VOLVO MENTIONED AND BASED
Android auto has become a necessity for me from now on. Any car that doesn’t have it, or can’t be added, total deal breaker. I know I’m not alone in this.
Like OEM’s can assemble a multi billion dollar system of personalized music delivery of quality superior to CD’s for less than their entire market capitalizations.
The shrewd hand it off to the Masters Of The Game and rake in the respect.
Every daily driver I have owned (quite a few at this point) has been a Chevy. I will not upgrade if I am stuck with a shitty infotainment system. This isn’t 2006 where I have to use a cassette tape with aux cable to use my iPod. I absolutely need AA or CarPlay
I thought new Volvos were Android only? Can someone explain the situation?
The only feature I want from the automotive company is to bring up Apple CarPlay navigation into the digital cluster. That’s literally it. No, for gods sake please don’t move AC controls or heated shit to the touch screen.
Ironically, Volvo’s and Polestars that have Android Automotive OS, DO NOT support Android Auto.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Android auto or Apple Carplay. I just set my phone to play what I want to listen to. Can someone tell me what those apps do differently/better? (Genuine question)
the one thing I love about AA: having Google Maps on the main car screen. It’s SO much nicer than either peeking down at my phone to see a weird intersection, taking my eyes off the road for longer, or having my GPS voice interrupt a podcast. This way if I’m getting directions, I can do a quick glance like I do my mirrors. This also pairs with Google Maps/Waze just being better than normal in-car GPSs. Also, being able to change stuff by your car screen instead of your phone while stopped or driving I think is also nicer.
Why would I want to interact with my phone while driving? It’s distracting, not to mention illegal. Much easier to hit the big, properly sized buttons on my much larger truck screen which I barely have to look at. It works natively with my steering wheel controls.
Google Assistant works without me touching a single button. It autoplays the last music or podcast I had on. The navigation is significantly better on a proper display. It autopopulates my navigation based on my upcoming calendar events and habits.
I don’t have to plug anything in or bother mounting my phone in some obnoxious location, I just drop it on the wireless pad if my drive is going to be a long one or leave it in my pocket if not.
It’s better in every conceivable way.
They play it over the car’s stereo. It puts it on a big screen that is right there so you don’t have to pick up your phone to look at the map to see how far up a turn is coming. It integrates with the car’s dashboard, shows upcoming turns and caller ID in the gauge cluster. The music and phone controls tie in to my steering wheel controls. It makes it legal to use those things on your phone since you’re not having to hold it.
It’s one of those things where most people don’t realize how much more convenient it is until they’ve used it for a while.
It’s still a distraction to use while driving, but people are using it regardless, so might as well do it in a way that makes it less distracting.
Like, are you asking why Waze is better than some car makers maps? Um, okay:
- Maps are always up to date, for free. We moved into a new house in new block, and Waze (nor car maps) had our house or street - opened Waze map editor, entered my house, neighbours houses, three days later food delivery guys had no trouble delivering food to us and our neighbours - Google Maps and Waze got updated. That easy.
- Live traffic information. Hidden police where everyone is doing 10 over speed limit? Marked. Accident and your usual street is in a standstill? Marked, new route provided. Street is closed for maintenance? Marked, up to date route is calculated. You used to turn left in this intersection for 5 years and suddenly there’s new sign saying you can’t? Waze knows that and shows route correctly, your Toyota will tell you to turn left.
I seriously had no idea why manufacturers even bother adding navigation to their cars, but it seems there’s still people like you who… use it? :D
My 2004 honda doesn’t have nav or even a touch screen. I use my phone and connect it to my radio. I’ve only rented one car with AA, and I’ve never used Apple, which is why I asked what all the buzz was about. There’s no reason for you to comment like I’m an idiot. I didn’t know, that’s why I asked, hence me marking it as a genuine question.
Going all electric is a mistake…
Damn Volvo CEO speaking some truth here. F*$( all other crap… Give me Apple Car Play and Android auto or you can go eff yourself. I will seriously not buy a new vehicle in 2023 + that does not have this feature.
I don’t even like CarPlay, and I think it’s a boneheaded decision. Everyone seems to want it.
Sell them what they want
And the thing with it is that it’s ultimately entirely optional. If you don’t like it, you just don’t use it and you’d never ever see that it exists. There are zero downsides to having it, only upsides.
I literally won’t consider a car if it doesn’t have Apple CarPlay.
Im late but literally nobody uses either where i live even in cars that have it. Whats the reason u need it over just the Standard Infotainment system?
