Apple announces big improvements to Apple CarPlay, will Tesla adopt it now?

Apple shows off the new CarPlay coming next year

Apple

Emily Schubert, a senior manager for Apple presenting at Apple’s WWDC 2022 event, couldn’t sum up the impact of CarPlay better: 98% of new cars available in the US have CarPlay compatibility.

According to Apple, 79% of car buyers wouldn’t buy a car unless it was CarPlay/Android Auto capable.

You have to hand it to Apple, they managed to fundamentally change the auto industry in the eight years since CarPlay was introduced.

Offering a superior internet-connected car UI experience to the various proprietary (and frequently painfully slow and unintiutive) automaker infotainment systems, CarPlay has dominated the auto market.

Doubling-down on the success of CarPlay in dictating UI interfaces and interactions with entertainment and navigation functions, it appears Apple is interested in taking more UI-design and control away from automakers.

New CarPlay Features Coming in 2023

The next version of CarPlay will integrate more car-based functions, enabling the control of systems like climate control and the display of information like speedometer data.

Apple describes the next iteration of CarPlay (available in 2023) as “the ultimate iPhone experience for the car. It provides content for all the driver’s screens including the instrument cluster, ensuring a cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone. Vehicle functions like radio and temperature controls are handled right from CarPlay. And personalization options ranging from widgets to selecting curated gauge cluster designs make it unique to the driver.”

Car controls will now be able to be incorporated into CarPlay

Apple

The infotainment and instrument gauge cluster mock-up that Apple used in the presentation was stunning (as one would expect from a mock-graphic from a multi-billion dollar technology company).

The icon tray, in truth, resembled Tesla’s latest UI changes. The incredibly large and immersive screen, however, resembled the 65” MBUX Hyperscreen found in the Mercedes EQS design.

Automanufactuers have lined up to implement the new integration demands from Apple. Partners include Land Rover, Mercedes, Porsche, Nissan, Ford, Lincoln, Audi, Jaguar, Acura, Volvo/Polestar, Honda, Renault, and Infiniti. Noticeably absent was Tesla.

Tesla has an odd history with Apple. There were even rumored attempts to sell Tesla to Apple in 2015. The current speculation for a lack of CarPlay support is that Tesla is hesitant to give up their mostly successful UI design and control in favor of CarPlay.

In Tesla's defense, Tesla doesn't have a painfully slow infotainment like most automakers. Old automakers are happy to give up control of their infotainment system to Apple to help improve the user experience.

With this iteration of CarPlay, Apple is offering a whole car experience, meaing it not only has a dock to navigate to your favorite iPhone apps, but also to change car specific functions.

Functions such as adjusting your vehicle's climate control, and seat heaters.

However, Teslas have many features that likely wouldn't fit into CarPlay's offerings. Features such as the Toybox, car visualizations, Dashcam, Sentry Mode, and popular HVAC features such as Dog Mode and many others.

Advantages of CarPlay

The inclusion of CarPlay would mean that Teslas would instantly gain a huge amount of new audio streaming services and apps, along with better text messaging integration and Siri support.

Tesla owners would finally have access to SiriusXM, Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube Music and so many more services that have been highly requested by Tesla owners. Tesla has a good set of audio choices, but there are countless music streaming services nowadays.

The same could be true for video streaming, where Tesla owners wouldn't be limited to YouTube, Netflix and a couple others.

Apple CarPlay and Google's Android Auto have the huge advantage of having a robust ecosystem with millions of developers. We spend hours a day on these devices and store our most important information on them, such as photos, health and financial informaiton and more.

Phone apps already exist to do almost anything imagaineable. This makes it difficult for Tesla to compete with the amount of data and apps available on our devices.

Furthermore, Apple is adding widgets to CarPlay in this iteration. Widgets that could show you the weather, our workout activity, access to home controls and more.

Apple CarPlay will support custom layouts with widgets

Apple

Some of things these Tesla may never be able to incorporate because they don't have access to the user's data.

Disadvantages of adding CarPlay

For Tesla to implement CarPlay it could mean giving up a certain amount of control of their UI.

Some initial questions that come up are how would visualizations, AutoPilot controls and other features tie into CarPlay?

Would CarPlay live on a portion of the screen, leaving other portions available to Tesla specific features? Would it require two docks, one for CarPlay functions and another for Tesla specific functions such as Dashcam access and Caraoke?

Although Apple is offering various layout options for the speedometer and other features, Tesla would still be limited to Apple's offerings.

