Hands on with Apple CarPlay Ultra

Aston Martin is the first out of the blocks with Apple's next big thing - we took it for a spin

By Nic Cackett / Wednesday, 11 June 2025 / Loading comments

If we’re being honest, yours truly was probably the worst person to send to try out Apple CarPlay Ultra - the next generation of software pitched as the ‘ultimate in-car experience’ and debuting on Aston Martin’s newest models. Despite being heavily bought into Apple’s ecosystem, I don’t generally use CarPlay, mainly because doing so prevents you from fully interacting with an OEM’s infotainment system - and on the basis that these now dictate a huge chunk of any modern car’s usability, it would be wrong not to experience them in isolation. Also, it means turning on Siri, and I really don’t like talking to my phone like it’s some kind of indentured, all-knowing friend. I don’t like talking into it full stop.

But I better get used to it. Apple, as it is wont to do - and certainly now it appears to have given up all ambition of building its own car - wants to move the CarPlay game on. Mostly, one suspects, because it doesn’t really want you to stop using your phone ever (especially if doing so means looking at someone else’s user interface) but also because better integrating it with your car is simply the next logical step in the sort of seamless user journey that Cupertino specialises in. ‘The best of iPhone and the best of the car’ as Apple put it this week - a sentiment echoed by Aston Martin, the first carmaker to take advantage of the Ultra toolkit.

For Gaydon, the advantages are not hard to fathom. Aston likes to think of itself as a global leader in design terms, and while that’s true when it comes to the exterior styling of its cars, it could certainly stand to learn a thing or two about how best to combine visual appeal and intuitive ease of use in a glossy new UI. Its latest infotainment system - though capable enough and beautifully integrated into the dash - is a tediously fiddly case in point. So who better to collaborate with? The Aston customer gets an approximation of an interface they are already intimately familiar with; Aston itself gets a unified, Apple-flavoured skin for the car’s many other functions, yet is free to develop its own brand-specific theme to sit on top. Win, win.

Well, eventually win, win. First, you’ll need to make the crucial connection between car and phone work - not, it must be said, a 30-second job with an older iPhone (you’ll need at least an iPhone 12 running iOS 18.5 or later) and a patchy 4G signal. That Aston’s expert on the subject arrived in the DBX's passenger seat armed with a USB-C cable - sorry mate, not this iPhone - suggests that a physical coupling is still the best way to proceed initially. Failing that, you might want to bring the Product Communication Manager along with you, she armed with two much larger, newer iPhones and a voice well-practised in bringing Siri to heel come what may. Or that’s what I did. Worked a treat.

As the case tends to be with Apple products, once you’re over the initial download this, update that hump, it all works with a well-oiled sense of consistency. Old-school CarPlay already did a fairly nifty job of bringing iOS into your car - but that core functionality is now complemented on the main touchscreen by access to climate control, drive modes, the audio setup, parking sensors and cameras, the active safety systems, and almost everything you can configure inside the vehicle. In fact, Aston suggested that the only outliers were the ambient light settings and the engine telemetry data, which currently required the native software to display properly. But even this transition doesn’t unduly upset the user-friendly vibe.

This vibe, as you might expect, is a significant improvement. Probably there is a longer discussion to have about what it means to submit some of these control surfaces to such obvious Apple-ification - i.e. do you really want your car’s infotainment display to mimic your iPhone - but for now, Aston can neatly sidestep this kind of issue by pointing to the stockpile of physical switchgear that still flanks the screen in all its cars. So while selecting the DBX’s Sport mode via an iOS drop-down menu is definitely not going to stir your soul, you’re unlikely to do that anyway when you’ve got a lovely fat dial to hand. Having said that, it speaks volumes about Apple’s knack for touchscreen iconography that I found myself adjusting the temperature using the screen almost immediately, even with a shortcut nearby.

At any rate, the other novelty of Ultra occurs in the instrument cluster, where speedometer, rev counter, fuel gauge, temperature gauge et al is now encompassed. This is where Aston’s own chosen theme, designed in-house, really comes into play. Happily, the brand has kept things nice and simple: you get two dials, in understated hues, offset by a white font with an additional (configurable) panel between them. I’d still prefer a needle to the rise and fall of a coloured band (see pictures), but these are customisable at least, as are other things, like the shade of wallpaper. Indeed, the options for personalisation - presumably set to grow - are doubtless part of the appeal to Aston. Today, colour palettes; tomorrow, the world.

For now, of course, the choice beyond Aston’s bespoke theme is dictated by Apple and therefore tends toward exactly the kind of look you’d expect: no one reading this is likely to want an instrument panel mostly devoted to an album cover. Or even Apple Maps. Or ones that make the gauges look like an app for your boiler. But while they seem mildly inappropriate in a six-figure, V8-powered DBX, they will doubtless blend in elsewhere. And besides, it’s hard to work up a head of dissenting steam when you’re presented with something that often imitates the soft-toned, everything-in-its-place precision of Apple iOS. We’re just too used to it working faultlessly, which it does, even via Aston’s haptic steering wheel controls.

If that all sounds like scant return for dispensing with analogue instrumentation, then you’re not entirely wrong. I’d personally swap the implied convenience of being able to ask Siri to change the temperature for a proper rev counter in the time it takes to blink. But if we’re all willing to grumpily concede that era is now in the rearview mirror (for anything that isn’t a Caterham Seven or Pagani Utopia), then Apple CarPlay Ultra - and its eventual roll-out in all Aston Martin cars from August - makes a predictably good and fluid case for itself. For many, if not most buyers, its inclusion will seem like a no-brainer. For the rest of us, we’ll just get used to it. Or else stoically continue using the not-quite-so-good interface that remains underneath.