It never made sense to me why you'd want to have a built-in GPS these days when modular devices are available that are A. generally better-designed and B. replaceable. People buying used cars in the coming years will be stuck with these big-screened dinosaurs in their dash that are essentially wasted space.
The big screens and not-required data connections are convenient. There are also local oddities to GPS e.g. in Japan GPS are keyed on landlines and mapcodes (proprietary GPS-ish codes) not addresses.
OTOH the interfaces of built-in navs &al tend to be unmitigated disasters.
At the end of the day, phone integration (Android's Auto and Apple's CarPlay) are probably what you want.
although i don't use it for directions, i use the digital map every time i drive. i drive a higher end car which has two maps, one in the center console and one in the instrument pod. i set the the instrument pod to show a top-down zoomed in dynamic heading version and the console map shows a bird's eye zoomed out fixed north version. very useful.
also satellite radio and weather/traffic is useful. if i want directions my phone will play them audibly over bluetooth while i look at my dash map (it's the same map!)
i think any car with bluetooth and a halfway decent regular map will be useful for years to come. my parents have a 10 year old car with a map that's still useful for basic nav.
My car has voice-control, so I press a button on the steering wheel, speak my destination, and I'm good to go. It works really well. I can't do this easily on a smartphone while I'm driving.
The "big-screen dinosaur" is incredibly helpful for showing routes and directions, much better than the dinky smartphone screen.
Ford has a good passthrough to Android (hold down Speak button). GM has a terrible system that requires you to wait to speak for a quiet beep, and chides you if you don't. It's very odd and never fails to infuriate me.
Bluetooth headset + phone gives you the same functionality. They even have bluetooth buttons you can attach to your steering wheel if reaching up to your ear isn't something you want to do.
Now you have to keep track of chargers, and kludge things onto your car. A button on your wheel, a holder on your window or clipped somehow onto your dash.
The bluetooth buttons just connect to your car. Install it, and then never mess with it again.
I assume most people take their phone around with them these days. I have a magnetic mount in my car, so as I'm sitting down I just lay it on the magnet on the dash and go.
It's possible to speak to the phone using the buttons of the car. Specifically pressing the dial or command button. If your car has bluetooth phone audio, or bluetooth "music" audio connection it becomes a lot more possible.
This. My mom's BMW has a really useful navigation display on the HUD. It also shows your speed. These two things mean you basically never have to look down from the window. Definitely comes in handy, especially in stressful driving scenarios.
Yeah, it's pretty sad. I was ready to buy a brand-new Subaru a couple years ago, but they mandated the shitty touch screen in the dash on all new models. Ended up with a used Mazda3. I was very interested in the new ND Miata, but they mandate the dumb LCD screen in the middle of the dash. Nope, not doing that. Seems early 2010s are the last of the good, pre-technology cars. Hopefully the self driving ones come soon before those models are worn out.
In its defense, the Mazda Connect system is pretty nice. It's solely focused on entertainment, navigation, and some secondary car management functions (maintenance intervals, explanation of trouble lights, long-term MPG charts).
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the touchscreen/command knob is the way things are now. You can't do terrestrial radio, satellite radio, bluetooth, USB music playback, etc with a single knob and 20-character display. All of these features have worked their way into being standard now. Nobody ships an AM/FM radio.
And now that backup cameras are mandatory in the USA as of the 2018 model year, you're going to need that LCD display anyway. So it's easier to throw all the HMI/IVI on that board and be done with it.
The Mazda Connect is run off an NXP iMX6 SoC, which is very powerful yet affordable enough to put in Mazda's base models for no upgrade charge. It's also highly hackable. =)
Oh, and HVAC is still done with physical knobs in a convenient location.
A CD player's still convenient on a long road trip when one wants to listen to one's own music, not the radio or the satellite. A phone can only hold so much!
The Mazda Connect has two USB ports in the dashboard. You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other.
> You can charge a phone with one and plug a multi-terabyte portable drive full of MP3s into the other.
Will it recognise an ext4-formatted drive, or does it require FAT, NTFS or something else?
Perhaps there are two people in the car charging their phones?
I really, really don't understand the hatred for CDs. Why, someone downvoted my original comment because I noted that they can be useful for a long road trip! Honestly, I'd expect that to be non-controversial: CDs require no data connexion; they are a physical audio format, which means that they can be converted to MP3, FLAC or whatever else one likes; they are owned by you, unlike a streaming music service's tracks.
