Adding CarPlay to my 812 superfast

I got my 812 just over a year ago, the spec is great but since I got it there were two things that I wished i could change: it's got the regular shields on the sides, i wish they were painted since i think they're much better proportions for the size of the car, and i wished that the car had carplay… the day i got it i asked the dealer about installing carplay in the car and they said it couldnt be done. since then i've been looking online to try to figure out a solution, the main thing i've been following is this thread on the FF/lusso forum: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/can-apple-carplay-be-added-to-a-cpo-gtc4lusso-v12.605977

It seemed promising but there were lots of unanswered questions i couldn't really find anywhere, but after a ton of going back and forth i decided to just go for it and buy the module. Well I've just finished the install and it seems to be working great, exactly what I've been looking for this whole time. So i figured in case anyone else is thinking about doing this i'll share the whole process here since that was the main thing that was scaring me away and i couldnt find any answers anywhere online.

tldr: 7 star screws, 1 bolt, can probably be DIY'd in an hour or so [especially if you're not a big person]…i made a few mistakes so it took me a couple of hours

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Comes with the carplay unit and a couple of cables and antennas. You'll need the cables [obviously] but you can ignore the antennas. First question, where does this go? I imagine this is different for each model, but on the 812 superfast the head unit is installed behind the seats under the luggage shelf.

So first step is to remove the separator that has your car's spec on it, pretty self explanatory. The easiest bolt to undo is at the top of the shelf under a little door, you can just pull open the door and then undo that bolt. It has some lip attached to it, and then once you remove the bolt and the plastic box, make sure to also take the other end of where the bolt attaches to, it'll just be loose under the box.

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Then you'll pull on the two black tabs on the floor closer to the middle of the car. That reveals three star screws you need to remove.

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Then came my mistake, i was dumb and spent quite a while fighting the shelf trying to remove it, but what you need to do is undo the leather belts, and then you'll find four more star screws that you need to undo. One under each strap. The two straps closer to the seats will stay attached to the shelf, the other two have a little square protector you can just push back to get to the screws, then the whole strap will come away from the shelf.

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Once you take those 4 screws out you can just take the whole shelf out! Trunk side will be fully free, the other side just has a couple clips that come apart fairly easily.

Bonus photo of the shelf on top of the little M roadster kept my shelf safe while I continued working on the car…

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Once you removed the shelf you'll see the head unit right there, you just need to undo the big cable on the far right, then the cable right next to it. Plug in the cables into the new cables that came in the box, then plug the cables into the head unit and the carplay unit.

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My next mistake was that i got too excited after i put it all together and completely forgot to take photos of it all assembled ‍♂️ However it's pretty self explanatory, you can put the carplay unit right above the head unit. It's a pretty great fit, tho i added a command strip just to make sure it was super snug and wouldn't rattle. Then just reverse the process to put it back together!

One last note is the USB cable that comes with it. Not really necessary, it's only used for updates. However to avoid undoing the whole thing again i did connect the cable to the carplay unit and routed it to end up right under the plastic box, so if there is ever an update I can just undo one bolt to get to the cable and i'll be able to update the unit.

And there we go, it works! Didn't even need to unplug the battery from the car or anything. I've never really done much work on the interior of cars before this [just undoing a single trim around my mirror to connect a dash cam in my GT4] so i think it's totally doable by anyone if you have the right screwdriver and wrench. Only caveat is as with any car work, maybe it's a bit more complicated if you're a bigger person. I'm pretty small so i just sat in the trunk of the car and did all the work pretty comfortably there.

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All in all I wish i'd done this a year ago when i bought the car it's 100% reversible and really easy to do. I'm glad i decided to try it out myself vs paying someone else to do it!

I did a short test drive and there's only two small things I noticed in use. The first doesn't really matter, but when adjusting the volume, you can't see what the actual volume level is at while carplay is active. No big deal.

The second is that i got used to using the control on the right side of the steering wheel to change songs, on carplay it now moves the UI selector along [as it should] however clicking the button in does not seem to do anything, so while you can move around the UI, to select anything you'll need to use the main control in the dash, not the control on the back of the steering wheel… minor thing that i think may be possible to address with an update.

