Ford has once again signaled its continued commitment to supporting CarPlay. Speaking at a conference this month, Ford CFO Sherry House confirmed that the company is “passionate” about giving drivers the option to use CarPlay alongside other in-car systems.
House’s comments came at the 2025 Barclays Global Auto and Mobility Tech Conference when asked about Ford’s technology roadmap:
“I would say that if I want to just continue on in this theme a little bit because it is something, as you said, I’m passionate about, we’re going to also continue to give the customers choice as it relates to Apple CarPlay. We think that that is a product that our customers really enjoy, so we’re going to continue to allow them to have access to that. We also are going to bring in Gemini in 2026 as soon as that’s available. And, we’re also going to continue to develop native apps that are going to enable us to get deeply connected with our customers. We’ve been doing this already in some of the latest apps and features that we have natively developed within Ford have just gone up at about 20 points in engagement levels from our prior version of SYNC4. So what you’re seeing is this combination of bringing the best from the outside, complementing it with what we know about our customer base, complementing it with native apps, and bringing that all together across the entire portfolio of products.”
Several years ago, an automaker executive reaffirming a commitment to a feature they’ve supported for years wouldn’t make the news. Nowadays, however, an automaker signaling they continue to support CarPlay comes as a breath of fresh air thanks to GM’s decision to drop the platform altogether.
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While Ford is committed to CarPlay, whether or not it will support CarPlay Ultra remains to be seen. While Apple has touted the automaker as a CarPlay Ultra partner, Ford CEO Jim Farley recently said that he didn’t like the “execution” of the first version of CarPlay Ultra. Farley, however, also confirmed that he has spoken to Tim Cook “many times” about his thoughts on CarPlay Ultra.
There might be another big shoe about to drop in the CarPlay world. Bloomberg reported in November that Tesla is actively developing CarPlay support and could roll out the feature in the coming months. This would be a huge shift in strategy by the world’s leading EV maker and one of the biggest CarPlay holdouts.
Is CarPlay still a “must have” for you when shopping for a car? Let us know down in the comments.
via Ford Authority
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