[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On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and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.

[JoshTriplett]

Yes, exactly. And USB enumeration has the advantage of being extremely standard and making it easy to extend by adding additional devices rather than changing the data stream to the existing devices.

[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.

[cyberax]

Sorry, but you're getting confused. First you want to give car to somebody else, and somehow having built-in shitty navigation (that they don't know how to use) makes it better.

Now you're offended by Android Auto making it easy for people to just plug in the phone and start driving?

It's clear that you have not used AA/CarPlay, but they _also_ offer wireless pairing. If you're using the car constantly, you can just pair it with your phone. There are even retrofit adapters available, so even a 10-year-old car can be wirelessly connected.

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

Nope. Cars should offer one thing only: Android Auto/CarPlay. That's it. Nothing else is needed.

Can your car play audiobooks and pause them when the navigator makes a voice announcement? Can it play a Youtube podcast that you started listening on your computer?

[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.

[cyberax]

> 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.

I don't think I ever saw this behavior?

> Why is there always a navigation app loaded?

I think this is the default? I have OsmAnd+ instead of Google Maps by default.

> 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.

This is because your phone needs to encode the contents of its display as h264 stream.

> 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?

AndroidAuto can notify the car that it wants reduced noise.

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

This is all fixable in software on Android. Nothing from your list is a problem on the _car_ side.

Given that the protocol is now documented and available, it doesn't even need to be implemented in Android. You can have a KDE desktop running on your car!

I actually played with that about 10 years ago: https://github.com/Cyberax/aauto/tree/master

[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.