Tesla, one of the original Apple CarPlay holdouts, may finally be close to actually adopting the immensely popular phone projection system for its cars, Bloomberg reports today. The company has started testing the capability internally, anonymous sources tell the publication, and could be close to releasing it publicly, perhaps in a few months — or perhaps not at all. Tesla has a history of toying with various features for months or even years before eventually deciding to kill them.
Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are typically two of the most sought after features for new car shoppers. But despite loud protests from fans, Tesla has never allowed phone mirroring in its cars, arguing that it can provide a better, more integrated software experience than a smartphone — a position that is strangely growing popular among some legacy automakers, like GM.
Also, Elon Musk has a complicated relationship with Apple. He has criticized the company’s App Store policies, and was reportedly miffed when Apple poached dozen of Tesla engineers to staff its own failed car project.
But times have changed, and in the wake of the Great Elon Musk Backlash of 2025, Tesla is now in a sales slump and looking for ways to juice demand. Bloomberg reports that adopting CarPlay, as outlandish as it seems, could be part of a broader strategy to get people interested again in Tesla’s cars.
Tesla’s version of CarPlay would, of course, be subject to the automaker’s own allowances. The company plans of featuring CarPlay in a window within the larger interface, Bloomberg said, which means the projection would not fully swap out Tesla’s own software. Tesla also plans on using the standard version of CarPlay, and not Apple’s new more immersive CarPlay Ultra that includes core functions like the speedometer and climate functions.
Unsurprisingly, the absence of Apple CarPlay is often a dealbreaker for many car shoppers. A 2023 survey revealed that nearly half of new car buyers globally wouldn’t buy a car without CarPlay or Android Auto. The same survey said that 85 percent of people preferred the phone-based system to their car’s built-in software.
It’s indicative of this strange, upside down time in which we live that a company like GM is actively plotting how to fortify its own software to obviate the need for CarPlay, based largely on the success of EV-only companies like Tesla and Rivian that don’t allow phone projection — and meanwhile, one of those same EV-only companies is now contemplating its own flip-flop on CarPlay. Wild stuff!
