For over a year, Apple’s CarPlay site has teased the arrival of the next generation in 2024. Now that it’s 2025, Apple finally admits that’s not happening.
When it was announced at WWDC in 2022, next-gen CarPlay was an exciting peek at the future of in-dash navigation systems. Instead of a rectangular screen, the next-gen CarPlay takes over the entire instrument panel, including car functions such as air conditioning and gauges. Apple says next-gen CarPlay “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.”
While it was originally supposed to arrive in 2023, only two automakers, Porsche and Aston Martin, have announced actual support for the system and neither has produced a car or even a real-world concept shoring off the interface. In late 2023, Porsche and Aston Martin showed off images of their respective systems, with a series of digital gauges and a “background wallpaper that mimics the brand’s distinct houndstooth (or Pepita in Porsche-speak) seat pattern” and “a central information screen bookended by a circular speedometer and tachometer, the latter of which integrates ‘Hand built in Great Britain’ wraparound text.”
There’s a lot about next-gen CarPlay that we don’t know yet, including whether it will require an iPhone to work. At the time of its announcement, Apple was still rumored to be working on its own vehicle, and next-gen CarPlay appeared to be something of a test for running a vehicle’s instrument cluster. But now that the project appears to be dead, it’s unclear how CarPlay fits into Apple’s ecosystem.
Apple finally removed the “coming in 2024” text from the CarPlay website but hasn’t replaced it with any new estimate. In a statement to the media, Apple said: “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.”
That’s much less specific than “coming in 2024” and implies that the project is much less far along than Apple previously implied. We might get our next peek at CarPlay at WWDC in June but for now, it’s anyone’s guess as to when the first cars might show up.