If Tesla were to adopt CarPlay, Tesla would likely have to adopt a similar UI to Apple's for their own features, so that CarPlay and Tesla functions would flow and the integration would look seamless.

This may be giving up more control than Tesla is willing to.

Competition is Heating Up

In addition, Tesla may be hesitant to partner with a company that is secretly designing an EV to directly compete with Tesla. Apple enthusiasts would point out that the new version of CarPlay does not require taking up the entire screen (and could be integrated into a window, similar to the jerry-rigged Tesla CarPlay solutions floating around the internet). But, ultimately, it is unclear if Tesla will budge on CarPlay implementation.

The impact of Apple’s latest CarPlay features remains to be seen, but one can’t deny that continuing to ignore customer demand for CarPlay functionality may ultimately affect demand for Tesla (as other car manufacturers start delivering their planned EV lineups).

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Musk Teases New Model for Early 2025 That Will Use a Mix of Next-Gen and Current Platforms

“We have updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025”. This was one of the key sentences that were part of Tesla’s deck shared on Tuesday directly before its financial results.

Since Reuters’ report a few weeks ago saying Tesla had “scrapped” the highly expected cheaper model— which Elon quickly denied on X —retail and institutional shareholders started asking for more details on Tesla’s product roadmap for 2024 and beyond.

In the earnings conference call, Elon Musk reiterated that Tesla expects to launch the next model in “early 2025, if not late this year”.

“We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. “

Over concerns of temporary production halts to update the factories for these new models, Musk said that Tesla will produce new models with certain aspects from their next-generation platform and current models. This will reduce the number of changes needed on production lines and allow Tesla not only to ramp up production faster but also to get the vehicles to market quicker.

Model Y Redesign

Tesla appears to hit that their next-gen vehicle will be less “next-gen” than they were initially aiming for, but to get a new vehicle out the door by late 2024, the process would already have to be in motion. Tesla may likely be referring to the redesigned Model Y, which is expected to reuse many parts from the new Model 3. Earlier this year, Tesla said that the redesigned Model Y will not be released this year, so it makes sense that they’re looking to speed up that production.

Tesla CEO concluded by saying that these measures will allow Tesla to reach a capacity of over 3 million units. Tesla produced 1.84 million vehicles in 2023. However, this year they’re ramping up Cybertruck production and introduced the new Model 3 into new markets.

And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent.

Tesla reported on Tuesday its earnings results followed by a conference call where it teased its upcoming Robotaxi and its next-generation platform saying its “purpose-built Robotaxi product will continue to pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy”.

Earlier in the day, Tesla announced the new Performance variant of its sedan Model 3 with deliveries in the United States starting already next month. The new version starts at $45,490 (after applying the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit) and goes from 0 to 60mph in 2.9 seconds.

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Tesla on FSD: Close to License Deal With Major Automaker, Announces Miles Driven on FSD v12

On Tuesday Tesla reported its earnings results followed by a conference call that brought several updates on the company’s roadmap for future vehicles, autonomous driving, Optimus and much more.

While answering a question from Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney about updates on the licensing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, Elon Musk said they’re talking to one major auto manufacturer and there’s “a good chance” the company signs the first deal before year-end. However, he went on to say that it would probably be three years before the necessary changes are integrated into the car.

I think we have a good chance we do sign a deal this year

Brings Benefits to Tesla

The technology would require other automakers to start using the same cameras and hardware as Tesla, meaning that Tesla may not only generate money from licensing FSD but also from selling the hardware itself. However, there would be other benefits as well. When licensing FSD, Tesla would likely own the data gathered with the system well, further helping them with data and edge cases that need to be solved to reach full autonomy.

people don't understand all cars will need to be smart cars… Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.

Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja commented pointing out that future partners “take a lot of time in their product life cycle” resulting in a gap between the deal signing and the arrival in the market of Tesla’s FSD software.

Miles Driven With FSD

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles that have been driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.

Tesla said it will continue to increase its “core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months” adding that in the first quarter, it completed the transition to hardware 4.0 with China now receiving the upgraded FSD computer and cameras.

Over the weekend, Tesla reduced the price of FSD dropping it from $12,000 to $8,000 for customers in the United States and from CA$16,000 to CA$11,000 in Canada.

Earlier this month, Tesla implemented a 50% price reduction for FSD subscriptions in the U.S. and introduced the subscription model in Canada at a great value of CA$99 per month.

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