The Road to CarPlay: Tesla’s Ongoing Efforts to Integrate the Technology

Tesla is in the process of adding CarPlay integration to its vehicles, as reported by Bloomberg. However, the automaker has encountered some challenges along the way, leading them to seek assistance from Apple to address these issues.

Last year, Bloomberg initially reported Tesla’s plans to introduce CarPlay support in the near future. Tesla intends to incorporate CarPlay as a window within its overall interface.

In the most recent edition of the Power On newsletter by Mark Gurman, it was mentioned that Tesla is still working towards implementing CarPlay and is collaborating with Apple to achieve this goal.

It was noted that Tesla faced compatibility issues between Apple Maps and its in-house mapping platform used for autonomous features. Specifically, there were discrepancies in turn-by-turn guidance synchronization between Tesla’s map app and Apple Maps during autonomous driving.

To resolve these issues, Tesla requested Apple to make engineering adjustments to improve compatibility. Apple agreed and implemented these changes in a bug fix update for iOS 26 and the latest CarPlay version. However, the adoption rate of iOS 26 has been slower compared to previous releases, resulting in a delay in users receiving the updated Maps changes by the end of last year.

Apple recently disclosed that 74% of iPhones released in the last four years are running iOS 26. Nonetheless, not all users have updated to the version of iOS 26 containing the CarPlay bug fix.

Currently, there is no specific launch date set for Tesla’s CarPlay support, with the automaker likely waiting for a higher adoption rate before introducing the feature.

Despite the delay, it is confirmed that CarPlay will be available in Tesla vehicles soon, highlighting the reasons behind the extended timeline for its implementation.