CarPlay connection unreliable

[Ste007]

I was very much looking forward to having CarPlay available in my EX30. Now I have it however I find it only connects to the phone about 50% of the time. When it doesn’t connect I am directed to the Bluetooth settings where… nothing I seem to do will reconnect. Then next time I get in the car it connects straight away. My 2018 T-roc had CarPlay which connected reliably 100% of the time.

Anyone else experiencing this? Any tips?

[edenr1]

Car Play works well for me, but I have to listen to the radio via the main car operating system as the signal via BBC Sounds is really poor. Loving the fact I can use the Tom Tom app now though. I hope you get your issue resolved Ste007

[andrewollason]

Ours seems to struggle a bit swapping from my partners iPhone and mine. All that we have to do is start CarPlay from the settings page and away we go.

[Stretford99]

Ste007 - not sure if these are tips as such, more my own experience! I had lots of problems in the first week, on one of the days I couldn’t connect it for the entire day and spent hours forgetting the Bluetooth connection and so on and retrying

The next day I realised that I often turn the WiFi off if I leave the house and was doing that when going for a drive too?

Since then it has been more reliable but there still have been times it hasn’t started up. But as mentioned above by andre- since I’ve kept the WiFi running I’ve found just going to the Bluetooth section and clicking the three dots and hitting launch on the next page has fired it up every time

This is still a bit annoying as you should expect it to just connect full stop. BUT unlike the first week haha, it has loaded up every time that I’ve had to click launch - but I’d say I’ve only had to do this a few times since I’ve made sure I’ve kept the WiFi on lol! And most of the time it does load up, and even BBC sounds will start playing before I’ve even done my seat belt up.

So am hoping they can iron this out in the next update

So you may well already know that unlike me about the WiFi lol in which case my post is a bit redundant - but thought would still mention just in case lol!

[RX30]

yes there is a whole stream of other posts on this.

I have found that it will not connect automatically if you enter the car with an active wi-fi connection, ie your home wi-fi for example. You can eventually fiddle around with the Bluetooth settings in the car and it will come back and tell you that its going to disconnect the wi-fi to fire up CarPlay. SO now if you have carPlay going and you go down the street and park somewhere that you have no wi-fi connection (the shops) and then come back to the car it will connect carplay as you would expect.

also I have noticed that when you return home get out of the car and go back into your wi-fi zone CarPlay is holding onto your phones wi-fi connection, in other words your phone will not connect to you wi-fi until you explicitly tell it to, in which case it drops the carplay connection....

At least this is what i have observed, and reported to Volvo....who have promised to "raise a technical note" to Sweden....we wait

[Ste007]

Thanks all for the observations and suggestions.

This prompts the question, what is the benefit of connecting to the home wifi? Since there is a ‘free’ unlimited data plan with the installed Vodafone sim can it just be turned off?

[andrewollason]

There seems little value in the external Wi-Fi connection as you say as it has its own eSIM. I think CarPlay needs both a Bluetooth connection (for telephone services) and wifi for data. I think this is why you have to turn off the cars external Wi-Fi connection to make the wireless CarPlay work.

[Geoff]

All this is a bit over my head but I’m curious – does CarPlay use your mobile phone data or the cars? I ask because I have a limited data contract.

[Stretford99]

Geoff sadly CarPlay uses the phone data! Which used to be a plus on other cars but sadly is a con in this car!

[Geoff]

Thank you. At least that’s something I don’t have to worry about, CarPlay doesn’t do anything for me that the car doesn’t already do so it's no loss.