Not linking to the actual product since i'm not sure if it's allowed, but easy to find. And just to be clear, i'm not related to the sellers at all, i just bought it last week and decided to share the entire process since i couldn't find much info about it online! Happy to answer any questions anyone has!

 

i’m literally just heading out to the airport can share a video next week when i’m back!

i’ve never used the original factory version, but it’s not quite 100% going to be the same since this is basically switching between the car’s system and carplay. you move from one to the other by holding down on the back button for a few seconds. however once it’s showing carplay (other than being unable to select with the steering wheel control) i don’t think it’s much different from the original since it’s just carplay, not much that can be different at that stage

 

music works the same way that it did before carplay. so through bluetooth directly into the car. so sound goes to the car, then carplay is just the interface to manage the phone (tho if you go back to the car’s built in system you can still do the same stuff from before like look at now playing or skip songs etc) i can make sure to include that in the video so you can see it once i’m back!

 

@nguyennhatquang ok here’s a quick video, hopefully it answers your questions. there’s a setting to either connect to carplay automatically or not when the car is turned on, i have that on so you can see it jump right into carplay. otherwise it stays on the ferrari UI instead. let me know if anything is unclear!

can’t figure out how to put the video directly in here (is it allowed?) but here’s a link: https://imgur.com/a/B3cBV4p

 

yea sound goes through bluetooth directly to the original system, not carplay, so it’s exactly the same

 

not sure how it works on the F12 my understanding is that it’s a little different for each model. for the F8 and 812 you pair the phone to the car for sound, then carplay is just for display. so for the 812 you’d still need the working NIT i think, but i’m not sure how that works on the F12, you can try messaging marco the creator (phone is on their website) and see what they say

 

yea if you watch the video you can see it all in action. the joystick controls everything, and the scroll wheel on the back of the steering can also move the selection (it just can’t confirm the selection for some reason) tho the one in the F12 looks a bit different so not 100% sure it will work exactly the same. pressing and holding the back button switches between ferrari and carplay. the volume is managed the same way as usual, behind the left side of the steering or on the volume knob in the dash

 

don’t know what the limit is but you should be able to pair more than one phone the same way you can with the car itself

 

oh nice, looks like it’s even easier in the GTS! let me know how it goes once it arrives, should be really straightforward now that you got that far in advance

 

yea i’m a huge fan! i never use the analog speedometer on the right screen, always have the digital one on the left. you can still pull it up but of course it replaces the carplay display.

i haven’t tried since i’m always on carplay and i can easily answer phone calls with the selector on the right side of the dash when the alert comes up, but i think you can still answer with the phone button on the steering wheel. you can also pull up siri with the voice control button on the steering wheel.

not really many downsides to it that i can tell, it generally has worked really well and main issues i’ve run into are not really specific to this unit in particular. for example if you want to type to search on maps it takes forever to go back and forth finding letters, but that’s just an issue of carplay in this car, not of the third party implementation cause if you had carplay from factory it’d do the same exact thing. all in all i don’t think there’s any major issues with it and i’m so happy i got it, it’s made driving (especially for longer trips, like when we drove ~500mi to vegas for F1) so much easier by just having the directions up on the screen vs having to use my phone. i’ve always liked carplay so i’m biased, but after driving the same car for about a year without it and later installing it, i’m actually surprised by how much of an improvement i felt. even bigger than i expected.

of course id prefer the factory install, switching between carplay and the system menu reminds you this is a third party implementation. but as far as i can tell getting the factory version is not possible, and i don’t need to do that often so it doesn’t bother me too much. i’ll take this implementation over none at all any day.

 

i dont have an android phone so not sure how that works, i guess it must be through huawei or mirroring? this is what i see on my end: https://imgur.com/a/vgD57pj

 

technically yes it uses wifi, but i don’t configure that. iOS handles connecting to wifi on its own to connect to carplay, i just needed to connect to bluetooth

 

oh nice, glad they’re helping you out, hopefully you can get it sorted soon!