Apple has announced that it will completely refresh its CarPlay would be getting more informative than just showing infotainment and gave a long list of carmakers that could endorse the program. Among the prominent names are Ford Motor, Renault SA, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, Honda Motor Co and Jaguar Land Rover.

Apple shared big updates coming to CarPlay at WWDC 2022. It makes CarPlay more capable than ever. Integration with the vehicle’s hardware allows for radio tuning or changing the internal temperature. Widgets are included to display calendars, weather, smart home controls, and the current trip in Apple Maps. CarPlay will act like an operating system for vehicles. It will take over the car’s instrument cluster to display gauges for fuel and oil, engine temperature, miles per gallon, and more.

Would this mean Apple deep diving into the car OS space in order to not only provide infotainment, but a lot more including dashboard, navigation, fuel and performance indicators?

We already do have quite a few other competitors, some paid and some free, including Android Auto, DriveMode, CarOS, MirrorLink. Now with CarPlay fully rewritten in order to be more than just an infotainment app and give a user the same look and feel as that of iPad or iPhone, there now seems to be some healthy competition once CentOS Automative Stream as well hits the market.

Apple has already forged partnerships with a handful of automakers for its Siri Eyes Free system, but that integration never took off. Now, by ceding control to Apple, automakers don’t have to hassle with updating their aging and perpetually outdated infotainment systems to bring you the core features and apps you use every day. And with each new iOS release, the functionality is bound to grow, further solidifying Apple’s dominance in the car.

CentOS Automotive Stream Distribution (also known as AutoSD) is going the CentOS Stream way. It becomes the official upstream distribution of RedHat In-Vehicle (Automotive) OS.

What is RedHat In-Vehicle (Automotive) OS?

As vehicles become increasingly more like mobile datacenters, from advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to automated vehicles to infotainment, the operating system plays a fundamental role in the resulting software stack. Current automotive software is based on proprietary, limited and intentionally slow components to maximise risk reduction and minimize mistakes, enabling a safety argument to be constructed. Red Hat intends to add open innovation to automotive software while retaining this same commitment to functional safety, bringing expertise in both implementation of more secure computing at-scale and reliable Linux systems-building benefits to the automotive supply chain.

What is CentOS Automotive Stream Distribution (AutoSD)?

This is a binary distribution that serves as a public, in-development preview of the upcoming Red Hat in-vehicle OS.

In August 2021, the CentOS project announced the launch of the CentOS Automotive SIG (Special Interest Group).

As the RHEL-oriented automotive work is being defined, it has become clear that having multiple development stages would be most beneficial:

• The CentOS Automotive SIG is open to anyone and everyone to build, test, experiment, and contribute with software for the automotive industry.
• The Red Hat automotive product, the product itself that Red Hat sells and supports. The SIG is where this product is being developed.
• A third place which would sit between the CentOS Automotive SIG and the product. This is a public, in development, version of the product.