Automating QA for Automotive Applications

Whether you’re building a music app, an EV charging service, or a navigation tool, delivering a seamless in-car experience is no longer optional. As vehicles become increasingly software-defined, drivers expect the same reliability, usability, and polish they experience on their mobile devices.

Testing automotive applications across Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is a critical step in meeting these expectations. By validating apps early and continuously in simulators and real-world environments, development teams can reduce defects, improve usability, and earn user trust — one mile at a time.

The Challenge of Testing In-Car Experiences

Modern in-car applications operate under unique constraints. Variable display sizes, operating system versions, hardware configurations, OEM HMI requirements, and stringent distracted-driving guidelines all add complexity. On top of that, regulatory frameworks and growing scrutiny around software-related recalls place additional pressure on engineering and QA teams.

Traditionally, testing these applications has required access to physical vehicles or complex lab setups, often detached from standard CI/CD pipelines. These fragmented approaches slow down development, limit test coverage, and make it difficult to validate real-world behavior at scale.

Shifting Left with Simulators and Emulators

The good news is that teams no longer need a physical vehicle to get started. Tools such as the Android Auto Desktop Head Unit (DHU), Android Emulator, and Xcode’s CarPlay simulator allow developers and testers to validate projected in-car experiences early in the development cycle.

By integrating these tools into automated QA workflows, organizations can:

• Detect issues earlier, before they reach production
• Validate UI, interaction flows, and safety constraints consistently
• Reduce reliance on scarce physical resources
• Accelerate release cycles without compromising quality

Early validation not only improves product stability, but also builds confidence that apps will behave predictably once they reach the driver’s seat.

Industry-First End-to-End Automation for Android Auto and CarPlay

As demand for in-car entertainment and connected services continues to rise, Digital.ai is expanding the boundaries of what’s possible in automotive testing.

Digital.ai now offers industry-first support for end-to-end automated testing of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay applications, extending its existing automotive capabilities that already support Android Automotive OS (AAOS) and mobile-to-vehicle integrations. This enables enterprise teams to automate critical in-car app workflows across projected and embedded experiences using standard Appium scripts, the same framework they already use for mobile testing – all without relying on physical vehicles.

The following Appium test connects to a real Android device in the Digital.ai cloud, launches Google Maps through Android Auto projection:

To see what the driver would see on the car’s infotainment screen, use the digitalai:automotive.getScreenshot command:

What Makes This Different

The key insight is that the phone and the head unit are independent surfaces. The standard Appium screenshot command captures the phone display, while the digitalai:automotive.getScreenshot extension captures the projected head unit. This separation means teams can:

• Validate the in-car UI independently from the phone experience
• Automate distracted-driving compliance checks on the projected interface
• Test across projection resolutions to cover different vehicle displays
• Run these tests in CI/CD — no car, no desktop DHU, no manual lab setup

Taking It Further: AI-Powered Autonomous Automotive Testing

Scripted tests are powerful for regression coverage, but automotive apps present a challenge that scripts handle poorly: visual validation at scale. Is the map rendering correctly? Are UI elements properly sized for the display? Does the navigation card look right after selecting a destination?

By combining Digital.ai’s automotive projection with an AI vision model, teams can build an autonomous testing agent that can see the head unit display, reason about what’s on screen, and act — tapping, typing, and navigating just like a human driver would.

How It Works

The agent follows a simple loop:

1. Capture the head unit projection as a screenshot
2. Analyze the image using an AI vision model to understand the current UI state
3. Decide what action to take based on the task and what’s visible on screen
4. Act — tap a coordinate, type text, or press back
5. Verify by capturing another screenshot and confirming the expected result
6. Repeat until the task is complete

This represents a fundamental shift in how automotive applications are tested. Digital.ai eliminates the traditional barriers of vehicle access and manual validation, enabling teams to automate everything from scripted Appium workflows to AI-driven exploratory testing across Android Auto, CarPlay, and AAOS — all from a unified cloud platform.

Ready to Explore Automotive QA with Digital.ai?

To see how Digital.ai can help your team automate QA for Android Auto and CarPlay at scale, get in touch with us and unlock the future of automotive software testing.