Apple CarPlay Users Could Soon Get To Buy Gas Right Off Their Dashboard

Apple Inc AAPL could allow its CarPlay users to purchase gasoline directly from their vehicle’s dashboard as early as this fall.

What Happened: The Tim Cook-led tech giant in June quietly unveiled a feature that will provide a CarPlay app to navigate to a pump and buy gas directly from a screen on their car dashboard and skip tapping a credit card, reported Reuters.

HF Sinclair Corp DINO, a Dallas, Texas-based diversified energy company, which markets gas at 1,600 stations in the United States, reportedly said it plans to use the CarPlay technology in the coming months.

In order to use CarPlay-based fueling, a customer will have to download a fuel company’s app and enter payment information to set it up, before activating the pump and pay feature, reported Reuters.

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Why It Matters: Using CarPlay at the pump is one of the many use cases Apple is pushing. The company has already opened up in-car software for parking, electric vehicle charging, and ordering food, noted Reuters.

CarPlay could end up being more important than the rumored Apple Car, according to Asymco analyst Horace Dediu.

“Forget about Apple Car, Apple CarPlay is a bigger deal,” said Dediu. He said, “It's very likely to scale to millions and millions of cars, if not hundreds of millions,” reported Reuters.

Despite Apple's attempts to garner space in the car’s dashboard, there is no lack of resistance. Top EV maker Tesla Inc TSLA has been less than enthusiastic about integrating CarPlay, which has led to community-led hack installs. 

Mercedes Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius said this week that the carmaker’s goal is to “have a complete, holistic, Mercedes experience."

Kaellenius said that when interacting with companies in the “digital domain” for everything that crosses into product liability relevance, “we would be very cautious,” according to Reuters.

Price Action: On Thursday, Apple shares closed 1.8% lower at $136.72, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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Photo by Hadrian on Shutterstock