Tesla is considering adopting Apple’s AirPlay to improve audio quality

Elon Musk said that Tesla is going to consider adopting Apple’s AirPlay protocol to improve audio quality over the current Bluetooth.

In recent years, Tesla has put an emphasis on the sound system inside its vehicles.

The sound system in the Model 3 has been well-received by audiophiles, and the one in the new version of the Model S has also received positive reviews.

It has been compared to an expensive Bang & Olufsen system often found in premium vehicles, but for a fraction of the price.

When a reviewer made the comparison on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented:

Tesla audio engineers come from B&O & many other companies. They literally rock. Our system is highly programmable, so we keep improving it via OTA codec updates.

While on the subject of improvements, another commenter agreed that the Tesla sound system is impressive, but it is limited by the quality of the audio that can be transmitted through Bluetooth when playing music off of a driver’s phone.

They then suggested that enabling AirPlay would provide lossless streaming, and Musk said that the solution will be discussed with the audio team:

AirPlay is a proprietary wireless communication protocol stack developed by Apple that allows streaming between devices.

The protocol uses Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, and since Tesla vehicles are equipped with Wi-Fi capability, everything is there to implement the solution.

However, Tesla has been reticent in adopting Apple software in the past – most famously over enabling the use of Apple CarPlay.

Tesla owners have been asking for it for years, and the possibility of adopting Apple CarPlay was discussed by the company at some point, but the automaker has since decided to keep its customers in its own software ecosystem.