For those unaware: the Volkswagen Up! is a small, low-budget car produced by VW group, it's also sold as the Škoda Citigo and Seat Mii. AFAIK it was only sold in Europe and Latin-America.
A family member had a early-gen Up!, and the OEM display (build by Navigon) that sat on top of the dashboard was removable, but used a proprietary connection, not USB. I believe it snapped on with magnets, which I remember thinking was quite nice.
The detachability was mostly for anti-theft reasons I presume, but quite quickly an aftermarket started to form to replace the OEM screen with other options, including phone mounts. I don't think VW envisioned that, but I thought that a detachable mount for aftermarket satnav, phone mounts or other accessories was quite smart.
I did wonder why they didn't just make it a phone mount as standard so you can basically BYOD, which could lower the price of the car further and probably be a better experience anyway.
> Volkswagen Up!: infotainment is just a USB port and a phone clamp.
Thanks to your comment I looked into it again, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see the newer generation Up! actually does have a OEM phone mount now, how cool! From what I just read it uses an app to integrate with some of the car's features.
More car manufacturers should do this for their budget cars. Have a few physical buttons for controlling built-in functions (namely HVAC), and let the user's phone provide the entertainment, navigation and other driving aids. Maybe even ditch the radio interface, and just have an amplifier and speakers build in.
It's a shame that phone OSes are moving away from on-device 'driving mode' in favor of Android Auto and Apple Carplay. I get it though, larger screen makes for easier controls and thus safer to interact with while driving, but still...