You can't do terrestrial radio, satellite radio, bluetooth, USB music playback, etc with a single knob and 20-character display.
The 2nd easiest-to-use interface in our vehicles is the USD$85 Pioneer DIN 1 head unit we put in our '81 VW camper van. It does all of what you list, as well as Pandora and (some other music service). Lots of buttons, not just one knob, but I'll bet that display doesn't do a whole lot more than 20 characters.
The most easy-to-use interface we have is CarPlay on the aftermarket head unit in our '04 Scion xB. Any cars we buy in the future will have CarPlay or no sale. I'm done with crap ass automotive UIs done by some designer trying to make her mark on the world. And though I'm sure some makers have UIs that don't suck, I'm not going to the trouble to find out which. CarPlay or nothing.
As an owner of the new Mazda3, I actually use the builtin nav more than I do the phone one. It's always there, it's always loaded, always initialized, has better organized UI (canceling routes, adding waypoints, etc. needs way less taps than Sygic/Apple Maps/GMaps do) and shows the upcoming navigation events on the projected HUD.
Unfortunately it also runs less smoothly and it's uglier and RDS traffic info is less reliable than phone one. At least for me the simpler UI and phone battery saving rally outweigh the downsides though.
(I got my nav included with the car, but compared to VAG group which charges 1000EUR+ for nav unit, 400EUR didn't seem to be all that much IMO.)
The navigation system that came with my 2004 Infiniti performs better than almost any systems I have used. It is well integrated with the car, it starts in seconds, there are physical buttons for the most common operations, it always plans a route in a few seconds at most. The screen space is used well so I can see what I need with just a glance. The company that built it clearly thought through what they were building and built a product that is solid and scores very high on usability.
Integrated navigation systems can provide more value than what a phone can. The obvious point is that the screen can be bigger, but more valuable is integrated with the car audio to turn down music when giving directions. When driving in tunnels and there is no GPS because it can talk to the car it knows the speed and can provide better estimations. And having permanent buttons right on your dash that you can hit without taking your eyes off the road is something that no phone will have. These are the type of features that a integrated navigation system should absolutely nail.
The navigation in my 13 year old car might be a dinosaurs, but in the world of car software what matters more than age is usability.
Now on the flip side I have used various navigation systems that are almost the exact opposite and are always a pain to use. If that is all you have ever experienced it is entirely understandable that you might think that this years system is a dinosaur. Having recently car shopped I was saddened at the state of many of the systems I tried. They probably have 10X as much computing power, but they were slower and more difficult to use. I could easily see how someone who bought one of these thinking how next years model would be better simply because it would be faster from the faster computer when it is clear that it was lazy coding and a failure to prioritize usability.
I have had the same experience with my car. Car manufacturers are far better at the car/dash experience than phones, however the phones have been catching up. Apps like Waze are hard to ignore. What would be ideal is a high quality integration between the two worlds, or at least the ability to use the phone's touchscreen as an extended mirroring display of one's phone if you choose as a universal standard.
I'd like to see a car have both Apple car and Android Auto. My point was more around the universal ability to extend either to your screen and not have to have to pick a particular car and particular phone to work together.
That's exactly how I felt about our old Volvo. We bought it used and didn't even know it had nav until I accidentally hit the the buttons on the back of the steering wheel during our test drive. It was a disc based system, but pretty fast. The discs were 10 years old and some points of interest were out of date, but it was surprisingly good for being that old. If there was a missing waypoint or destination, we would just enter the street address in and be good to go.
The interface was what I loved though. The screen popped up out of the dash* which meant that it was super easy to see without looking down at the center console, and it didn't replace our radio or other screens with the nav, the screen was nav only.
The controls were cursor based (not pointer, but just menu selection) so the buttons were on the back of the steering wheel, so you didn't even have to take your hands off the wheel to run it. All it needed was a 4-way pad and an enter and back button. There was an IR wireless remote that the passenger could use.
One of my favorite features was that it easily supported multiple waypoints, search along route, and it stored routes even when you turned the car off. Taking a multi-day road trip? No problem!
* How the motorized screen still worked on a 10 year old volvo is probably a small miracle considering what didn't work on that car.
My maps app on my phone gets much more frequent updates than the maps fucntion in my car. Saying that I do use my in car nav system, I just rely on googlemaps for traffic data and redirections,
It simply makes no sense to use in-car GPS. Updates are free (some car markers charge them) and fast for mobile apps. There's a little tradeoff (privacy) though.
