Recently, Harley Davidson and multiple car sites including Honda and Acura revealed there are problems with Apple CarPlay. What is happening is the phone call feature doesn’t function when you connect an iPhone 11 Pro Max to a Harley Davidson or various other car systems using an original iPhone cable. Older phone models with iOS13 are not having any problems. All of the other iPhone features work properly. Now, similar behavior is affecting Android Auto connections with iPhones.

On some forums, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto problems have been ongoing

This may be old news for some as this has been happening for a while. Google has released updates to correct the issue but it is still ongoing. This was first reported last year. Numerous makes of phones started experiencing the glitch regardless of the type of cable the phone was connected with. 

Samsung Galaxy S and Note, Google Pixel, Xiaomi, and OnePlus phones were all affected by the issue. Users experienced not hearing parties on the other end and vice-versa. Some found that by switching to the loudspeaker option and then back to the car or bike system it fixed the issue. The issue might be continuous or in some cases, it happened after every two or three calls. 

Here’s one description of the problems from a forum

Here’s how one person on the forum described it, “I have the same problem with a Galaxy S9 and an Acura 2018 TLX. If I dial through the car’s head unit it works fine, but dialing via a Google voice command fails about 50% of the time. This used to work but somehow it got broken with an update.”

Google has been mum. But, it should be noted it plans on releasing a new version of Android Auto later this month. We don’t know if this will fix the issue or not. Right now it looks like the workaround is to restart the phone, toggling on then off in airplane mode, and resetting the connection itself. 

The Apple CarPlay problems are limited to the new 11 Pro Max Apple phone

The Apple CarPlay issues involve only the phone call feature and only the new 11 Pro Max Apple phone. Older phones don’t seem to be infected. One user complained they contacted Apple last December without there being a fix. “I spoke with Apple and Harley this morning about the iPhone 11 problem. Harley Customer Service rep reported they were aware of the issue and are working on the resolution to fix it. He did not offer a timeframe for the fix but recommended that we check the HD website and see if there is a new update for the GTS system. Until then I guess we will have to do without or just ignore all incoming calls and call them back at the next rest stop or whatever.”

There will be another update soon

The good news is that a new iOS update should be out by the end of this month (March 2020). We hope it includes a fix.