Oliver Haslam·

Bloomberg: Apple CarPlay Could Be Expanded To Include Controls For Climate Control, Sound System, Seats, More

Apple is working to expand CarPlay beyond its current capabilities, according to a new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. In that report, Gurman says that future CarPlay implementations could allow for control of things like in-car A/C as well as other features like automated seats.

The project to improve the way CarPlay works is, internally at least, said to be named IronHeart.

The company is working on technology that would access functions like the climate-control system, speedometer, radio and seats, according to people with knowledge of the effort. The initiative, known as “IronHeart” internally, is still in its early stages and would require the cooperation of automakers.

However, while Apple might want CarPlay to be able to control more parts of the car while also reading data from the instrument cluster, it’s a move that will require carmakers to sign off. That seems like something that will be difficult to achieve given how long it took them to begin to implement CarPlay as it is today.

IronHeart would represent Apple’s strongest push into cars since CarPlay was released in 2014, but it may not be a hit with automakers. They could be reluctant to hand over control of key features to Apple. While CarPlay is now in more than 600 car models, other Apple initiatives launched in recent years have been slower to catch on with automakers.

This latest news comes as reports continue to pop up claiming Apple’s own plans to build a car are proving problematic. It’s possible Apple is instead trying to take control of existing cars, adding a layer of software between the car and the drive, rather than build its own vehicle from scratch.

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