,’ the problem is, no dashboard has a 6x10” flat space big enough to hold a reasonably sized touch screen. You either make it smaller and have people complain about the size, or make it larger and have people complain that it looks like they taped an iPad to the dash.
When the hell are Mazda upgrading the earlier vehicles to support CarPlay??
big kc said:
I pretty much agree here. Though I don't think the display positioning or ergonomics are all that bad (the digital environment controls suck to high hell, though; no way should that pile of nondescript buttons ever have been placed on a car dash). But the infotainment system is one of the clumsiest, laggiest, inconsistent, and buggiest things I've ever used that isn't an open source project (though I bet most of the underlying code is just the same open source garbage found on Linux, hence the lag and bugginess).