The problem with CarPlay integration in a car like the Air is that there are three parties that would need to do some custom work to make it good, due to the screen orientations.
CarPlay was originally designed for small, horizontal screens, as most cars had exactly that at the time. They eventually added some additional resolutions, but they are fixed. No third party can just make CarPlay display any way they want. The apps are all designed with a fixed view in mind. Apple would need to add support for custom resolutions, aspect ratios, etc.
So first, we‘d need Apple to do some work. In addition to resolutions, Apple would ideally add some sort of multi-screen support, if they haven’t already. Otherwise, Lucid would be limited to showing CarPlay stuff on only one of the touch screens. (I imagine Lucid could easily pick whichever touch screen they wanted to use for that, pilot or cockpit.) I haven’t dug into CarPlay myself, but I develop for iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS. CarPlay is sort of an extension of iOS. It’s just an external monitor with touch controls for your phone, essentially. Along with a custom launcher for pre-approved apps. When you are looking and interacting with CarPlay, you are controlling your phone, not any computer in the car. (This is why Musk will never add CarPlay support to Teslas, by the way. He wants to know every button press you make while you drive, and Apple would never give that to him.) But I don’t think CarPlay can do more than one external display at the moment.
WWDC is coming up in a few weeks, though. So maybe now that Apple has interest from more EV companies with custom display sizes, Apple could announce support for these things. I know Apple wants CarPlay to get more powerful over time, so this must be on their radar. It’s just a question of when. WWDC might be an interesting time for such announcements, as they introduce iOS 16.
Second, Lucid would need to figure out how CarPlay fits into their UI. Essentially, they need to portion out a piece of screen real estate, a rectangle, where CarPlay would display its stuff. Touches on that portion of the screen would be sent to your phone instead of the car. If Apple adds support for custom resolutions, that will give them much more flexibility. If not, they are going to be stuck just slapping it into the pilot panel or right cockpit. I’d argue the right cockpit is the correct place, though it’s a small screen for the task. Only because CarPlay can get very interactive, and the Pilot Panel takes your eyes off the road too much to be useful for navigation and such? But who knows? The first implementation will likely be a simple horizontal rectangle, regardless. Unless Lucid has early access to whatever is coming next from Apple, which is possible.
I don’t expect support for any of the fancy swipe up and down between the screens anytime soon. But having some controls on both screens could be very cool. Nav up top, music on the bottom? iOS does have multitasking, but Lucid’s own software doesn’t even allow that yet.
Third, if Apple does allow custom resolutions and multiple screens, third-party developers, such as Waze, Tidal, Spotify, etc. will have to update their apps to accommodate these new features. So you could be looking at a period where you have multi-screen support, but some of your apps only show up on one of the screens, anyway. If Lucid is the only car that adopts multi-screen, and they only make 10k Lucid Airs this year, don’t expect a company like Spotify or Tidal to jump and adopt this quickly. It could be too small a market to bother with for a while. The more custom the implementation for Lucid, the less chance third parties will care enough to bother. At least all your internal Apple apps (such as Maps, contacts, messages, etc.) will be supported at launch.
MY hope is that Lucid has been in direct talks with Apple about how best to implement CarPlay, and they are collaborating on innovative ways to take advantage of the multi-screens in the Lucid. It’s a big deal for both companies, as far as I’m concerned. Apple stands to win by proving CarPlay is adaptable to modern EVs (while thumbing their nose at Tesla). Lucid gets to have not just CarPlay support, but world-class CarPlay support (also while thumbing their nose at Tesla). And we get the one thing I’ve wanted since mobile phones became a “thing“: My car becoming a perfect conduit to the media and data I‘m already carrying around in my pocket.
Oh, and meanwhile, I’m leaving out Android Auto. Ideally, Lucid would be having the same conversations with Google about these features. It’s possible Google will be more accommodating than Apple when it comes to requesting this stuff. But it all takes time. We could end up with a kick-ass Android Auto implementation and a standard rectangle for CarPlay, or vice versa. My guess is neither company wants to be handed its lunch, though. So one will catch up to the other fast. (Especially if Lucid grows and does very well.)
