According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Tesla is still in the process of integrating CarPlay into its vehicles. However, the company faced some challenges that required Apple’s assistance to resolve.
iOS 26 adoption slows Tesla’s CarPlay roadmap
Last year, Bloomberg first reported that Tesla was working on adding CarPlay support and that the feature could be launched “in the coming months.” Tesla intends to incorporate CarPlay as “a window within its broader interface.”
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman mentioned that “Tesla is still planning to introduce CarPlay.” The company is collaborating with Apple to make this integration a reality.
It was discovered that there were some “compatibility hitches” between Apple Maps and Tesla’s own mapping platform used for autonomous driving features. Tesla requested Apple to make some engineering changes to improve the compatibility between their software and Apple Maps.
To address this, Tesla asked Apple to make engineering changes to Maps to improve compatibility. The iPhone maker agreed and implemented the adjustments in a bug fix update to iOS 26 and the latest version of CarPlay. However, the adoption of iOS 26 has been slower compared to previous releases, which meant that not enough users had the updated Maps changes by the end of last year, according to Tesla.
Apple recently released the first iOS 26 adoption numbers, revealing that 74% of iPhones released in the last four years are running iOS 26. However, this does not guarantee that all users have updated to the version of iOS 26 that includes the CarPlay bug fix.
Currently, there is no specific launch date for Tesla’s CarPlay support, as the company is likely waiting for a higher adoption rate before rolling out the feature. Despite the delay, the report confirms that CarPlay is still in the works and sheds light on the reasons for the delay.
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