Car Play Ultra upgrade - worth it?

[kingkelly]

Hi All,

Just booked my 25 plate Vantage into Aston Martin for the CarPlay Ultra update. Apparently it needs additional hardware and then software installed and takes around 3hrs.

I thought it was free but no! they are doing an offer of £1,000 at Hatfield.

Firstly is it worth it? and secondly any Aston dealers pricing it differently?

cheers!

[EVR]

Briefly saw it on a DBX 707 I was riding as a passenger on the back, all in all probably 4 hours trip.

I mean, cool, but the Apple interface really takes over your full car. I would say, if you are ok with this, go for it.

[BiggaJ]

kingkelly said:

Hi All,

Just booked my 25 plate Vantage into Aston Martin for the CarPlay Ultra update. Apparently it needs additional hardware and then software installed and takes around 3hrs.

I thought it was free but no! they are doing an offer of £1,000 at Hatfield.

Firstly is it worth it? and secondly any Aston dealers pricing it differently?

cheers!

So I understand this correctly, the 25 plate (current) Vantage doesn't come with Android Auto/Apple Car play?

My understanding was that this was a standard ft from factory, so why do you need to pay for it? I have a friend with a 73 plate DBX707 that came with it.

[bobthemonkey]

BiggaJ said:

So I understand this correctly, the 25 plate (current) Vantage doesn't come with Android Auto/Apple Car play?

My understanding was that this was a standard ft from factory, so why do you need to pay for it? I have a friend with a 73 plate DBX707 that came with it.

This is CarPlay Ultra - which essentially means CarPlay also takes over the instrument display as well as the central media display.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ult...

[BiggaJ]

bobthemonkey said:

BiggaJ said:

So I understand this correctly, the 25 plate (current) Vantage doesn't come with Android Auto/Apple Car play?

My understanding was that this was a standard ft from factory, so why do you need to pay for it? I have a friend with a 73 plate DBX707 that came with it.

This is CarPlay Ultra - which essentially means CarPlay also takes over the instrument display as well as the central media display.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ult...

Thanks for the info. I had no idea but I doubt I would bother with that.

[VantageHead]

kingkelly said:

Hi All,

Just booked my 25 plate Vantage into Aston Martin for the CarPlay Ultra update. Apparently it needs additional hardware and then software installed and takes around 3hrs.

I thought it was free but no! they are doing an offer of £1,000 at Hatfield.

Firstly is it worth it? and secondly any Aston dealers pricing it differently?

cheers!

I also have a 25 plate Vantage and before I took delivery, was pondering having the upgrade to Ultra. Not any longer though!

Since owning the car for 6 months, I have had so many glitches and bugs in the standard software (both screens randomly turning off (or not turning on at start-up), failure of the ADAS systems, CarPlay dropping connection every 3 minutes, etc.) that I think I’ll be giving ‘Ultra’ a swerve.

My car has just spend a whole week in the dealership (just collected it today) having numerous large software updates applied to it (has to be connected to the computer at the factory). Until Aston get the basics right, I don’t think it’s appropriate to install ‘Ultra’. These new cars are essential ‘computers-on-wheels’ nowadays, and I worry about how the aging software will be supported once the warranty runs out in 2.5 years time! After all, who’s still supporting Windows 95 PCs, and whats being done to ensure that these ‘connected’ cars won’t become prone to hackers/malicious action when the security updates are no longer produced!

My other worry about ‘Ultra’ is that given that Aston are the only company (so far) to adopt it, with many companies (e.g. Mercedes) saying that have no intention of adopting it, is the attention really going to be given to continued development and support of the software, or will it be like Google ending support for Nest thermostats (or Sonos ending support for legacy speakers, Hive Security Cameras, cessation of Belkin Wemo Cloud, Logitech Harmony remotes, etc.), essentially ‘bricking the units’! No thank you!

Of course, any buyers of the latest ‘S’ models (or Vanquish 3) won’t have a choice and ‘Ultra’ will be fitted as standard.

My point is that if the ‘core’ isn’t working, applying an Apple ‘skin’ over it will not improve the reliability of the car’s operating software. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t stop it being a pig!!

I can see owners of VH (and earlier) cars laughing at us ‘early adopters’ of these ‘tech fests’ on wheels! Colin Chapman was onto something when he said “add simplicity”. Unfortunately modern cars (including. EVs) are going very much against this sentiment.

[geresey]

Interesting comments above and I’m sure you’re correct, these things will become unsupported /hackable not far down the line. I cant afford a new one but would I want a 15yr old one with no software support, where failure of it can make the car undriveabIe? Course not. I wonder when manufacturers will wake up and start offering “non-techy” versions of their cars for those of us in the market that don’t want to be beholden to the whims of software manufacturers. They’d probably charge a premium for it but I’m sure there’d be a market for this from new as well!