Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

What happened to the promised in-car apps?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Hopefully they came to their senses and realized that apple carplay and the android equivalent make it completely unnecessary for them to develop their own apps. Technology has moved on. Tesla really hasn't in this regard.

Exactly. If Tesla doesn't want to develop an SDK for their infotainment system, they should open it up to CarPlay/AndroidAuto and let those "app experts" do the heavy lifting.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Julie's MS
Earlier this year at an event in Hong Kong, Elon Musk mentioned they are likely going to ditch the idea of an SDK and apps and instead mirror the display of your smartphone onto the 17" screen

“As we have sort of thought about it more, the logical thing to do from an app standpoint is to maybe allow apps on your iPhone or Android to project onto the center display, as opposed to trying to create a new app ecosystem,” Musk said.

Tesla SDK likely a no-go, targets iOS and Android app mirroring instead
 
  • Like
Reactions: Julie's MS
Except that means there won't be any data from the car in these apps. That might fix the current ridiculous media app, but won't help the navigation app or allow experimentation with how the menus work.

What kinds of apps, apart from media, would be useful and not actually dangerous? Games, Twitter, photo editing, email, what?
 
..plugshare
for one

I wish this was a native app on Tesla.. their website is so-so
Sure, if it was a native app, or even an app running on a real browser in the car that also had an interface to the car's information, such as the state of charge and the navigation destination. The problem with phone apps displayed on the screen is you don't have any of that information.

Third party navigation apps like Waze would be useful. A better web browser. Apps that log stuff for your car, like some of the current web based Tesla services.

Again, these would be much more useful if they could access information from the car. Restricting apps to just what can run on a phone seems very limiting and unnecessary to me.

I still say that Tesla should just do a modified Chrome browser as their entire user interface with a set of custom data sources that could be read by browser apps. Chrome is well sand boxed, has plenty of capabilities, and Tesla wouldn't have to deal with it at all once they converted everything over.
 
If Tesla created simple API's for third parties then these third party apps could incorporate the information of your vehicle that is being shared. Very simple, a good example are all the health apps which share information with each other.
 
  • Like
Reactions: xcell
The only way to "mirror" iOS and retain the ability to touch a remote screen is through Carplay. Otherwise, mirroring on iOS only displays its screen on a remote display without the ability to accept touch input from that display. There is no way Tesla can give iOS users "mirroring" without giving them Carplay. Unless you want to see your iPhone on the 17" screen while interacting on the phone itself. That's how it would work with a non-Carplay mirroring setup with iOS.

Elon is batshit crazy if he doesn't offer Carplay. Tesla doesn't seem to be listening to its own customers when it comes to vehicle features.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pnd4pnd
It's pretty ironic that folks have to dash-mount their smartphone to do things the 17" CID can't. If Tesla saw pictures of that perhaps it would encourage them do finish this project already.

When people first see the 17" they are amazed. When they find out its limitations they are amazed.

Maybe owners should start posting photos of their mounted iPads, iPhones and Android things to Elon and Tesla's Twitter pages with the hashtag #GiveUsCarplay or #YourSoftwareSucks? Just thinking out loud...
 
Maybe owners should start posting photos of their mounted iPads, iPhones and Android things to Elon and Tesla's Twitter pages with the hashtag #GiveUsCarplay or #YourSoftwareSucks? Just thinking out loud...

Yes. I have a magnetic phone mount because the navigation is terrible in comparison to Waze. All I want is Waze and text integration and I will be happy.

Maybe throw in a screensaver that you can load pictures on. The Honda Accord has that.
 
There seems to be no development ever since... guessing Tesla is occupied elsewhere...
Is anybody using EVE dashboard?
The only thing that I recall changing substantially in the 2.5 years that I have owned a MS is the media player, and some of the changes have caused other problems. Elon said last October that the web browser would be updated soon but it is still pretty much unusable.
 
The irony here is that the "over the air" updates are often touted as this big Tesla advantage and yet it seems to be a mostly wasted opportunity. One could argue that both the first and second gen autopilot iterations were simply released before they were ready and the "updates" are just Tesla owners participating in the software development life cycle as testers.

Kind of a bummer really.
 
  • Like
Reactions: verygreen