The happiest U.S. car owners are those with Apple CarPlay

Once they’ve owned their cars long enough for the new car smell to wear off, most U.S. drivers are pretty happy with their vehicles. But they tend to be happiest if it has support for Apple CarPlay.

According to the APEAL (Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout) study for 2024, released by J.D. Power, there are higher rates of overall consumer satisfaction than last year. However, it uncovered concerns about the in-car infotainment systems, which were reported to be unnecessarily complicated.

“Automakers keep pouring additional features into their vehicle infotainment systems, but it appears to be creating needless complexity,” said Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power. “Owners struggle to perform simple audio-related tasks, so it [raises] the question of whether automakers are actually in tune with the desires and needs of their customers.”

Satisfaction with in-vehicle infotainment systems was rated at 805 out of 1,000, some way below the overall average across all categories of 847. But customers were significantly happier if their vehicle was equipped with Android Auto (scoring an average of 832); and happier still if the car had Apple CarPlay, for a score of 840.

J.D. Power’s conclusion is that this shows “that customers prefer to have the simplistic usability of their phone extended into their vehicle more so than what manufacturers are providing.” And evidently, Apple is better than Google, albeit only slightly so, at providing that “simplistic usability.”

Apple is slowly rolling out its next-gen Carplay system, which controls all aspects of the car, including the speedometer, air conditioning, and seats. It is currently only supported by Aston Martin and Porsche and no car models have been released.

The APEAL study was based on responses of 99,144 owners of new 2024 model-year vehicles after 90 days of ownership.