Image: Michał Gapiński on Twitter
Polish developer Michał Gapiński (@mikegapinski) has released a preview for the second alpha of “Tesla Android,” his custom solution for running Apple CarPlay on a Tesla through Google’s Android OS, he explains to Tesla North.
Tesla owners have been requesting CarPlay support for years now, albeit to no avail. Gapiński decided to take matters into his own hands and home-brewed a workaround that can bring Apple CarPlay to any Tesla.
Gapiński’s “hack” relies on running CarPlay on a custom build of Android, which he had originally installed on a Raspberry Pi connected to his Tesla. The developer showed off an alpha build of the software back in February.
Tesla Android finally became available for download earlier this month, and Gapiński is already working on the next iteration. According to Gapiński, the second alpha fixes navigation audio from apps like Apple Maps and Waze in CarPlay, and it also enables audio mixing between iOS and Android via Bluetooth.
Tesla has historically been close-fisted about integrating Apple’s ecosystem (or any other, for that matter) into its cars. References to Apple Music support were spotted in a firmware update back in December 2020, but the automaker never added it in.
However, in an interesting turn of events, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last week that he “will discuss” Apple AirPlay support and other improvements with the company’s audio engineering team. Looks like there might be hope for at least some (official) Apple functionality in Teslas, after all.
Check out the full second alpha preview video from Michał Gapiński below:
