According to a new report from Bloomberg, Tesla is still working on adding CarPlay integration to its cars. The automaker, however, reportedly hit “a few hurdles” that it had to ask Apple to fix.
iOS 26 adoption slows Tesla’s CarPlay roadmap
Last November, Bloomberg broke the news that Tesla was working on CarPlay support and that the feature could launch “in the coming months.” Tesla plans to integrate CarPlay as “a window inside its broader interface.”
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that “Tesla continues to plan to add CarPlay.” The automaker is working alongside Apple to make this launch happen.
The report explains that Tesla discovered several “compatibility hitches” between Apple Maps and its own first-party mapping platform used for autonomy features.
“Specifically, the turn-by-turn guidance from Tesla’s maps app didn’t properly synchronize with Apple Maps during autonomous driving,” Gurman explains. “That could create a confusing experience for users, who could theoretically have both applications open side by side.”
Tesla reportedly asked Apple to “make engineering changes” to improve the compatibility between its own 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. But here’s the catch: Adoption of iOS 26 has been slower than with previous releases. That meant, in Tesla’s view, too few users had the updated Maps changes by the end of last year.
As Gurman notes, Apple released the first iOS 26 adoption numbers on Friday, revealing that 74% of all iPhones released in the last four years are running iOS 26. However, this doesn’t mean all of those people have necessarily updated to the later version of iOS 26 that includes this CarPlay bug fix.
As it stands right now, there’s no specific launch date for Tesla’s CarPlay support. The automaker is presumably waiting for those adoption numbers to tick up a bit more before deploying the feature.
Nonetheless, today’s report reaffirms that CarPlay is still coming and reveals why it’s taking a bit longer than some people expected.
My favorite CarPlay accessories
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