Apple has created a truly revolutionary device with enough potential to replace any and all car decks—so why hasn’t it?

Apple has created a deck for car audio, but no one seems to have noticed. It has GPS. It has satellite radio capabilities. It has a built-in iPod. It has Pandora. Heck, it even has Netflix. Talk about your ideal road-trip companion. Best of all, it starts at just $629—or $499 if you ditch the GPS capabilities. That price is so low it’s blasphemous in the car audio scene. That’s right—we’re talking about the iPad.

If it’s so great as a car accessory, why have we rarely heard of it fulfilling this seemingly obvious purpose? The answer’s an unfortunately complex one, having to do with the iPad’s uncommon diagonal dimensions and housing complexities, the safety concerns it creates for the driver, and perhaps most importantly, the danger it presents to the car audio industry. 

Consider Alpine Electronics. Alpine is one of the largest car audio retailers in the world; it does business in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. It consistently produces impressive car stereo systems and regularly upgrades its products to compete in the cramped car stereo space. But, as with most car audio retailers, its product line is woefully lacking. On Alpine’s website, clicking the Build Your System button reveals three options: “I want an iPod in my car,” “I want a sound system,” or “I want navigation.” With the separation of navigation and head units (or, as they’re more commonly known, decks), customers are forced to choose between an all-inclusive system or a capable head unit and CD player.

Take, for instance, the Alpine IDA-X305S. It comes stock with a 2.2-inch TFT display—enormous for a non-navigation or DVD dash system. Though it integrates with a six-CD MP3 changer, (many deck manufacturers are choosing to ditch CD players altogether in favor of enhancing their iPod and iPhone integration), the IDA-X305S’s main selling point is its full integration with Pandora—so long as you’ve already got an iPhone with Pandora installed. The process of changing songs and radio stations is fairly unwieldy for a driver, the deck doesn’t work with GPS, and it has a suggested retail price of $400.

At $400, Alpine’s IDA-X305S costs nearly as much as an iPad.

If you want a video, music, and GPS combo—all the things an iPad is equipped to do—you’ll need to be ready to fork out some major cash. The Alpine INA-W900bt—Alpine’s cheapest new model—retails for a whopping $999.95. A look at other brands revealed cheaper options—like Pioneer’s $439 AVH P3200DVD or Jensen’s incredibly cheap Apple-ready DVD deck (the VM9214) for $299. Unfortunately, except for that Alpine, each of these other options requires costly additional components—like the NAV102 (SRP: $400)—which, when all is said and done, easily runs the overall price up an additional $500, not including installation costs.

All that car stereo talk boils down to this: it’s almost startling that the fabled in-dash iPad has yet to be fully realized. At this point, no major car manufacturers have considered an iPad install to be practical, which leaves only two options. Either you buy a kit or a new dash. Kits are cheaper—they usually connect through an iPod/iPad-friendly deck or 3.5mm headphone jack. Scosche has been working on one such kit for several months, and viewings of kit videos have proven that interest in the iPad dash is very real (at press time, a YouTube video for the unreleased product had over 600,000 views). Still, anyone can see the Scosche prototype is strangely inelegant; it replaces your car’s deck entirely, requires a unique Scosche cable, and forces users to screw and unscrew a large fastening bolt each time they want to disassemble it.

Fortunately, there are seemingly better options out there that actually exist. 

Padholdr.com offers its own stylish kit, and it supplies options for nearly any car. It works with an iPad (housed in a case) and has a sleek, high-gloss finish. Nearly anyone can do the installation themselves—each Padholdr comes with detailed installation information. But kits aren’t for everyone. For those seeking a more luxurious option, there’s only one choice—a full install. The process requires enough removing, cutting, and wiring to make it a professionals-only affair. At this time, many dealers and car-audio specialists are unwilling to perform the operation—but plenty of companies will, like SoundMan Car Audio based out of Santa Clarita, California. At roughly $1500, SoundMan’s process isn’t cheap, but then again, nothing is in car audio. 

The Padholdr is so easy to install, even we could do it…probably.

Though talk of the rumored seven-inch iPad has tapered off in recent months, its release would be even more revolutionary for the car audio industry—its smaller diagonal proportions would mean less invasive dashboard installation. For now, we’re stuck with an iPad that’s just a little too big for our cars. It begs the question—by the time we can easily replace our decks with our 9.5-inch iPads, will we still want to?

SoundMan Audio’s full install can be fairly described as “invasive.”