First-Time CarPlay Models: Highlander, Versa, Venue

As the demand for smart cars grows, all major automakers have introduced CarPlay (“iOS for your car”) to the majority of their model lines. The last few stragglers are cleaning up by adding CarPlay to the remaining few vehicles that escaped this treatment up to now.

The 2020 Toyota Highlander, 2020 Nissan Versa, and the 2020 Hyundai Venue are amongst these stragglers’ models — recently debuted at the 2019 New York International Auto Show — to include CarPlay for the first time.

The 2020 Toyota Highlander and the 2020 Hyundai Venue will come with CarPlay as a standard feature on all trims. All variants of these two cars will feature an 8-inch touchscreen display, except the Platinum trim of the Highlander, which will be equipped with a 12.3-inch touch screen. The 2020 Nissan Versa will have CarPlay as an upgrade option with a 7-inch touchscreen display.

These three models are equipped with CarPlay — just plug an iPhone into the USB port and gain convenient access to frequently used apps, at least the ones Apple lets you use. Send a text, make a phone call, access maps, etc. directly from the driver’s seat. The 2020 Versa will go on sale this summer (2019), followed by the nonhybrid 2020 Highlander, and the Venue in fall/winter of 2019. The hybrid Highlander is expected to be released in February 2020.

1 Comment

[…] BMW is the first car manufacturer to charge its customers a subscription fee to use Apple CarPlay and it’s obvious how beneficial those fees could be for BMW. For example, charging $80 per year to use the subscription each year means BMW will make more money after four years that it could have made offering CarPlay as an option. So, it seems BMW may be setting an unwanted trend for Apple CarPlay users in the vehicle industry. […]

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