CarPlay contact search has usability

Hi everyone,

I’m using Apple CarPlay in an Audi A6 (MMI) and I’ve run into what I feel is a serious usability and safety problem.

Right now, contact search in CarPlay is basically limited to Siri. In my case, that’s almost unusable, because I speak Slovenian and Siri often doesn’t understand Slovenian contact names correctly. That means I cannot reliably use voice to find the person I want to call.

The alternative is to open the Contacts list in CarPlay, but there is no on-screen keyboard. I can only jump to contacts by entering the first letter of the name, and then I have to scroll through a long list while I’m in the car. In my opinion, this is more dangerous than simply allowing proper text input when the car is stopped.

My questions/suggestions:

• Why isn’t there at least a normal keyboard for searching contacts when the car is stationary (e.g. at a red light or parked)?
• Why is there no option to type the full name to search, instead of only the first letter and then endless scrolling?
• Are there any plans to improve this for non-English languages, where Siri recognition is much less reliable?

From a safety perspective, forcing Siri in languages where it doesn’t work well and blocking proper search seems like the worst of both worlds: I can’t speak reliably to CarPlay, and I can’t safely search by typing either.

I’d really like to know if others have the same problem and if Apple/Audi are considering any improvements here.