Carplay issues? Return and replace your 17 pro max

If you having trouble with wired and/or wireless carplay on your Iphone 17 pro max, there's only one sure-fire solution: return & replace the phone. Apple won't make it terribly easy, but they will accept the swap if you spend the requisite 30 minutes chatting with the Indian call center through apple.com. You may have to go through some useless troubleshooting suggestions before the authorize the replacement, Should be easier if you bought at an Apple Store. The new phone Apple that sends you will work fine.

I can state conclusively that replacement was the only solution I found. I went through ten days of resets, restarts, re-installs, tech team chats and everything else, to no avail. I even got a real Apple tech person in Cupertino on the phone (you can too, but it takes a couple of days for them to respond to an escalation from customer service), who said there is a "known problem and Applis is working on a solution." I don't think they will find one accessible to users, if the chip issue really is the cause.

Return and replace is the only cure.

While there's no official explanation from Apple, there's enough verifiable chatter to conclude it's a hardware issue that users cannot fix with troubleshooting. X & Chatgpt replies speak to a subtle problem with some of the first A19 pro chips used in the phones. It's a large number, with one source saying something like 200,000 devices. Not enough to spark a Wall Street sell-off on its own, but still enough to hit the share price price if the right analyst writes about it.