[maxdo]

that's a symptom of a bigger problem.

Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.

It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

[JoshTriplett]

> Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software.

On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.

> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user.

If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.

[maxdo]

you settle with one failure story for another failure story.

there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.

[JoshTriplett]

> there are companies with amazing software experience

I don't want an amazing software experience. I want an unsurprising experience, ideally the one I already have.

The only thing better than Android Auto would be to just provide a standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs. Then you wouldn't need two different standards (Android Auto and Apple Carplay), just one, which would also work with any new device that came along to break that duopoly.

[taneq]

> standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs

So a web browser loading a page off the phone? :)

[JoshTriplett]

Emphatically not. I want the head unit to act as a dumb terminal for the phone. My first instinct would be a USB-C docking station supporting DisplayPort video, various interesting USB devices, and a descriptor that makes it clear it's a car's head unit so the device can intelligently offer a car-specific experience.

[taneq]

Oh, right, more like a car-flavoured docking station? That does sound better, it relies on the car for less in terms of functionality so it should be more consistent and futureproof.

[maxdo]

you just stuck in this paradigm, this apple/auto surprised me so many times :

- when you need to re-pair Bluetooth

- when you forget the cable to charge and you need to drive

- when you want to share your car to someone and they need to spend 5 minutes to accept every single ToS possible to simply put a GPS

- several people with phones paired before, now you dealing with complete random

you name it.

- you listen music and you need to go out to buy something while others in the car

None of these problems exist if you have a decent, dedicated computer in the car that just works, it knows profiles, it does need you to be always on wire, or on the line.

[cyberax]

The TLDR; answer to all your problems is: "Just use a freaking USB cable".

I rent tons of cars and my experience with the wired AndroidAuto is:

1. Plug it in.

2. That's it. It just works. No ToS or any other crap.

3. The same cable also supplies power!

Some cars _may_ need me to press something on the screen to switch to AA mode, but it's rare.

And it works perfectly with _everything_ on my phone. A navigator properly pauses my audiobook before announcing a turn, for example.

[maxdo]

for rental it honestly probably make sense, since this is not your car.

Why on earth everytime i sit in the car i have to neurotically plug the cable. I had situations i forgot and in the middle of the ride i started to look for cable or try to wire car play, simply because i figure out i don't know where to go .

This type of crap is not convenient and simply dangerous.

what proper car should offer: keyless enter; keyless profile adjustment including seats, heat, music profiles, etc wheel etc; keyless start and go;

one of the best tiny features i have. In the morning i drive to work; i can go several ways there depends on traffic, My car knows that in the morning i go to work; GPS is on, traffic is calculated.

I open the door , my music started to play, I press gas and drive; zero cables, zero pairing ; open the door and drive.

[rootusrootus]

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid

I own a Tesla, and a Ford. Amazing is not how I would describe the Tesla software experience. It lacks features like iMessage for group and for non-phone recipients that I am able to use in my Ford. Even though many people would say the Ford software is otherwise inferior. And if history is anything to go by, there are features in CarPlay today that Tesla will never add to their infotainment system.

[maxdo]

i can create an entire list of features, that will never ever be in CarPlay, because it's not made of this is just a dongle on steroids, not a proper way to make your car smart.

Joe mode ( silent your car when baby sleeps)

automatic profiles that are connected all the way to what music played and in what device, headphones seamlessly stop playing after i go into the car from the gym

send navigation to car from any device , while I'm driving my gf or friend can send it, so i do not distract myself

proper navigation , order management etc as part of the vertical integration, including re-routing to less busy charger etc.

[rootusrootus]

You might be unaware of CarPlay Ultra.

In any case, thank you for contributing evidence to my assertion that CarPlay is additive, not subtractive, and since you can choose to use it or not, adding it to Tesla's infotainment is strictly a win.

[pbhjpbhj]

Meanwhile my car - Vauxhall Zafira Tourer - from 2018 has a broken Android Auto, they stopped offering the map updates for sat nav in, like, 2019 and that update system is locked. AFAICT you need an encrypted thumb drive.

It's my first car with built in satnav, so it was not something I thought to test. A working Android Auto would be great compared to 10+ years out of date maps.

[cyberax]

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid

Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit.

Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.

[maxdo]

huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.

Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.

their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists on fsd with myself. Yesterday i 0 touch 1h 30 min drive from long island all the way to a very busy manhattan street. tons of exits, complicated connections etc.

It's not even comparable. Everything else feels like a horse carriage vs space ship.

[maxdo]

you can swipe left to show full map if you in the navigation and open it almost in full screen. even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Really fake concern.

you can pin your Bluetooth app with drag-n drop , never used car link so not sure if that's an app or an icon.

glovebox is the real annoying item i can confirm is a 100% weird design choice. I still love pin in valet mode so that my items are not stolen.

[cyberax]

> you can swipe left to show full map if you in the navigation and open it almost in full screen. even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Really fake concern.

Would you mind uploading a picture of this "almost full screen"?

> even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands.

Yeah, sure. "We removed about 40% of the screen, but don't worry, you still have a lot of screen left!"

[cyberax]

> huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.

I think it's 40%? Most of this screen is utterly useless for me. I don't care about "other items". I want more map, and next several turns in that spot.

The speed limit can stay in a nice carved-out area at the top left.

> Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk.

Oh wow. Being able to opening the trunk is now the pinnacle of usability. How about a glovebox?

How about making the Homelink button always visible, because GPS is not always reliable. How about making Bluetooth icon always available? Ditto for compass.

> I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.

Nope. It's just copium.

[BeetleB]

> On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.

I'd agree if it worked.

Android Auto sucks. And I don't like that my auto manufacturer can wash their hands off it by pointing at Google.

> If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.

