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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To show off its scalability, Tesla has officially launched its first major expansion of its Robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas. The expansion comes just 22 days after the program’s initial public launch.
That’s a stunningly quick pace that sets a benchmark for how fast we’ll be expecting Tesla to roll out additional expansions as they validate and safety-check in additional area and cities. The new geofence not only adds a significant amount of new territory, but also makes Tesla’s service area in Austin approximately 4 miles larger than Waymo’s.
The expansion, which went live for users in the early access program earlier today, reshapes the map into… what we can call an upside-down T. It helps connect more parts of the city, and increases the service area by more than double.
So far, the initial launch has been operating without any significant issues, which means Tesla is ready and willing to continue expanding the program.
Rapid Scaling
While the larger map is a clear win for early-access users and especially those who live in Austin, the most significant aspect here is just how fast Tesla is going. Achieving a major expansion in just over three weeks since its initial launch is a testament to Tesla’s generalized autonomy approach with vision only.
Unlike methods that require intensive, street-by-street HD mapping that can take months or even years just to expand to a few new streets, Tesla’s strategy is built for this type of speed.
This is Tesla’s key advantage - it can leverage its massive fleet and AI to build a generalized, easily-applicable understanding of the world. Expanding to a new area becomes less about building a brand-new, high-definition map of every street light and obstacle, but instead a targeted safety validation process.
Tesla can deploy a fleet of validation vehicles to intensely focus on one zone, allowing the neural nets to learn the quirks of that area’s intersections and traffic flows. Once a high level of safety and reliability is demonstrated, Tesla can simply just redraw the geofence.
Geofence Size
Tesla went from approximately 19.7 sq mi (51 sq km) to 42.07 sq mi (109 sq km)in just 22 days, following the initial launch and safety validation. Within a few short days of launch, we began seeing the first Tesla engineering validation vehicles, hitting Austin’s downtown core, preparing for the next phase.
The larger footprint means more utility for riders, and that’s big, especially since the new service area is approximately four square miles larger than Waymo’s established operational zone in the city.
Highways and Fleet Size
The new territory enables longer and more practical trips, with the longest trip at tip-to-tip taking about 42 minutes from the southern edge of the old geofence to the northern edge of the new geofence. For now, Tesla has limited its fleet to operating exclusively on surface streets and does not use highways to complete its routes.
We also don’t know if Tesla has increased the vehicle fleet size quite yet - but if they’re intending to maintain or reduce wait times for even the early-access riders, the fleet size will easily need to be doubled to keep up with the new area.
This video clip shows the @robotaxi follows the Interstate (I-35) but does not take the highest.
Perhaps the most telling bit about how fast Tesla is expanding is that they’re already laying the groundwork for the next expansion. Validation vehicles have been spotted operating in Kyle, Texas, approximately 20 miles south of the geofence’s southern border.
Robotaxi Validation vehicles operating in Kyle, Texas.
Financial_Weight_989 on Reddit
This means that while one expansion is being rolled out to the public, Tesla is already having its engineering and validation teams work on the next expansion. That relentless pace means that if this keeps up, Tesla will likely have a good portion of the Austin metropolitan area - the zone they’ve applied for their Autonomy license for - serviceable by the end of 2025.
The pilot? A success. The first expansion? Done. The second expansion? Already in progress. Robotaxi is going to go places, and the next question won't be about whether the network is going to grow. Instead, the new questions are: How fast, and where next?
One of the most welcome features of the recently refreshed 2026 Model S and Model X is the addition of a front bumper camera. Now, thanks to some clever work by the Tesla community, it has been confirmed that this highly requested feature can be retrofitted onto older HW4-equipped (AI4) Model S and Model X vehicles.
The discovery and first installation were performed by Yaro on a Model X, and Tesla hacker Green helped provide some additional insight on the software side.
Unused Port and a Software Switch
The foundation for this retrofit has been in place for a long time, laid by Tesla itself. All HW4-equipped Model S and Model X vehicles, even those built before the recent refresh, have an empty, unused camera connector slot on the FSD computer, seemingly waiting for this exact purpose.
While the physical port is there, getting the car to recognize the camera requires a software change. According to Green, a simple configuration flag change is all that is needed to enable the front camera view on the vehicle’s main display once the hardware is connected and ready.
The Hardware: Parts & Costs
Yaro, who performed the installation on a Model X, provided a detailed breakdown of the parts and approximate costs involved.
Front Camera - $200 USD
Bumper Grill (with camera cutout) - $80 USD
Bumper Harness - $130 USD
Washer Pump - $15 USD
Washer Hoses - $30 USD
The total cost for the Model X hardware comes to around $455 USD, which isn’t too expensive if you were to DIY it. Tesla’s Electronic Parts Catalog has some of these parts available for order, and some can be ordered via your local Service Center. Yaro did note that he had to jerry-rig the camera connector cable, having salvaged the cable from a different camera harness.
The Model S vs Model X
This is where the project varies significantly. For the Model X, the retrofit is relatively simple. Because the main bumper shape is the same, only the lower bumper grill needs to be swapped for the version with the camera opening, along with installing the camera itself and the washer hardware.
For the Model S, the process is a bit more complex and expensive. Due to the different shape of the pre-refresh bumper, the entire front fascia assembly must be replaced to accommodate the camera. This makes the project far more expensive and laborious.
DIY or Official Retrofit?
The official front bumper camera on the Model X
Not a Tesla App
Right now, this is only a DIY retrofit. Tesla hasn’t indicated that they intend to offer this as an official retrofit for older vehicles at this time, but given the fact that it isn’t too complex, we expect that there is a possibility that they may do so in the near future.
All in all, this is about 3-5 hours of labor for the Model X, and approximately 5-7 hours of labor for the Model S, based on the official Tesla Service Manuals, using the front fascia reinstall process as a guide.
That means if Tesla does offer this as a retrofit service, it will likely cost between $800 and $1,200 USD when factoring in Tesla’s labor rates, but the total cost will vary regionally.
For those who own an AI4 Model S or Model X, it could be possible to request service for this installation, but as far as we’re aware, there is no official service notice for this retrofit at this time.
What About the Model 3?
For owners of the refreshed Highland Model 3, the only vehicle now left without a front bumper camera, the possibility of a retrofit is still uncertain. It has been noted by Green that some, but not all Model 3s built in late 2024 have an empty camera port on the FSD computer. This inconsistency means that while a retrofit may be possible for a subset of Model 3s, it isn’t a guaranteed upgrade path like it is for the Model S or Model X.
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