car

Adding CarPlay to your car without installing a new stereo system

by
A photo of the free-standing Carplay unit in my car

I’m someone who always has my phone doing something passively in my car whilst driving – whether it’s listening to music, podcasts or audiobooks, or giving me directions in Google Maps. Until now, I’ve just had my phone sat in a cradle with a built-in Qi wireless charger, because my car stereo doesn’t support CarPlay.

And then I found out, via Matt Haughey, that it’s possible to buy an additional screen for your car that just offers CarPlay, or its equivalent Android Auto. So I followed suit.

The three ways to CarPlay

As Matt points out, there are now three ways that you can have CarPlay in your car:

  1. It’s already built in. If you have a relatively new car, then the built-in stereo system will support it natively, either through a USB connection or wirelessly.
  2. If not, you can replace the existing stereo system with an after-market, or third-party system which supports CarPlay.
  3. Or, do what I’ve done – keep your existing stereo system as-is, but add a free-standing unit that connects to your car.

The reason why I’ve gone for the third option is that neither of the others are available to me. I drive an original Peugeot 3008, which I bought second-hand in 2019. Whilst it’s one of the higher-spec Allure models with cruise-control, climate control and a head’s up display, whoever bought it new decided to have the most basic in-car stereo system on offer.

No really, it literally just has a radio, CD player, auxiliary audio connection and a USB port that supports iPods. It doesn’t even have Bluetooth.

When I first bought the car, I did investigate the second option, of having the stereo system replaced with a Sony after-market system that supported CarPlay. However, I was advised by an installer that this would cause issues. This was backed up by various horror stories that I found online.

Annoying, many cars that were sold between around 2010-2016 put various car configuration options into the stereo menus. So, if you removed the stereo, it meant that you couldn’t amend settings for your headlights for example. I have seen some videos where independent garages have managed to get a working CarPlay system built in to a car like mine, but considering that the after-market units are usually around £300 plus additional parts and labour, it’s an expensive option.

Free-standing

So, to the third option. Periodically, I’ve tried looking for something very similar as I though it would be an obvious thing to make and sell, but never managed to find anything. So when Matt’s blog post popped up, I went straight to Amazon to find something similar. Indeed, it looks like most of these units have been on the market less than 6 months.

Matt bought his because he’s bought a new Rivian electric SUV. As Jeff Bezos was an investor in Rivian, it doesn’t support CarPlay or Android Auto. Instead, has its own touchscreen interface incorporating Amazon’s Alexa. And that’s probably okay if you just want to play music, but you don’t get access to the various apps on your phone – especially podcast and audiobook apps, or Google Maps. Sure, pretty much every car nowadays has a built-in SatNav, but Google Maps also has live traffic data and live re-planning of routes whilst driving, in case a quicker route becomes available. I understand that Tesla cars also don’t support Android Auto or CarPlay, although you’ll never catch me driving a Tesla for as long as Elon Musk is associated with the company.

Eyetoo 7″ CarPlay screen

The unit I bought was this Eyetoo 7″ model from Amazon (affiliate link). It’s a more basic model, which just supports CarPlay and Android Auto without offering much of its own interface. As well as the unit with the screen, you get:

  • a very long USB-C cable that has a 12 V cigarette lighter plug on the other end. Seriously, it’s about two metres long.
  • an auxiliary cable to plug into your stereo.

It can also broadcast on an FM frequency that you can tune your car radio to, if you want fewer wires.

There are several other models, all by different Chinese manufacturers that I’ve previously never heard of. Some of these have some additional features:

  • Built-in dashcam
  • Connection for a rear parking camera
  • MicroSD card port and media player software on the device
  • USB port for connection a phone directly

Whilst a reversing camera would be useful, it would probably need to be professionally installed. In any case, my car does at least have reverse parking sensors so I didn’t bother.

The unit comes with both a suction cup for attaching to a windscreen, and a stand with sticky pads for attaching to the dashboard. As you can see in the above photo, I went for the latter. This leaves a tripod screw on top, which you could also use to attach a dashcam, I suppose. The stand is pretty sturdy and holds it up well – it doesn’t wobble around at all. That being said, it does mean that it’s not easy to remove if you want to use it in another vehicle.

It starts up as soon as there’s power to the 12 V socket – i.e. when you turn the engine on – and takes a few seconds to boot up. Connection to CarPlay is wireless, which is good as this model doesn’t have a USB port for a wired connection to your phone. It takes a further few seconds for CarPlay to open, but it does open automatically and will even start playing your music for you.

The screen is fine – it doesn’t have automatically adaptive brightness and it’s not very high resolution, but more expensive models look like they offer this if that’s important to you. But on the whole, I’m really happy with it – it’s great to finally have CarPlay in my car without having to spend a lot of time or money on having it professional installed, and it hasn’t broken anything that affects the car’s systems. I am looking at ways of tidying up the cables though – perhaps with some right-angled connectors.

If you’re looking to add CarPlay or Android Auto to your car without needing to take it apart, I would recommend looking into this as a viable option.

How to: get cheaper car insurance

by
Alas, the car I've bought insurance for is not this Rolls Royce

Having bought a car at the weekend, I also needed to arrange car insurance. The law in Britain now requires all cars that are used on public roads to have a valid insurance policy; if you don’t, then you must park the car off-road and submit a SORN. If your car is found on a public road, parked or moving, then you can be fined. So I needed to have a policy in place before I would be able to drive the car away.

