Last week, Apple finally put a hinge on an iPhone. This week, the company released the long-awaited personalised Siri AI in the latest builds of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and watchOS 27. In a few days, the company’s latest iPhone 18 Pro models with a mechanical variable aperture and new Apple Watch models that now offer a Readiness score, and, wait for it, a steps complication, will also go on sale.
All of that and yet one of the most exciting things Apple announced in the last two years remains stuck where it started: in the cabin of a car most of us will never sit in (technically, we actually have, but we won’t own one in this lifetime). CarPlay Ultra, Apple’s deeply integrated, screen-swallowing successor to regular CarPlay, was announced in May 2025, rolling out on new Aston Martin orders in the US and Canada at the time, followed by a promise that it would reach existing compatible Aston Martin models within a couple of weeks following the launch.
Apple named Hyundai, Kia and Genesis as “newly committed” partners on top of Aston Martin at the time of the announcement, but more than a year on (16 months if we’re being precise), expansion hasn’t happened beyond select Aston Martin vehicles with six-figure price tags. So where is it?
What you’re (still) missing out on
Apple CarPlay Ultra isn’t a minor spec bump or small design tweak to the current CarPlay as we know it. Our own hands-on test in an Aston Martin DBX saw us come away very impressed with what it delivered. It wasn’t just CarPlay on a fancier screen; it was a takeover of every display in the car, instrument clusters included, with the speedometer, tachometer, fuel and temperature gauges all rendered through Apple’s interface, and tailored to match Aston Martin’s own design language.
Climate, drive modes, tyre pressure and even the radio all live within the same user interface, and anything Apple can’t do natively gets handled by a feature called “punch through” that drops you into the carmaker’s own menu and brings you straight back.
In our hands on, we said: “Once you’ve experienced that level of clarity and cohesion, there’s no going back. It’s not just about looking nice — it’s about making the whole driving experience feel less like battling a touchscreen and more like using a great piece of tech.”
Safe to say, we’re really sad it hasn’t arrived on a car a journalist’s salary might allow. The question is, if CarPlay Ultra is really as good as we thought, why has nobody outside $200,000 Aston Martin drivers got anywhere near it yet?
What’s the hold up?
Well, the bad news is that Apple hasn’t actually said what the delay is with CarPlay Ultra. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has said previously though, every CarPlay Ultra theme is bespoke in that Apple’s design team builds a unique interface with each automaker from scratch. This is understandably a slow, resource-heavy process compared with a one-size-fits-all software rollout like traditional CarPlay. It’s also understandable that car manufacturers might be wary of handing too much control over their dashboards to Apple, given the company spent years working on its own car before shelving the project.
As a result, Gurman has previously described CarPlay Ultra as “a bit of a dud”, noting that “for a company with Apple’s scale, this kind of niche offering is unusual”. But there is some slightly better news in that Gurman has more recently reported that CarPlay Ultra should finally arrive in at least one major Hyundai or Kia model in the second half of 2026, with Porsche, Mercedes and Polestar tipped as future partners, though without any firm dates.
So far, 13 brands have formally committed to CarPlay Ultra, including Acura, Ford, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Lincoln, Nissan and Porsche, alongside launch partner Aston Martin. Aside from Aston Martin, however, none have shipped yet. Meanwhile, BMW, Ford, and Rivian have said it’s not for them and General Motors even pulled standard CarPlay from its newer EVs at one point. Thankfully, as of September 2026, it was reported by The Verge that it has now introduced a split-screen interface that integrates CarPlay back in.
Delayed, not dead
So has Apple abandoned CarPlay Ultra? Almost certainly not. Most current reports point to us seeing some movement before the year is out, rather than the project suffering the same fate as the Apple Car. What seems to have happened is that Apple introduced something that got us all excited, but then handed the keys to an industry that moves at a different pace to Cupertino.
Over a year after launch, CarPlay Ultra remains a brilliant idea trapped in an Aston Martin showroom, but fingers crossed that might change before the year is out. All we want for Christmas is CarPlay Ultra on a more affordable car. And maybe a folding iPhone, if you’re buying.
Read next: Apple CarPlay Ultra compatibility list: every car that has, and is getting, Apple’s next-gen UI
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