Audi owners can view live streams and news and enjoy creative content while charging or during driving breaks as the company directly integrates YouTube into select vehicle models’ infotainment systems.
Audi is integrating YouTube into selected models’ infotainment dashboards. By embedding a new app store, customers can access popular third-party apps through the multimedia interface (MMI) through a data link in the vehicle. As a result, the YouTube app is available in the app store for Audi owners for the first time. Video streaming will launch in selected Audi models over the summer, with other VW Group brands to follow.
Beginning this month, drivers of select Audi models can access their chosen content via the YouTube app in their vehicle’s infotainment system. The access is made possible by embedding the new app store, which Audi developed with Volkswagen’s software company CARIAD and its partner HARMAN Ignite.
Enabled apps include music, video, gaming navigation, parking and charging, productivity, weather, and news, with apps such as YouTube installed directly in Audi’s MMI system rather than through a smartphone.
After installing the app in the store, it appears in the MMI and is launched by tapping the icon. The app works just like the YouTube app on a smartphone, but to meet Audi’s safety requirements, occupants can only play videos when the vehicle is parked. Drivers who are YouTube Premium members can log in and watch ad-free content.
YouTube is the first video platform available for download through Audi’s new native app store. Audi relies on the cumulative expertise and synergies within the Volkswagen Group to develop its complex digital systems. Volkswagen’s CARIAD company is working on the project alongside Samsung-subsidiary HARMAN to create an open ecosystem of popular apps to make the vehicle a smart companion for drivers.
A data link is required to use third-party apps such as YouTube and is established via an embedded SIM — a permanently integrated SIM card in the vehicle, as opposed to a mobile phone SIM card, which can easily be swapped out. Audi models will continue to support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay via the optional smartphone interface feature.
YouTube will be available starting with the 2024 edition of select models equipped with the latest hardware and software cluster of the third-generation modular infotainment system (MIB 3). These include the Audi A4/A5, Q5, A6/A7, A8, Q8 e-tron, and Audi e-tron GT quattro1.
From the launch date, those models will be optionally equipped with the store ex-factory throughout the European market, Canada, and the United States. The system will later be rolled out to other regions and Volkswagen Group brands.
