It is the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week and a number of CarPlay announcements have started to release, including one from Toyota, who have announced that their first vehicle to (finally) included Apple CarPlay will be the all-new 2019 Avalon, which releases in Spring. CarPlay will also be integrated into their other 2019 vehicles over the coming year, as well as their luxury Lexus brand of vehicles.
Since being confirmed as an Apple CarPlay partner on Apple’s own website in 2014, yet it has taken the car manufacture a number of years to bring Apple’s in-car platform to its line-up of vehicles, peer pressure seems to have won over the manufacture who will offer Apple CarPlay as part of their new Entune 3.0 and Enform 2.0 multimedia systems, which for now will be sold in the United States only.
Although the Avalon comes with wireless charging, Toyota has said it will not feature wireless CarPlay. Regardless, the Avalon comes pretty feature packed, with a 9-inch display, Wi-Fi hotspot, Qi wireless charging, JBL branded 7.1 sound system and compatibility with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant – a first for an automaker.
Toyota told Mac Rumours that they do not have plans to support CarPlay in pre-2019 models at this time, even though the 2018 Camry and 2018 Sienna has the CarPlay-enabled Entune 3.0 system already installed.
