Tesla's lack of CarPlay support is allegedly down to the slow adoption of iOS 26, with a Maps compatibility fix supposedly one of the last hurdles in CarPlay's way.

Tesla has long been one of the holdouts when it comes to CarPlay support. While there have been many rumors about CarPlay finally making its way to Tesla's impressive in-car infotainment system, it has still yet to appear.

In Sunday's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman says that CarPlay is still expected to arrive. Tesla is still planning to have CarPlay operational, running in a window within the Tesla software interface, but there are still some hiccups to manage.

Apparently, the biggest problem was between Apple Maps and Tesla's own in-house mapping software, which it uses for self-driving functions. An incompatibility meant that turn-by-turn guidance from Tesla's maps app wasn't properly synchronizing with Apple Maps when the car is driving autonomously.

Since both applications could be open side-by-side, this was deemed a problem as drivers could be confused by seeing two conflicting sets of directions.

Tesla asked Apple to make some changes to Maps so that the two could work together properly. Apple agreed, and created a fix for iOS 26 that impacted navigation in CarPlay.

Slow rollout fix

While a fix existed and was distributed to the public, another problem to Tesla was that it wasn't being distributed fast enough. With apparently slower adoption of iOS 26 than in previous releases, too few people were in a position where their iPhone had the update to Maps by the end of 2025.

This seemingly slow rollout meant that Tesla didn't introduce CarPlay support at the end of the year as expected, because Tesla didn't think there was enough supported iPhones to warrant the change.

That said, on Friday, Apple's App Store data revealed that iOS 26 adoption closely tracked iOS 18's rollout. At 74% of all iPhones released in the last four years, this was a mere 2% behind iOS 18 at the same time one year prior.

Further muddying the waters is that the fix wasn't included in the base iOS 26 release, but as a later incremental update. While Apple's figures are for iOS 26 in general, it doesn't drill down to how many people installed the later update that is of interest to Tesla.

While there is no firm timeline for when Tesla will finally support CarPlay, it seems that it will rely more on when the car maker believes the support is spread out enough in the iPhone ecosystem.

Since it has taken its time getting CarPlay supported so far, it could be a long wait before Tesla drivers get to play with it.