Tesla Apple CarPlay Hack Claims To Work On Any Tesla Now

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Tesla Apple CarPlay Hack Claims to Work on Any Tesla Now


Tesla Apple CarPlay Hack Claims to Work on Any Tesla Now

This story is part of Plugged In, CNET's hub for all things EV and the future of electrified mobility. From vehicle reviews to helpful hints and the latest industry news, we've got you covered.

Apple CarPlay is a great way to bring the dead-simple smartphone experience to your car's dashboard. While it's become ubiquitous in new cars, Tesla never jumped on the bandwagon, so there is no official way to bring CarPlay to Tesla vehicles -- official being the key word.

A post on MacRumors brought our attention to a YouTube video from developer Michał Gapiński, who created a system that allows Apple CarPlay to run on Tesla's infotainment display. The latest update claims to bring "100% functional CarPlay integration for any Tesla," and the video shows Gapiński fiddling with CarPlay inside a Tesla, in addition to watching YouTube and using what appears to be an Android-based interface.

That's because this is no mere CarPlay upgrade alone. In order to make this work, Gapiński had to install several pieces of additional hardware. His website lists the full hardware requirements, which includes two Raspberry Pi computers, an LTE modem, an HDMI-to-CSI-2 adapter for processing video streams as data, as well as cables linking everything together. It's not so much an Apple CarPlay emulator as it is an entire Android tablet emulator, although a version that runs Linux is also available.

Installation is not for the faint of heart, either. You'll have to be comfortable with executing terminal commands to get Linux or Android 12 installed on the first Raspberry Pi, and you'll have to fiddle with some more things to get CarPlay running. Gapiński recommends a small fan to help keep the computers cool, especially if they're stored out of sight in the center console, so expect a little noise from that, too.

Meanwhile, for those of us with a car running CarPlay natively, we're in for quite a treat in the near future. At WWDC 2022, Apple unveiled the next generation of CarPlay, which will reskin the entire vehicle operating system. It'll also be customizable, letting you pick from a variety of styles that best suits your preferences. Automakers will need to opt in for this level of integration, but a number of OEMs have already signed on, including Ford, Honda, Nissan, Porsche and Volvo.

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This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET's complete coverage from and about Apple's annual developers conference.

What's happening

Apple previewed the next generation of its iPhone-powered in-car software.

Why it matters

CarPlay will soon be able to power the totality of a vehicle's infotainment functions.

What's next

The first car with an iPhone-powered dashboard should be announced in late 2023.

Apple CarPlay is about to get a whole lot more powerful. At its WWDC 2022 keynote today, Apple previewed the next generation of its in-car app mirroring technology, which will soon be capable of taking over the car's displays and infotainment functions -- from the speedometer to the seat heaters.

The next generation of CarPlay will be compatible with a variety of aspect ratios -- from portrait to landscape -- and can even adapt to multidisplay dashboards, including vehicles with digital instrument clusters or with ultrawide pillar-to-pillar displays.

CarPlay will be more integrated with all the host vehicle's systems. Beyond its current navigation and media consumption functionalities, Apple CarPlay will handle traditional instrumentation like speedometer, tachometer, temperature gauges and fuel or EV battery level displays. Users will be able to adjust their climate controls, activate seat heaters, monitor air quality and even tie into Apple's smart home technologies directly from the CarPlay interface.

As with the next generation of iOS on the phone, Apple is also giving CarPlay users the ability to customize how CarPlay looks with selectable themes, backgrounds and widgets. From loud pink analog-style gauges to slick numerical displays and bar graphs, CarPlay will be able to match a wide range of vehicle interior designs and personal aesthetic tastes. 

Perhaps most interestingly, Apple says that this new full-fat approach to CarPlay as a complete vehicle interface will continue to be powered entirely by the connected iPhone, giving Apple an unprecedented amount of control over the vehicle's operation as well as access to data generated by each host vehicle. Here's hoping it can be as trusted to protect said data as it claims to.

Apple says the first vehicles to feature this CarPlay OS compatibility should be announced in late 2023, so we're still about a year out. It also hasn't announced which automaker will be first to the market with the tech, but lists Acura, Audi, Ford, Honda, Jaguar-Land Rover, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Volvo and Polestar as partners that are "excited to bring this new vision of CarPlay to customers."

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