As long as the car manufacturer gives me basic functionality (radio, stereo, Bluetooth, etc). Nominally they do, but it sucks in a different way from Android Auto. So I have to ping pong between these two.

My prior car's aftermarket Bluetooth receiver was fantastic. The fact that I can't install something like that on modern cars is a huge regression.

[cyberax]

> Android Auto sucks.

No, it doesn't. It's a very simple streaming protocol.

It's literally a gRPC-encapsulated stream of h264 frames over a USB connection. With touch events and some car-related telemetry streamed back. You can implement it in a weekend: https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto

You can create whatever you want, including just streaming videos onto the head unit or making it play Doom while driving (with steering wheel for input).

[BeetleB]

Maybe I'm being imprecise.

What I mean is: When I enable Android Auto on my phone and on my car, and connect the two, I get something that has a poor UI and sucks.

[cyberax]

What exactly is poor?

[BeetleB]

Not sure if you're asking relative to other options, or just in the absolute. I'll respond to the latter.

Some of my complaints below may have remedies - please feel free to inform me!

When Android Auto loads up, it shows me a tile with the current weather. In Fahrenheit. I want it in Celsius. Everywhere on my phone I've set it to Celsius. In the Settings (I think multiple ones). In the actual weather app. But AA will show it in Fahrenheit.

And why show me that tile at all? I don't want to see it. I can't disable it. In my Android Auto settings, I removed it from the list of apps. It still shows up. Why can't I control what apps launch?

Why is there always a navigation app loaded? I don't want it on by default if I'm just going to listen to stuff. Nothing should be loaded by default except the launcher menu. I should be able to configure on my phone what I want autolaunched.

It eats up too much battery. Why does it need to eat so much battery if all I'm using it for is to listen to podcasts? With regular Bluetooth, it barely consumes battery.

Waze sucks on AA compared to just plain Android. I can't, for example, send an ETA via AA. I can't even do it on my phone while connected to AA.

Why does the air vent fan speed drop dramatically when I get a call? Why does the climate system even know I'm getting a call?

If I connect my phone via USB cable, why does it insist I connect via Bluetooth? I can go to Android settings, have Bluetooth forget my car, and when I plug in the USB and launch Android Auto, Android will connect to Bluetooth. I Googled and apparently this is intentional. I find it very hostile.

That's all from the top of my head. I'm sure I can come up with plenty more.

[xmprt]

Android Auto sucks but I guarantee that any software that those car companies would have made in house would be many times worse.

[BeetleB]

Disagree. They mostly suck in a different way, with neither being better than the other. I've often switched back and forth.

But this is a red herring. With older cars, you could install a 3rd party system and it was far superior to Android Auto for the basic things I need.

[maxdo]

why on earth you need an aftermarket receiver of Bluetooth? The cost of the module is few dollars. My cheap ac has bluethooth, just to connect it wifi, i used it once in it's lifetime.

The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, what if you have several devices in the car etc ? it's such a horrible, broken, neurotic idea.

[BeetleB]

> The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices,

Why would you get that idea? Do you have to pair your phone every time for all other Bluetooth products?

[maxdo]

because that's the only way to use that CarPlay, if you need music, navigation, etc. if you have a standalone computer you don't have to do so.

[BeetleB]

I still have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm not speaking in the abstract. I've done this before on older cars.

[Telaneo]

Given that the (user-facing) software that comes with the car is always broken (modulo Tesla and a few other modern exceptions), it's no wonder people want to replace that software with literally anything else that actually works.

This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved.

It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.

[izacus]

Err, Teslas aren't an outlier - the OTAs break shit all the time and in many ways they're worse than cars not getting OTAs because of that :(

[maxdo]

I can name you tons of things they fix over 5 years i own over the air. The ratio there is very very net positive towards a very good , well polished system, not an other way around.

They even fixed once a semi broken hardware for me. Camera power started acting up. I called tesla they said you can come to service to replace or wait a bit we will release OTA that will decrease a power consumption, in 3-4 weeks they fix my custom problem without going to serive

[Telaneo]

Yet they still manage to be better than the baseline, since that's located somewhere around the Mariana Trench.

[izacus]

I've been driving many cars lately and I strongly disagree.

[plqbfbv]

> the OTAs break shit all the time

Uh? I can literally count the times my Model 3 2019 software broke something on one hand:

- when they redesigned the AC controls to make them more visually appealing but less functional (no button borders and no fill)

- when they decided to put air recirculation under auto-control and ignore the user's settings

- when they optimized the cellular connectivity and it took them a while to get back proper reconnect on loss of signal (garages etc)

- when they tuned sentry's sensitivity and there was some back-and-forth for a couple cycles between "record everything" and "record nothing"

None of this made the car undrivable or totally useless. I did hear of reports of early HW4 cars bricking their FSD computer, and Tesla replaced it.

In my opinion it's still a much better experience than the absolute guesswork of "what will my screen display today when I connect the phone? and where will I find Maps again?", based on software updates on the car AND the phone.

EDIT: also agreeing with the sibling comments: my 7 year old car got a lot of extra features since release, and most of them working very well at the first try.

[afavour]

> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced.

In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.

[janalsncm]

> software is solved with AI

Presumably every car manufacturer can use AI. Yet there are still bugs. If all bugs are solved with AI, and therefore every car manufacturer with access to AI writes bug-free software, the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.

[Reason077]

> ”the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.”

This suggests the supply of AI is too limited, and there isn’t enough AI to go around. Solution: build more AI data centres.

[Our_Benefactors]

> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user

Hello, Elon

Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.

[parineum]

> It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.

Why doesn't op simply ask AI to write software to fix his problem?

[Rebelgecko]

A lot of the time, the head unit only accepts signed updates

[parineum]

Software is solved so you just need to use AI to fix android auto or find a vulnerability in the head unit.