Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet last week that he “will discuss” AirPlay support and other improvements with the company’s audio engineering team — reports Tesla North.
Musk’s comments were in response to a Twitter user who wished to play better quality audio through their Tesla’s speakers than Bluetooth technology allows. @JacobB1290H suggested Apple AirPlay, which would allow Tesla owners to play higher quality audio directly from their phones, supports lossless audio streaming, and won’t require any hardware upgrades.
In response, Musk said he “will discuss this and other improvements with Tesla audio engineering.”
Will discuss this and other improvements with Tesla audio engineering. The new Model S and X sound system is incredible.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2022
The Tesla CEO also took the opportunity to shout out the company’s refreshed Model S and Model X vehicles, which he said have “incredible” sound systems.
Despite having intersecting user bases, Apple and Tesla don’t play well together. Tesla doesn’t even support Apple CarPlay, despite it becoming all but standard for luxury cars.
The closest Tesla owners have come to CarPlay is a jury-rigged solution for running it from a Polish developer, which involves a Raspberry Pi. Michał Gapiński’s CarPlay hack for Teslas became available to download earlier this month.
Tesla owners saw a ray of hope for more iOS functionality when references to Apple Music support were spotted in a firmware update back in December 2020. However, Tesla never followed through on adding that functionality.
Seeing the two companies collaborate is even more of a long shot now, given Apple’s (admittedly rocky, at the moment) efforts to create a self-driving electric car of its own.
Would you like to see AirPlay support and lossless audio streaming added to Tesla EVs? Let us know in the comments below.
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“Will discuss..”?!? it’s not like this is the first time owners asking for CarPlay..lol
Yup, and it sounds like its the first time he’ll allow them to discuss CarPlay at a meeting. lol
Tbh – I am not sure about the narrative that this or other sites are running with, that Tesla doesn’t want to implement CarPlay because of the impending competition from the Apple smart car
To me, this just doesn’t make sense. For folks like me who are in the Tesla ecosystem (vehicle, charger, charging network, subscriptions and AB), functionality to integrate CarPlay into Tesla will only further deter us from moving over to Apple cars (whenever they arrive).
In other words, if everything I need is in Tesla why would I ever want to switch out. If anything, Elon and team should be working harder to integrate Tesla and CarPlay so that they can buy in even more loyalty.
Come on Elon – keep that kool-aid fresh
Totally agreed. I didn’t know what I was missing with CarPlay until I had a rental car recently that had it. It’s fantastic. That feature is sort of like iMessage. Sure I can kind of get the job done using other apps like WhatsApp, but iMessage is so much nicer to use. Same applies to CarPlay. Sure I get by without it, but I would be more locked in with it. I’ve had my Model S for 4 years now and my next car will definitely have to have CarPlay. I’d like that to be another Tesla. Ball is in their court, however. Considering how many good EVs are on the market now (and coming out in the next few years) and that I won’t be able to get free supercharging if I buy another Tesla, I’m more committed into the Apple ecosystem than I am the Tesla one.
Tesla needs to implement the ability to reply to group messages.
Allowing access to Apple Music, similar with what is available for Spotify should be enough IMO.
What a joke “airplay and lossless streaming”?
Are those not just things you would get from CarPlay anyways that everyone with a car and an iPhone want out of their cars already? (I guess AirPlay specifically can give you other stuff but it’s still a car, you shouldn’t have movies on the screen)
Get out of your own way Tesla…
One more thing…
Seriously, how many people do you think test drive a Tesla and try to connect their iPhone only to be surprised it doesn’t have CarPlay?
I bet you it’s most (iPhone users).
I mean maybe the intersection between people that know about CarPlay and don’t already know about the startling Tesla feature omission isn’t as big as I think.