To use Apple Carplay wirelessly your phone must be connected to the car's WiFi hotspot as well as be paired via Bluetooth because Bluetooth by itself does not have sufficient bandwidth to carry the high volumes of data between the phone and infotainment system. However, if your phone is an iPhone then IOS will use that WiFi connection to access the Internet for music streaming, map data, and whatever data is not stored on the phone itself. There appears to be no way to change this to direct IOS to use the phone's SIM connection instead. The WiFi hotspot will only use the car's SIM and its cellular connection for Internet access. But you can't use this connection for general Internet access unless you purchase ConnectPrime and ConnectPlus. ConnectPrime is extremely expensive ($199 per six months or $499 per 18 months). Does anyone know of any way to make CarPlay use your phone's SIM and cellular connection for Internet access instead of the car's?

 

Interesting. I’ve got a brand new 2021 SQ7 that has the wireless CarPlay. I never connected to the car’s WiFi during the pairing/setup process. Just paired via Bluetooth as I normally world. So far it’s worked well, but I know I’m on all sorts of free trials since the car is spankin’ new. I’ll have to pay close attention to whether or not my phone is connecting to the car’s WiFi. This would be a MAJOR bummer if it works like you describe. I had no plans to keep any of the Audi services.

What year/model are you referring to in you description?

 

I did some searching and I came across this TSB. It’s awesome because it servers as a general Q/A and a white paper on how wireless CarPlay works. Very informative. There’s some stuff in there that says data is sent via LTE as long as you use the Bluetooth connection method. The car still utilizes the car’s WiFi, but sends data for apps other than CarPlay over lte. See attachment.

 

Thanks very much for the TSB. I have a 2020 S7 to answer your question. I started playing around with wireless CarPlay thinking it would be nice if I didn't have to take the phone out of my pocket every time I wanted to use CarPlay. Now I'm thinking that the wireless traffic between the phone and the MMI might drain the battery too rapidly, so maybe it's advantageous to connect the phone to the USB port in the center console instead so it gets continually charged. The TSB is interesting though in that it says there is a way to direct the phone-MMI traffic through the car's WiFi hotspot without the phone appearing to connect to it and without using the car's built-in SIM for Internet access. It would be interesting to experiment with that just out of curiosity. I didn't try to use wireless CarPlay during my trial period (which expired in January) because I knew I wouldn't be willing to pay all that money for Connect Prime and Connect Plus when I already had an unlimited data plan for my phone. But it's been a learning experience. Thanks again for your help.