Nobody under 40 is ever going to buy a new car that doesn’t interface with their phone properly. It’s no longer a luxurious or optional extra, it’s a bare fucking minimum requirement.
Not to me
Hell even my motorcycle has AppleCar play, and I gotta say it’s pretty nice!
Wireless CarPlay is standard on new corollas. At this point, if a new car doesn’t have CarPlay, it’s fair to call it a complete piece of shit
I can’t imagine being that addicted to my cell phone. What does it feel like?
It actually feels great. Makes life a lot easier and extremely convenient. All the information of the world at your fingertips. Overall, highly recommend.
I had a couple-year-old Honda pilot for summer vacation, and I was wholly unimpressed with Apple CarPlay. Had to have my phone plugged in, so my wife couldn’t charge without disconnecting nav (admittedly our fault for only having one charging cable). And you could only see one screen at a time: messages, map, or music. I’m sure part of that was the relatively small screen, but it wasn’t intuitive or easy to use at all. I vastly prefer having Apple Music as an app in my current vehicle and using that and the integrated nav rather than my phone.
One of your problems here is fixed by having more than one charging cable, and the other isn’t actually a problem: there already is a multi-screen view that shows both music and maps together.
That’s more an issue with the Honda than the app. My current Carplay is wireless, and there are options to have multiple things on screen at once. My prior car, which was a 2018, had to be plugged in though.
Same here, with the exception of a few specific cars I’d like to buy that were made before CarPlay was a thing.
I’m a service manager for a dealership. The amount of headache phones cause for us due to updates not working with Android auto or carplay is ab absolute nightmare. It’s every. Single. Day. God forbid the customer realize its the phone, and not the car. There needs to be more standardization is the problem and that’s what GM is trying to accomplish. It really is a nightmare for both customers, and dealers.
You are downvoted but not wrong. Wireless CarPlay greatly impacted the actual customer satisfaction by making it unreliable for many who don’t know how to check the various settings. When it was wired you just plugged it. Still can but customers don’t know how to solve wireless issues.
Are you sure it’s not a car issue? I’ve had flawless CarPlay experiences for 6 years in the same vehicle, multiple phones and versions of iOS
What you’re describing are mostly user and service department issues, not strictly “phone” issues. Still a pain in the ass but not the same thing.
A friend of mine has been going round and round with Hyundai about wireless Carplay that worked when he bought the car but then had it serviced and it stopped working immediately after (wired still worked). Now Hyundai is telling him that the vehicle was never wireless Carplay capable in the first place, which is complete bullshit, and won’t troubleshoot to fix a problem that they most likely caused. So yeah it’s a problem but not 100% in the way you’re attempting to describe.
Somebody’s going to make a fortune selling jailbreak kits to convert GM to CarPlay.
The valve CEO is absolutely right. My ideal infotainment system is something that just does CarPlay and lets me change a few options in my car.
I know people who had never used android auto, or CarPlay, who were buying a new car in the last few years, and the only reason they chose that vehicle aside from vehicle type . They picked the vehicle that option was most attainable in.
Lots of CEOs are perceiving a shift from car companies to being “software companies”, its a meme with executives right now - spurred on by the meteoric rise of Tesla’s stock price.
The lack of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is not a cost cutting exercise - in fact its dirt cheap to have it onboard - most sub $15K brand new vehicles in India and China have it standard.
Its a vendor lock-in exercise. They are hoping people will get used to Chevy/Tesla/BMW Vehicle systems and stay locked into the brand, just like how Apple keeps people in iOS/Mac land.
The problem is that people probably spend 1-2 orders of magnitude less time interacting with their vehicles software than with their phones/laptops, in my opinion the hallmark of a good infotainment system is how little you have to use it.
CEOs and making short sighted business decisions motivated by the growth in completely different industry while ignoring the nuances of the strategy of that particular industry. Name a more iconic duo.
Its a vendor lock-in exercise.
Most every company designs their products in this manner. Locked-down app stores? That’s less about “user safety,” and more about making switching between Android or iOS incredibly painful. Netflix and Disney+ and other deal services’ taking content exclusively to their platforms? They want you locked into their service, not the other guy’s. “Free” cloud storage? They want you sticking photos (that probably train their AI) on their servers with automatic backups so you overrun that storage and buy more for them. Xbox Game Pass? Rent games forever and never switch to Playstation because you’ll lose everything (hence spending billions to make Starfield and others exclusives).
The two biggest driving forces right now are “you’ll own nothing and like it,” and “only we have what you need, so never look elsewhere or else.”
Right, it’s also an attempt to build a new revenue stream for services where every GM driver spends $X/month to keep their infotainment system running