Why I Still Miss Apple CarPlay After 7 Years in a Tesla

I've been an Apple person for years now. In 2019 I got a Tesla and I've been driving it daily ever since. And while I love the car and the UI, I've been missing CarPlay a lot. These past few days made it extra obvious. My Tesla is in the shop so I've been driving my wife's Volkswagen, and on top of that I've been testing iOS 27 which has some genuinely great CarPlay improvements. The combo of driving a CarPlay car again while testing iOS 27 basically turned into an unplanned side by side comparison. Man, I really miss CarPlay. I keep searching for aftermarket ways to give a Tesla CarPlay capabilities and I keep hoping the rumors of Tesla supporting it officially will be true. I just really, really miss it.

Here's my honest breakdown of what I miss, and how iOS 27 is making each of those gaps even bigger.

Maps and Navigation

I'll start with the one thing Tesla genuinely does better: it lets you type a full destination while driving. No app on CarPlay does that, and it's actually really useful.

But the visualization of the map is terrible. I often miss exits because the turn cues don't come early enough or clearly enough. There's also this frustrating delay after you hit Start where it just takes a lot of time to tell you which way to go. So if I pull away from a parking spot a little too late, I end up taking the wrong exit before navigation even kicks in. Those types of errors in real life can be costly!

iOS 27 improved CarPlay navigation with better GPS accuracy, improved heading detection, and the ability for your navigation app to share data with the car for a better picture of the journey. None of that helps Tesla, obviously, but it's a reminder of how much active development is going into CarPlay while Tesla's map experience feels like it hasn't changed much.

Media, music and podcasts

Right off the bat, the fact that I have to pay for the Premium Connectivity subscription just to access Apple Music natively on Tesla is horrible. I'm already paying for Apple Music. That's just a lot to ask.

But even ignoring the subscription, the whole media experience is very laggy and very slow. I don't know if it's because I have an older Tesla and the hardware is getting tired, but man, it's a lot. Everything just takes longer than it should, and after a while you stop wanting to interact with it at all. Podcast support is the same story — so so laggy that CarPlay is almost always better. Even when I was paying for Premium Connectivity I still found myself using Apple Music on the phone.

iOS 27 made this even worse for Tesla comparatively. CarPlay now has a persistent MiniPlayer in the top right corner of the screen at all times, so you can pause or skip tracks without ever leaving navigation. It also finally added song scrubbing, so you can drag to any point in a track while driving. And both Apple Music and Podcasts got fully redesigned with the new liquid glass look. It all just feels so good to use, which makes going back to the Tesla media experience hurt more.

Calls

It's very cumbersome to call someone from the Tesla interface. Too many steps, and you're doing it while trying to drive. I've gotten to the point where I just wait until I'm parked.

iOS 27 also overhauled Siri, and in CarPlay it's now genuinely much smarter, it shows up as a glowing orb and can handle all kinds of questions the way ChatGPT or Gemini would. On Tesla you're working through a clunky interface to make a call. On CarPlay you just talk.

Dashboard

This is honestly what I miss the most. Just having the map on one side and the media controls on the other in one view, everything streamlined and right there. Tesla has way more screen real estate but somehow requires so much more hunting around to find basic stuff. The CarPlay dashboard view just makes sense for a car.

iOS 27 made the dashboard view even nicer with new wallpapers, color themes, and larger more interactive app thumbnails. It's clearly a product team that cares deeply about the in car experience.

I still love my Tesla. Even after all of this, I wouldn't trade the car itself for anything. But the software gaps are real, and iOS 27 is making them more obvious by the day. I keep checking if there are good aftermarket CarPlay adapters for Tesla (there are some, but nothing great), and I keep holding out hope that the rumors of official support will eventually be true. Having an electric car with native CarPlay support is genuinely on my bucket list if Tesla doesn't get there soon. Are any of you Tesla owners feeling the same way, or have you found a good workaround I should try?