Like many things, buying car insurance can be simple and quick, but if you’re prepared to put some effort in, you can bring your premiums down significantly. I can wholeheartedly recommend the advice on MoneySavingExpert.com which gives some tips on how to reduce your premiums by tweaking the information you provide. I would advise you to read the whole article, but here are the things I tried that worked for me.

1. Trying multiple price comparison web sites

It’s hard to avoid the various price comparison web sites that advertise nowadays. Whether it’s the one with the meerkats, talking robots or annoying opera singer, these sites are well-advertised. They work by taking your details, and obtaining quotes from a range of insurers on your behalf, which are then ranked to show you the cheapest. The sites make their money from the referral fees that insurers pay when you take up a policy. Considering how much these sites advertise, they must make a lot of money from these referral fees.

It’s worth trying multiple sites, as different sites work with different insurers. I got different results from each. You can also usually get cashback if you click through to a price comparison web site from a cashback site like Quidco (referral link) or Topcashback (referral link). I got about £2 from them, just for getting a quote.

2. Go direct to insurance companies

Once I’d found the cheapest insurer – and the three comparison sites I tried all gave the same company – I also tried to get a cheaper quote by visiting their site directly. Again, going via a cashback site may net you cashback as well. Remember those referral fees? Cashback sites pay those to you.

It’s also worth checking Aviva and Direct Line, who do not advertise their policies on price comparison web sites. As it happens, both gave me unaffordable quotes that were nearly double the cheapest that I could find, but, worth a try.

3. Tweak your job description

I have a rather unique job title of ‘Student Recruitment and Data Officer’, which isn’t on the selection lists that insurers ask for. Originally I put it through as ‘Recruitment Consultant’ working in state education, but I found changing it to ‘Administrative Officer’ in the university sector lowered my premiums significantly (by about 20% in my case). As long as the title still accurately reflects your job role, you should be fine.

4. Add another driver

As Christine hasn’t passed her test yet, it was going to just be me on the car’s insurance policy. However, we found that adding another family member to the policy, as a secondary driver, reduced my quote by another 10%. To be effective, this must be someone that would realistically be likely to drive the car, and who has a good driving record with no penalty points or recent insurance claims. Adding an irresponsible or inexperienced second driver may increase premiums, but it’s worth trying.

5. Include some business use

If you think adding another driver is a bizarre way to reduce your premiums, here’s one that seemed even weirder. I will need to drive for work from time to time (I reckoned no more than 1000 miles per year) and so I included this in the policy. This means that I won’t need to arrange a hire car, so my employer also saves money too. After getting quotes with this included, I tried taking it out and stating that the car would only be for ‘leisure’ use (no commuting and no work-related activities). That actually pushed the premiums up by about 10%, so I put it back in.

Plus the things that I didn’t try

I didn’t try everything. I could have got an even cheaper policy if I had opted in to a ‘black box’ insurance policy. This involves the fitting of a recording device to your car that monitors your location and how you drive – and if you drive safely, you’ll save money. InsureTheBox is one of the better known firms that offers this (a friend works for them), but it’s available from a variety of insurers.

Sometimes, opting for third-party insurance can be cheaper, but it covers less than fully comprehensive insurance which could leave you out of pocket in the event of an accident. And, again bizarrely, sometimes comprehensive cover is cheaper than third-party because of risk factors.

And if you have another type of policy with an insurance firm (say home or travel insurance), some insurers may give you a discount if you take out more than one policy from the same firm. Our home insurance was arranged via a broker when we got our mortgage so I wasn’t able to approach them for a car insurance quote on this occasion.

In the end

As it happened, the cheapest quote I got was via Confused.com, for Diamond insurance – a company that historically only covered female drivers. Both are owned by Admiral Group, incidentally. Overall, the policy ended up being about £200/year cheaper than when I started, which isn’t bad for a couple of hours spent entering information into various web sites. Insurance for new drivers is always expensive and I’m hoping that, should I continue to drive like Captain Slow, my premiums should come down in future years.

A car. An actual car.

by
A photo of my Nissan Note

Well, I now own a car. After having passed my driving test last month, and with an imminent house move and a little one on the way, we decided that we really needed to get a car sooner rather than later.

Fortunately my parents kindly gifted us most of the money that we needed, so we were able to buy a decent-sized second hand car. After trawling the listings for local dealerships on Auto Trader, we found a local dealership with a good range of cars within our budget. We then narrowed this down to two cars, at the same price, which we took on test drives.

The first was a Hyundai i30, which was good car, and slightly newer with better equipment, but it didn’t drive so well and didn’t have as much internal space. So, we went for a 2008 Nissan Note.

It’s got a 1.4 litre petrol engine (which is fine for us) and a manual gearbox – I’m indifferent when it comes to manual or automatic but both Christine and I are/were learning in a manual car. The boot is big and there’s also plenty of legroom in the back, plus there are Isofix fixings for a child seat. It’s very much a family car, and whilst it may not be very cool or trendy, it should be very practical for us.

I’ve had a bit of time to drive it but the big test will be in a few weeks when we drive down to Staffordshire for a family wedding. I say ‘we’ – it’ll be me driving there and back as Christine still hasn’t sat her theory test yet, never mind her practical test. I may try to arrange a motorway driving lesson with my instructor before then.

After putting up with not having a car for so many years, it feels very weird to finally own one. We’ve managed to make do with public transport, but I am very much looking forward to not having to pay over the odds for taxi fares, or complicated bus and train journeys that take twice as long as driving would.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about car insurance.