[benrutter]

There's so many comments on the lines of "I would never buy a car without android auto/car play support". I 100% used to be on this camp, "A car without android auto, what am I, a caveman!?".

Anyway, separately to anything car related, I got fed up of some of google's treatment of android and switched to Murena's /e/os which is a de-googled spin of android. It doesn't support android auto, and that held me back from switching for ages.

Long story short, I don't miss android auto at all. Bluetooth is absolutely fine for playing media from my phone etc.

(my car does already have functionality like google maps built in though, so I might feel differently if it didn't)

[Telaneo]

> (my car does already have functionality like google maps built in though, so I might feel differently if it didn't)

See if you care in 5 years when the maps are out of date.

[benrutter]

No, I meant literally the car has google maps built in - it's an up to date android app.

[Telaneo]

So you have Android Automotive? (stupid name)

Where does it get it's internet connection from? It's going to need that to keep the maps updated.

I'm not sure how long the Google Maps app will stay alive in your case. I doubt AA will get updates 10 years after a sale, but even if it doesn't and you're stuck on an old version of Google Maps, assuming the underlying API doesn't change, I guess that doesn't matter?

[benrutter]

> So you have Android Automotive? (stupid name)

Yes I do! And yes it is!

It's a fairly recent Volvo, and it has a sim card (or something along those lines) that connects to the internet. It also can use a phones connection via bluetooth, so internet wise I think would be fine, and uses that connection to update the cars software.

I can't say how long the software will work for - I guess that depends on how long Volvo support their software for. I'm optimistic but I guess I'll find out in quite a few years time!

[Telaneo]

The sim card/internet plan supplied with the car isn't going to last forever (from memory, they buy a 5-year plan or whatever in line with the car's warranty period or similar. It might be possible to buy/subscribe to an extended plan, but I can't imagine why one would. I wouldn't expect any carmaker to seriously support the car past that anyway).

If you can share your phone's internet connection, then that works fine (and is probably ideal!), modulo my previous remarks.