🚗 Using AutoDrive with CarPlay

When you plug your iPhone into a CarPlay-equipped car — or connect wirelessly — AutoDrive appears on the in-car screen alongside Maps, Music, and Phone. Tap the AutoDrive icon and you land on a three-tab CarPlay layout designed to be safe and glanceable while driving.

CarPlay is available to everyone, including free accounts. There is no subscription or upgrade required. The CarPlay screen is a companion to the iPhone app — everything you do in CarPlay is reflected in your iPhone, and your existing drives, vehicles, and settings carry over automatically.

The Drive tab — Quick Start, live dashboard & summary

When no drive is in progress, the Drive tab shows three tiles arranged like a steering column: the active Driver on the left, Start Drive in the middle as the primary action, and the active Vehicle on the right. Tap Start Drive to begin recording manually. Tap Driver or Vehicle to swap the assignment for the next drive — the picker lists everyone in your active group, with a ✓ on the current selection.

While a drive is in flight, the Drive tab flips to a live two-column dashboard styled like a glanceable instrument cluster — everything fits on screen, no scrolling:

• Speed — current speed in mph or km/h, clamped against bad GPS speed-accuracy so a parked phone with drift never reports false motion.
• Distance — straight-line distance from where the trip began.
• Heading — compass direction (N, NE, E…) when you’re moving.
• Duration — ticks every second.

The screen title carries the active vehicle name during the drive and swaps to Finalizing drive… when AutoDrive has detected you’ve stopped and is closing the trip out, so you always know which car the drive is being recorded against and whether the engine has handed the trip off for saving.

A single action button sits at the bottom of the dashboard: End Drive saves the trip immediately with full route, distance, and cost estimates. (If AutoDrive auto-started a drive you didn’t mean to record, you can discard the trip from the iPhone app once you’ve parked.)

When a drive completes (either by your tap or AutoDrive detecting you’ve parked), CarPlay shows a Drive Summary screen with Distance, Duration, Avg Speed, Cost, From, and To. The summary auto-dismisses after 15 seconds back to the idle Start Drive grid; tap Done to dismiss it sooner.

Auto-detect sounds. If a drive is started by AutoDrive automatically (e.g. CarPlay or Bluetooth route detection), the start chime is held until AutoDrive confirms you’re actually moving. If the drive ends without ever recording motion (the engine ran but you didn’t leave the driveway), neither the start nor the end chime plays — so you don’t hear “ding…ding” for a phantom trip that AutoDrive then drops as a ghost.

The Stations tab — fuel or charging, automatically

The Stations tab shows nearby fuel or charging stations on a map you can tap through to get directions. AutoDrive picks the right one for your active vehicle automatically:

• If your active vehicle is gas, diesel, or hybrid, the tab opens to Fuel — nearby gas stations with regular unleaded prices when available.
• If your active vehicle is electric, the tab opens to Charging — nearby charging stations with network and charging level (Level 2, DC Fast, etc.).

You can flip between the two at any time using the Show Fuel / Show Charging button in the top-right. This is per-session — the tab will go back to your vehicle’s default mode the next time you open the app.

Closest first. Both fuel and charging results are re-sorted on the device against your current GPS fix, so the row at the top is always the nearest option. As you drive the list re-sorts automatically — you don’t have to scroll past a 4-mile station to see the one across the street.

Each row packs the most-glanceable datum onto its second line so you can pick a station without tapping in. Fuel rows show ~<distance> mi · Reg $<price> when the price is real (the regular unleaded price is shown when AutoDrive has it; otherwise just the distance). Charging rows show ~<distance> mi · <network> · <level>. Distances are approximate (haversine straight-line from your current location).

Tap any station on the map to see the address and a Directions button. Directions hands off to Apple Maps for turn-by-turn navigation — CarPlay does not allow third-party apps to render their own turn-by-turn UI for non-navigation apps, so this hand-off is the safest, most predictable behaviour.

The Traffic tab — incidents on your route

The Traffic tab plots nearby construction, events, congestion, and incidents within roughly five miles of your current location, sorted closest first so the incident most likely to affect your next mile is at the top of the list. Tap any pin to see the full description, the road affected, and a severity rating — Low, Moderate, High, or Severe.

From the incident detail you can tap Directions to drop a pin in Apple Maps at the incident location, which lets Apple Maps factor it into routing and offer a way around it.

A Refresh button in the top-right re-pulls the latest incidents on demand — useful when you’re sitting in traffic and want to know whether something has just opened up or just gotten worse.

What CarPlay won’t do (yet)

Apple intentionally limits what non-navigation apps can render on CarPlay. The current AutoDrive CarPlay layout does not include:

• A recent-drives list (use the iPhone app or AutoDrive Online for that).
• Siri or voice commands (planned for a future release).
• Custom turn-by-turn navigation (we hand off to Apple Maps instead).
• Audio playback or NowPlaying integration.

Troubleshooting

• The AutoDrive icon doesn’t appear on CarPlay. Make sure you have the latest version of AutoDrive from the App Store, and that CarPlay support is enabled for your device. On iPhone, open Settings → General → CarPlay, choose your car, and confirm AutoDrive is in the visible-apps list.
• Stations / Traffic tabs are empty. CarPlay surfaces use the same data sources as the iPhone app. If the iPhone app shows the data correctly but CarPlay does not, force-quitting and re-plugging usually resolves it. If both are empty, check Location permission is set to Always — CarPlay needs location even when the phone is locked.
• Quick Start does nothing. Confirm AutoDrive has Location permission set to Always, and that you have at least one vehicle added on the iPhone app — drives have to be attributed to a vehicle.