Long-time iPhone and CarPlay user here, I have probably used CarPlay for a half-million miles (mostly with Google Maps since it rolled onto CarPlay in 2020), so I'm pretty familiar with it and comfortable with Apple's ecosystem in general. After getting kinda frustrated with Apple Maps on a roadtrip in my Lightning last week between confusing directions and it not letting me select Tesla chargers, and then Ford/Google releasing better integration, I decided to pick up a cheap prepaid Android phone to use on the truck's wifi and give it a whirl on a 300 mile day trip yesterday.

Android Auto absolutely beats the pants off CarPlay in my truck with the 15" screen. The tiles have better proportions, and the Google Maps charger integration works great-it sent me straight to a compatible Tesla charger once I selected that I had a NACS adapter (inside the Google Maps settings). AND GET THIS Y'ALL! Android Auto has a current weather widget right on it! It's ticked me off that CarPlay doesn't have that as an option for a long time. As a bonus, using Spotify, I could still use Siri and/or my Apple Watch for audio controls. (This is a function of being able to control Spotify on one device from another one, not an integration between Google and Apple, so it doesn't work on other apps) Google Maps evidently doesn't have a speedometer in Android Auto (which blows my mind a little since Google added it to CarPlay) but other than that, the in-vehicle experience was great.

The obvious huge downside is not having the phone I actually use as a telephone hooked up to the truck, but I usually use a headset or AirPods for phone calls anyway. I also had both phones hooked to the truck at the same time, and it was relatively painless to switch between the two while driving by picking one or the other from the truck's phone list-I didn't have to touch either phone. It's definitely not a perfect solution, but I plan on continuing to use the Android phone as my car computer, at least until CarPlay catches back up. Just throwing this out there in case there are any other frustrated iPhone folks here.

( I'll try to edit this with screenshots later, the only one I have now is directly in front of my house)