Tesla has among the most popular electric vehicles on the market, but the company has always avoided support for Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay. Now, Tesla is apparently considering a change, but ignoring Google’s side.
Bloomberg reports that, in a bid to boost vehicle sales, Tesla is developing support for Apple CarPlay in its vehicles. Support for phone-based projection systems is apparently one of the most requested missing features of Tesla owners.
The report brings out that Tesla is discussing a CarPlay rollout “in the coming months,” which especially with Tesla in mind means there’s no real expectation for when this might be available. However, while Tesla is looking to cater to iPhone owners with CarPlay support, the company is apparently ignoring Google’s Android Auto entirely.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google offers a CarPlay competitor called Android Auto for devices running its operating system. But Tesla isn’t actively developing support for it.
To an extent, that makes sense as the United States is Tesla’s primary market, where the iPhone makes up roughly half of the smartphone market in terms of sales. It’s been abundantly clear that vehicle buyers demand support for CarPlay and Android Auto, with a study finding that around a third of car buyers would not purchase a vehicle without support for those platforms, so it’s also pretty obvious why Tesla is considering this feature addition.
Will it actually happen? Well, it’s Tesla so… who’s to say? But, at the very least, it doesn’t seem like Android Auto is on the table for now.
More on Android Auto:
- Gemini starts rolling out on Android Auto with Live support [Gallery]
- Android Auto prepares support for app widgets as latest updates roll out
- Google Maps for Android Auto gets partial redesign to surface ‘Report’ button, hide suggested locations
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