Tesla has always been against the idea of adopting Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in its electric cars , preferring to rely on their own operating system. Faced with Elon Musk’s apparent indifference to his customers’ requests to exploit other systems, lo sviluppatore polacco Michał Gapiński presented a solution to install Apple CarPlay on a Tesla Model 3.
To do this, the developer used a Raspberry Pi and a custom version of Android. Gapiński calls him Tesla Android Project and does what the name suggests: it provides an Android Auto interface that can be accessed via the car’s built-in web browser.
6 months after the release of the first video showing how Apple CarPlay could work on a Tesla, Gapiński has now first available alpha version of “Tesla Android” on Github for others to download and try.
Apple CarPlay on Tesla, several hardware devices required
As the Polish developer did, however, he has to equip us with different hardware components. It starts with a Rasberry Pi 4 system with custom firmware based on Android, to which is added a Raspberry 3 with Linux. Then you need to have an LTE modem and a Wi-Fi access point, a micro-HDMI cable for HDMI and an Ethernet cable. After going through the lengthy setup process available on GitHub, Tesla’s built-in web browser can connect to the Pi’s Wi-Fi and access the Android interface.
Once connected, you can use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Gapiński reminds us that this is an alpha version and that some users may therefore encounter some bugs. For example, the experience may not be quite smooth, but overclocking the Raspberry Pi system could be a temporary solution to this problem. “My focus now begins to focus on better integration and simplification,” promises the developer. One goal is to reduce the requirements to a single Raspberry Pi.