[olyjohn]

I think it's hilarious that I can upgrade my 2004 Honda Accord and add CarPlay into it with a myriad of screen sizes and options, features, cameras. There's an entire world of car stereo / infotainment gear out there that is cheaper and better than ever. Meanwhile, everybody with their new cars are just stuck with the terrible built in systems, or can only upgrade with a $1000 worth of audio processing gear and multi-channel amplifiers.

[dangus]

I think this is a negative recency bias, nobody makes aftermarket stuff for brand new cars because nobody with a brand new car is trying to augment it.

You can find infotainment replacement systems for more recent cars. Example: https://www.caraudiocoho.com/products/mazda-6-car-radio-mult...

[olyjohn]

Your link proves my exact point. You need some specific one-off gear from some no-name android tablet manufacturer that doesn't fit any other car. LOL@ this thing running Android 12, which was out of support in March of this year... Much aftermarket support wow.

The 2004 Accord has a DIN slot in it. Which has a myriad of options available for it, despite the dwindling aftermarket.

Have you seen how to upgrade a 2023 Honda Accord infotainment system? You can't without major work. You can use the factory head unit, and feed all the amplified signals into a $1000+ sound processor, with a bunch of other modules specifically built for the car, then run the speaker outputs out to some crazy-ass 8 channel amplifier (because more speakers means the stereo is better for some reason), then feed that back to your speakers. And then at that point, all you've upgraded is the audio, not even the head unit itself. And why does it even have a center channel again?

Also, people obviously care about what infotainment is in their cars, as there is a huge amount of people saying they won't buy a car without CarPlay. Sounds like people DO want to augment their infotainment systems. Nobody is trying to do it, because you can't do it. Imagine if you could buy the car you wanted, and install your own accessories in it.

[dangus]

Look, I wasn’t even getting into proprietary or not. Obviously generic DIN was better than the present automotive industry situation.

You made a claim that you can’t upgrade these systems without $1000 of gear and I proved that idea wrong with a single link. It doesn’t really matter that it’s Android 12 - nobody really cares because all it has to do is run CarPlay and Android Auto. As long as the system can do that it’s infinitely upgradable from a software perspective. Nobody’s actually using the base Android system.

I also have a friend that spent under $500 to add CarPlay to a Chevy Sonic with a similar system and they’re very happy with it.

And that’s why I want a car to have CarPlay and Android auto, because it negates any need to upgrade the system down the line. The upgrades happen on your phone.

Imagine if you could install your own accessories in it…like the one I linked? I mean, again, I get it, it’s not a simple DIN setup but for the 1% of people who are interested in upgrading their car system this this is a real product you can buy for basically any car model. I owned an Alpine head unit for my 2005 Volkswagen and I wouldn’t really describe it as not janky compared to the OEM head unit, but the thing had Bluetooth and that’s all I needed.

[hulitu]

> then run the speaker outputs out to some crazy-ass 8 channel amplifier (because more speakers means the stereo is better for some reason),

As Zaphod Beeblebrox famously said: Two heads better than one. /s.