Tesla is Reportedly Planning to Add Apple CarPlay Support to its Vehicles

Tesla is reportedly planning to make its vehicles compatible with CarPlay, Apple’s iPhone mirroring system that most modern vehicles support alongside Android Auto. According to a report from Bloomberg, the company has started testing CarPlay support internally, but there’s no established rollout plan yet.

Tesla cars currently feature an in-house software platform with various apps, but CarPlay support has been one of the top-requested features from customers. Still, this is something the company has been reluctant to do as Apple spent billions of dollars to develop its own electric vehicle… before sunsetting the project for good last year.

The Bloomberg report says that Tesla is currently testing the standard version of CarPlay rather than the Ultra version that launched earlier this year in select Aston Martin vehicles. However, Tesla is said to be tweaking CarPlay to make it work in windowed mode, which would be quite unprecedented.

“Tesla plans to feature CarPlay within a window inside its broader interface, the people said. That means the Apple software won’t fully replace the Tesla operating system as it does in many other vehicles. CarPlay also won’t tap into Tesla features like FSD, or full self-driving mode. Drivers will need to rely on Tesla’s own navigation app for that,” the report reads.

Tesla’s brand image and sales have suffered in recent years, in part due to Elon Musk’s political connections. The competition in the electric vehicle space has also gotten much better. While Tesla has reportedly considered rolling out CarPlay to its vehicles in the coming months, this may not really help to drive sales in the short term. As for Android Auto support, Bloomberg believes that Tesla “isn’t actively developing support for it.”