It’s finally 2025 for Apple. The company recently admitted that its long-awaited next-gen CarPlay, expected to land in 2024, has been delayed indefinitely. With that, the company keeps working on this old promise, but at least it has addressed how the work with car makers is going.
Cupertino told MacRumors, “The next generation of CarPlay builds on years of success and insights gained from CarPlay, delivering the best of Apple and the automaker in a deeply integrated and customizable experience. We continue to work closely with several automakers, enabling them to showcase their unique brand and visual design philosophies in the next generation of CarPlay. Each car brand will share more details as they near the announcements of their models that will support the next generation of CarPlay.”
The news here is that the company states it’s working with “several automakers” to enable their “unique brand and visual design philosophies” in the next-gen CarPlay. So far, we know the company has been working closely with Audi, Porsche, and Aston Martin. That said, more vehicle makers could be planning to support the next-gen CarPlay in the near future.
Here’s how the company describes this upcoming revamp: “This next generation of CarPlay is the ultimate iPhone experience for the car. It provides content for all the driver’s screens, including the instrument cluster. This ensures a cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone — with designs for each automaker that express your vehicle’s character and brand. Vehicle functions like radio and temperature controls are handled right from CarPlay. And personalization options ranging from widgets to selecting curated gauge cluster designs make it unique to the driver.”
Still, without a new timeframe, it’s unclear when we could see the first vehicles with this CarPlay update. As of now, code references in iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.3 reveal Apple keeps tweaking this experience from the inside. Now, it depends on the automakers to make the next-gen CarPlay a reality.
Even though this delayed feature might take longer than expected, I still think it isn’t too late for Apple’s next-gen CarPlay to be a game-changer. Several carmakers still struggle with a nice UI, and most Americans care about CarPlay support when buying a new vehicle. If Apple can live up to the hype, this will be the closest we’re going to have as an Apple Car experience.
BGR will let you know once we learn more about it.
