While CarPlay has become very common in cars over the past several years, most manufacturers are still relying on a wired implementation that requires the user to plug his or her iPhone in using a Lightning cable connected to one of the vehicle’s USB ports.
The first and only car manufacturer to adopt wireless CarPlay so far is BMW (including its MINI brand), although Mercedes recently announced wireless CarPlay coming later this year. On the aftermarket front, Alpine is offering one solution that supports the feature, while Pioneer has just announced a few models of its own.
One common justification for the slow adoption of wireless CarPlay has been that the car is an easy place to charge your phone, so it pays to plug it into your car to top off the battery while you’re driving. But with Apple’s latest iPhones supporting Qi wireless charging and more car manufacturers starting to include Qi charging pads as options on their vehicles, we thought it would be worth taking a look at how such a setup works in the real world.
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