A new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg makes a claim that might be the hardest to believe yet: Tesla is working to add wireless CarPlay to its vehicles.
Tesla was one of the first major carmakers to specifically shun CarPlay, building its own ground-up infotainment software that incorporates maps, navigation, streaming music, and more. Controlling the full in-car experience from top to bottom has long been a point of pride for the brand, and others (such as EV startup Rivian) soon followed suit.
In recent years, massive automaker GM made the decision to drop CarPlay from all new vehicles in favor of its own in-house infotainment system. The phase-out is expected to be complete within a few years.
So it’s certainly strange that Tesla is discussing a rollout of CarPlay support “in the coming months,” although Gurman notes that plans are not final and the timeline could come later, or not at all, as Tesla has historically changed course on software features even after months or years of development. Musk has been a big critic of Apple, publicly complaining about the company’s control over app distribution and the ranking of his company’s apps on the App Store. In other ways, the company has been supportive, having recently added Apple Music and Podcasts to its own infotainment software and often supporting the latest iOS features in its Tesla app.
Bloomberg says the move is an effort to boost Tesla vehicle sales, which implies that its salespeople are being at least asked about CarPlay support on a regular basis. The CarPlay interface would appear as a window in the main Tesla interface, Gurman reports, with critical car controls and information still displayed alongside it. This is not unlike how CarPlay works in some other vehicles—a Ford Mustang Mach-E retains its own interface down by the “knob” and shows the CarPlay interface above it, for example.
The report does not say which Tesla vehicles will get support for the feature, though certainly all Tesla models made in the last decade or so should be fully capable of it. It notes that Tesla will support wireless CarPlay, but not CarPlay Ultra.