Chevrolet Volt test drive part four. Infotainment hell...

 Let me start by saying, again, that I do love the Volt.

GM was kind enough to let me have another one for a few days, just so I can check what was wrong with the stereo/CarPlay system. ( I had tons of problems with the first one a few weeks ago)

So, again, I did enjoy the car very much. It is a great drive. Wether in pure EV mode or not.
It is comfortable, quiet, very solid and  fast.

And, look at that friendly screen! It's like having a simpler, larger iPhone right here, on top of the dash. what could be wrong with that?

Well. It didn't work in my first test car, and still didn't work in the second.

Oh sure, it does work once in a while. But only about half of the time.

 The map does work fine. As you can see, it got me right into one of these insane local traffic situations in no time.

 But most of the time I was browsing through my playlists and I would get this: It stops after the letter "B" and says "More".
"More" just summons Siri. ( Who can't find your playlists either)
Sometimes the rest of the playlist reappears after 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes they don't.

 So then you get frustrated and yell "Screw CarPlay", bypass it and go directly to GM's "MyLink".
And this is what you get :"No Media Found". Again, not all the time, just most of the time.

 Or, when the "media" IS found, you look for your playlists and see "radio".

And yes, it IS plugged in. But sometimes it doesn't recognize the USB.
(Plus, that "AUX" logo looks like it's giving me the finger...)

And yes, I thought it could have been the USB cable, although that very cable works in every other car I drive. So I tried another one and got the same problems.
I even tried a friend's iPhone. It did the same thing.
I tried reading some online forums where people advised getting the very latest iOS version.
Which I did. Or, oddly, dumping "Pendora" from your phone. Which I also did.

There was no fix I could figure out.
It's not like it didn't recognize the phone, it just did it some of the time.
I love listening to music in the car, and I really hated just having the radio. (It doesn't have a CD player)

This is really a big problem on the Volt.
The Passat I drove earlier also had CarPlay and it worked flawlessly for the whole week.

Tomorrow I am getting a Suburban for a week which, hopefully, does also have CarPlay.
So I'll be able to get an idea if this is a Volt problem, or a more generalized GM issue.

-

5 ( 88 ratings )

- Monday, March 21, 2016