For over a yr, Apple’s CarPlay website has teased the arrival of the following technology in 2024. Now that it’s 2025, Apple lastly admits that’s not occurring.
When it was introduced at WWDC in 2022, next-gen CarPlay was an thrilling peek at the way forward for in-dash navigation programs. As a substitute of an oblong display, the next-gen CarPlay takes over your complete instrument panel, together with automobile capabilities reminiscent of air-con and gauges. Apple says next-gen CarPlay “ensures a cohesive design expertise that’s the easiest of your automobile and your iPhone–with designs for every automaker that categorical your car’s character and model.”
Whereas it was initially purported to arrive in 2023, solely two automakers, Porsche and Aston Martin, have introduced precise assist for the system and neither has produced a automobile or perhaps a real-world idea shoring off the interface. In late 2023, Porsche and Aston Martin confirmed off pictures of their respective programs, with a sequence of digital gauges and a “background wallpaper that mimics the model’s distinct houndstooth (or Pepita in Porsche-speak) seat sample” and “a central info display bookended by a round speedometer and tachometer, the latter of which integrates ‘Hand in-built Nice Britain’ wraparound textual content.”
There’s quite a bit about next-gen CarPlay that we don’t know but, together with whether or not it should require an iPhone to work. On the time of its announcement, Apple was nonetheless rumored to be working by itself car, and next-gen CarPlay seemed to be one thing of a take a look at for working a car’s instrument cluster. However now that the venture seems to be useless, it’s unclear how CarPlay matches into Apple’s ecosystem.
Apple lastly eliminated the “coming in 2024” textual content from the CarPlay web site however hasn’t changed it with any new estimate. In an announcement to the media, Apple stated: “The following technology of CarPlay builds on years of success and insights gained from CarPlay, delivering one of the best of Apple and the automaker in a deeply built-in and customizable expertise. We proceed to work intently with a number of automakers, enabling them to showcase their distinctive model and visible design philosophies within the subsequent technology of CarPlay. Every automobile model will share extra particulars as they close to the bulletins of their fashions that may assist the following technology of CarPlay.”
That’s a lot much less particular than “coming in 2024” and implies that the venture is way much less far alongside than Apple beforehand implied. We’d get our subsequent peek at CarPlay at WWDC in June however for now, it’s anybody’s guess as to when the primary vehicles may present up.