You won’t find a lot of buttons inside a Tesla because almost all of the functions are controlled through a massive 17 inch touchscreen center console in the Model S and Model X electric cars. Whether it’s the climate control or the sunroof you use the giant tablet in the car to control those features. It’s a setup that appears to be ideal for running all kinds of apps, and it looks like instead of creating a whole new app ecosystem, Tesla might allow users to mirror apps from their existing devices to the center console.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk touched upon this subject during a special event held for Tesla owners in Hong Kong. He said that the company is most likely going to be moving away from the SDK in favor of allowing owners to mirror apps from their existing devices to the center console.
Musk said that the company has arrived at this idea after thinking about apps a lot more, adding that it appears more logical to allow apps on a driver’s iPhone or Android device to project onto the center console, as opposed to trying to create an entirely new app ecosystem. “So that is probably going to be our focus in the future to enable you to project apps from your phone to the center screen,” Musk said.
There aren’t a lot of apps available currently for Tesla’ electric cars and the few that are available happened to be browser-based. Even though developers might have been keeping their fingers crossed for a native SDK it does make more sense if Tesla just makes it easier for everybody by allowing apps on the two most widely used mobile platforms in the world to be mirrored on the center console.
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