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Twelve South's $39.99 AirFly Drive makes wired CarPlay wireless for cars two people share
Twelve South's AirFly Drive, a $39.99 plug-in cube, makes factory wired CarPlay wireless and swaps between two paired phones with one button. That suits a car two people share and leaves pool cars with three or more regular drivers short of a slot.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- The cube pairs with a phone once and reconnects automatically each time the car starts, with no app, account or charging needed.
- Before first setup, owners must disconnect the iPhone from the car by choosing "Forget This Device" in the car's Bluetooth settings.
- Twelve South says the adapter covers more than 75 car makes, with model years going back to 2014.
- 9to5Mac reports that it also runs Android Auto on the car's built-in display, alongside CarPlay.
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Why it matters
- capability Owners of older cars with cable-only CarPlay can go wireless and keep the car's own display, buttons and steering-wheel controls, so nobody has to replace the screen.
- constraint With no app or account behind the cube, nobody can see or change its pairings from a desk, so whoever runs several cars handles every phone change in person.
- contradiction MacRumors reports Twelve South's claim as any car with factory wired CarPlay and 9to5Mac as most such cars, so anyone buying for several vehicles has to check each model first.
The second driver of a shared car gets in and presses the one button on a small aluminum cube in the USB port [2][4]. CarPlay moves from the first driver's iPhone to theirs [4]. MacRumors describes that button as useful "if two people share the same vehicle" [4].
The pitch is the missing cable. 9to5Mac wrote that wireless CarPlay is "significantly more seamless than wired CarPlay, especially for those shorter trips around town" [13]. Buyers could already get that from other brands [10]. MacRumors notes similar wired-to-wireless dongles on Amazon and gives Twelve South's record as a reputable maker of Apple accessories as the difference [10]. In a two-driver household, the new thing being bought is the handoff. At $39.99 for a button that serves two phones, that comes to about $20 per driver [1][1].
The two reports word the handoff differently. MacRumors says "two paired iPhones" [4]. 9to5Mac's spec list says "two paired phones" [12]. A household with one iPhone and one Android phone should confirm that a mixed pair works before buying for it. On the iPhone side, Twelve South says anything on iOS 10 or newer is supported [6].
The fleet case is an extrapolation from a household pitch [4]. For a car two people share, I think $39.99 is easy to justify. The tradeoff is in the spec list, which promises "ongoing compatibility updates" [11]. Neither report says how a device with no app receives them [3].
A 2x2 places any car. One axis is regular drivers: two or fewer, or three and more. The other is who changes the pairings: the drivers themselves, or one person responsible for every car. Two self-managing drivers is the case the product is pitched at, and the cube fits [4]. Two drivers in a managed car fits too, with the admin doing any changes in person [3]. Three or more self-managing drivers leaves at least one regular driver without a place on the button [12]. Three or more drivers in a managed pool is where staying wired is the safer call.
What to watch
- Support threads from early owners on whether the promised fast automatic reconnection holds when both paired phones are in the car at once.
- Any Twelve South change to the two-phone limit; a third slot would bring pool cars with rotating drivers into range.