Pretty cool!

 

The EV has to expose vehicle data to CarPlay (Apple Maps makes you press Accept on the privacy change).

Only the Mach-E has this feature so far. It actually works pretty well and also integrates dynamic turn-by-turn directions into the native Mach-E dashboard which Google Map does not.

 

Considering that every single professional reviewer has lamented lack of charger routing in the nav system for this car, compared to the competition, Kia would be remiss not to integrate this feature in a software update someday. However, I am not going to hold my breath.

 

My takeaway from that is 1) Ford has pretty decent built-in route planning with charge stops, and 2) Ford allows an integration with Apple maps, which Kia also doesn't.
I test drove the Mach E and liked the Kia much better, but on this point I have to say Ford has a leg up. Also I have to agree that the ABRP user interface on iOS is... totally baffling. It seems good at finding charge stations and routes, but finding any feature within the app itself is always a puzzle. It's like they tried to strip away all extraneous text from the UI and in the process made it totally cryptic.

 

I’m trying this in Dec 2022 and seemingly Apple still doesn’t play well with Kia. Apparently the SOC data to get into Apple Maps would need to be derived from the data in Kia Connect. So you’d presumably need to share your Kia login info with Apple. I’m extrapolating that sequence based on the Mach-E blog video where he says Apple gets SOC from a similar method.

BUT if you’ve tried to use Tronity which would also take a similar path to get SOC or other data for charging and so on Kia EV6 is not one of the supported cars last I checked. Anyone think this is all on track or of off track I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year (and any other holiday you might enjoy this time of year).

 

The Fiat 500e can apparantly also connect to Apple Maps as you can see in this video:

Apple Maps warns if the battery is low and yuo have a button to add a charger to your route. I don't have that in my Kia Eniro. I have to add a stopover and then type 'DC Fast' and then it'll show the chargers that are on my route... Very annoying from Kia.