2024 was a huge year for tech, with artificial intelligence fast becoming the most promising tech advancement since, well, perhaps the internet itself. We also saw a ton of incredible new gadgets, laptops, phones, tablets, electric vehicles, and yes, even a few cool new robots.
What we didn't see, however, is a couple of services and products that were promised for 2024, but simply never saw the light of day, or were postponed into 2025 and beyond.
We waited and waited, and now that the year is done and 2025 is most definitely here, it's time to do a recap of the stuff we didn't get this year.
Apple's next-gen CarPlay
This is perhaps the most straightforward omission. Apple has long been working on the next generation of CarPlay. In the company's own words, it's "the ultimate iPhone experience for the car," as it basically takes over the car's infotainment and instrument cluster and turns it into a "cohesive design experience that is the very best of your car and your iPhone."
While the CarPlay of today is adequate, it still feels oddly disconnected from the rest of the car's user interface. But this new generation of CarPlay sounds like it could bring us as close to the fabled Apple Car as we're ever going to get, given that the company reportedly stopped working on the project after a decade of development.
The problem? The first cars with this new CarPlay were supposed to arrive in 2024, but didn't. It's not just wishful thinking on our part, either: Apple explicitly said so. In fact, the company's CarPlay site still says that the "first models arrive in 2024". Sorry to be a bummer, but 2024 is over, so hopefully the new CarPlay-equipped models will arrive soon. When it does happen, we expect it to be in a Porsche, which has been working to integrate the latest CarPlay functionality into its upcoming models.
Spotify's hi-fi tier
Spotify's hi-fi subscription tier is one of the weirdest tech stories in recent years. The company originally announced it in February 2021 (yes, nearly four years ago), and, at the time, it seemed like a logical step up to compete with Amazon, Apple, and Tidal, all of which offered high-fidelity streaming on their music services.
Fast forward a couple of years, and Spotify launched nothing of the sort, while stubbornly maintaining that something akin to a hi-fi subscription tier is eventually coming (it may, however, be called Spotify Supremium, or something else entirely).
Right now, there's no launch date for the service (well, if you don't count the "later this year" which is what Spotify said in 2021), and the details are still very murky. Last we've heard on the matter was from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who said that a "deluxe version of Spotify" with "better sound" is coming, but he wouldn't share when. Well, it certainly won't happen in 2024.
Tesla's cheaper car, Robotaxi, and unsupervised FSD
The fact that we didn't get any of the above in 2024 hardly surprised anyone, given that Tesla CEO publicly said they're all coming in 2025 and beyond. But it's worth revisiting the topic, as the fabled super-affordable Tesla, the self-driving, people-hauling Tesla Robotaxi, and a version of Tesla's full-self driving (FSD) software that can drive the car autonomously, were all promised for 2024 (or earlier) at some point.
For example, Musk said in 2020 that Tesla could launch a $25,000 car by 2023. The idea saw much back and forth over the years, with Musk recently giving up on the idea of a "$25,000 non-robotaxi regular car model," while at the same time promising a "more affordable" Tesla in the first half of 2025.
Per Musk, Tesla Robotaxis were supposed to roam the streets as early as 2020; now the actual Robotaxi (or CyberCab, we're not sure about the name) model has been revealed, and is scheduled to launch in 2026.
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Finally, unsupervised FSD, which should bring newer Teslas to the point at which they can drive themselves without the need of a human driver's intervention, is now scheduled for 2025, even though it was originally promised way, way earlier than that. The last widely available, supervised version of FSD launched very late in 2024, and reports indicate the company may finally be close to nailing it.
