AudiFan02

Anyone having luck getting Apple Car Play to work? I have not been successful.

I think this may have to do with the car WiFi hotspot. My phone will connect to the car hotspot, but it will drop
it after about 45 seconds. The dealer has an issue activating my Audi Connect, so I’m thinking maybe that’s causing the problem.

Also, if Car Play works wirelessly thru the car’s WiFi, would you think this means we have to maintain an active Audi Connect subscription just to connect for CarPlay?

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I connected to to Bluetooth first and then wireless CarPlay was automatically configured after a couple of taps.

gerryw4

My salesman, who just quit after I talked to him, told me that Android Auto does not work over Bluetooth. He said you have to plug in. Does anyone know if this is true? He really knew very little about e-tron (because he was leaving?) so I can't take him too seriously.

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its true. Android auto only works via cable.

schalliol

Could you please elaborate on the steps? We have Bluetooth set but didn’t see about CarPlay.

MKSurfPhoto

Go to settings : general : CarPlay on your iPhone.
I believe I paired Bluetooth first and it asked me if I wanted to enable CarPlay.

You dont need subscription to anything. Even though I configured mine via Bluetooth - it just uses that to pair and configure WiFi between phone and car.

BestLife9798

Android user here and yes, it is indeed with cable only. I tried and used it yesterday and again today. One thing that's still confusing me (I'll continue to explore tho...) my phone will connect automatically via bluetooth when I return to the vehicle as it should. However - once I plugged in and used Android Auto it then wouldn't recognize my phone as being paired via bluetooth when I return. I had to physically go through the full pairing process to get my phone to connect via bluetooth again. Not only that, but while connected by cable for Android Auto - the car's built in paired phone features aren't available to you. Your phone isn't connected as far as it's concerned - it's simply a media device instead. Seems to be one or the other. It's happened twice now but I'm hoping I just haven't quite figured things out...having fun getting in to the tech of it all.

scoopman

I don't know anything about CarPlay, but as a former member of the Android Auto team, here's how AA works.

Android Auto connects to your car via wired USB cable for its video and audio from your phone (and also to receive sensors and button and touch inputs from your car), but it also automatically pairs and connects via Bluetooth to place phone calls. This is because Android phones do not have the hardware capability to route phone call audio via the USB method used for the rest of the audio, and because using Bluetooth for phone calls also lets the driver use the built-in Audi UI for placing and receiving calls. (Note wireless AA uses Wifi -- Bluetooth can't handle the data required. The etron does not support AA wirelessly).

This means a couple of things:

-- Android Auto has a special implementation as part of its requirements with all cars which has the phone pair silently and in the background so the driver needs to do nothing to pair their phone over BT
-- The phone pairing only allows for the Hands-Free Profile (HFP) and doesn't allow for media streaming from your phone (profile A2DP) while connected to AA
-- Although Audi's MMI allows for two phones to be simultaneously paired and connected via BT to share streaming music and receiving phone calls, Android Auto does not permit this and requires any car (not just Audis) to disconnect any other secondary BT phone connection while Android Auto is plugged in.

Bluetooth is a notoriously unreliable technology and for Audis with controller-based MMIs such as mine (S5 Sportback), the car frequently fails to properly connect over BT with the phone when AA starts up. Android Auto works fine in this case, but the driver just can't make phone calls until they manually hit the TEL button and tell the car to go pair with the phone.

No idea of the similarities / differences with CarPlay, but hope this helps clarify how Android Auto works.

Cadx6

Assuming the e-Tron is the same as the Q8, the iPhone has to be connected to the 5g connection of the hotspot (not the 2.4) for wireless Car Play to work.

AudiFan02

Update: I was able to get this working this morning. I think my challenge was that I did not set it up when I first paired the phone to Bluetooth. I was able to go into the "Phone Apps" menu on the car, then to Connected Devices. On my phone, I had the Car Play settings open so I could pair it. It doesn't seem to need WiFi as I originally thought-- it appears to be working thru Bluetooth.

I am guessing my phone keeps dropping the WiFi hot spot because my Audi Connect is still not quite setup right with the trial period. Since the phone doesn't see the internet, it drops the useless WiFi connection.