Bad UI, quickly out-of-date data, required trip to dealer to update said data, and lack of traffic awareness makes them just useless compared to something like Waze.
Last time I used a car GPS, it told me I was in for a 20 hour drive across the northern midwest. Google Maps helpfully turned that into 4 hours, by recognizing the major highway missing from the car system. A highway, I should add, at least ten years older than the car.
The struggle for Waze is keeping their traffic data up to the minute, the struggle for cars is keeping their roadmaps on par with a decade-old atlas.
Waze continually gets me to work through back roads and side streets in 20 min, a trip that in traffic on the "normal" routes takes roughly an hour... Maybe one day cars will have GPS on that level built in... but for now... nope
In the DC area enough people have this kind of intelligent routing that Waze seldom saves me much time. And not all of it is intelligent, Waze-style routing; a lot of it is just that people know shortcuts. Even when it claims to have time savings at the beginning, usually it eliminates those time savings from its estimate as I actually drive.
Sometimes Waze gets a shortcut for me that actually saves maybe three or four minutes...but at the expense of driving down dangerous roads and making numerous turns. Typically it's not even worth it.
About the only time Waze is worth it is when there is an extraordinary event, such as a very bad wreck or a closed road. In those circumstances rerouting can save time.
At least Waze is up to date. Apple sometimes gives me impossible routes (e.g. illegal turns) and has some street and highway names that have been out-of-date for at least six months. Google on the other hand has an infuriating way of asking me to confirm reroutes that supposedly save me time, and giving me only a few seconds to do it. But Waze has a muddy, horrible interface. All these services have flaws.
If you have a truly intelligent system it would spread the load across the roads equal to what they can handle rather than the system now where everyone seems to take the "main" road leading to congestion on that road and quiet side streets.
Side streets need to support their fair share of traffic. Most cars these days are very quiet, barring the occasional beater, utility truck, and ricer. That being said, if they slow cars down Waze will direct less drivers to them.
Those side streets were funded with the same public money as the big ones... and the idea that residents somehow have special rights to them is rather wrong.
Property owners claiming rights to how public property near them is used is rediculous
I think that's demonstrably false... if more traffic is using the side routes, it reroutes to other side routes... it distributes the load across the road system... my route is often different every day because of this...
Believe it or not, there exists a Nash equilibrium for this. There are several papers discussing various approaches to optimally distributing traffic so everyone gets the best possible route given all the cars on the network:
I have read a paper (which I can't find now) that claimed that cooperative optimization had visible effects on overall routing with as little as 7% of the traffic population participating in the cooperative routing scheme. So it doesn't even require that everyone use the same scheme to get some benefits, which is nice.
Another reason not mentioned by the article is map updates. Lexus charges $169+ to update the map data and requires a dealer appointment. A smartphone with google/Apple maps is always more up-to-date.
If you're buying a new car today, the reason to get navigation is for the LCD screen and not for the GPS. The LCD is used to see the rear view camera image for parking. Also, playing music shows the song titles.
It would be nice for a lot of reasons but I think over all the net damage from the distraction would be more than the damage saved by people realizing they forgot to pin the trailer coupler and similar stuff. You don't have many reasons to see that field of view at speed since pretty much every reverse camera basically points down.
Rear view mirrors are useful while going forward. But, it's fairly easy to block that line of sight in a full car, thus making the rear view camera a useful backup.
You can with the appropriate device on certain cars. I retrofit a newer headunit into my older truck and also have the added benefit of turning the backup cam on whenever I want.
Several competitors starting to pop-up here. One downside on all of them currently is, you need to connect to a wifi network generated by the camera. They have mini-routers built in because of the speed required to even come close to streaming real-time video.
Right, the way map updates are priced it seems best to me to update roughly once every five years or so. My habit is to try the car nav first (because there are some things about it that are more convenient, especially the next turn information on mine below the speedometer) and if it doesn't find an address or the route looks somewhat off switch to my phone.
Having worked for a company selling satnavs and mapping, typically an automotive company has some number of map updates that will be released for a given product per year. It generally ranges anywhere from 4 to 1/year. However, there were some instances where it was a single update at the time of release and then no more.
We bought a Gamin GPS for my wife as she prefers it over using a phone for navigation. It has lifetime map updates and costs less than the map update for my car's built in navigation. It's also far superior in several ways including knowing the speed limit on more roads, showing the name of the upcoming cross streets and better multi-lane information.
I personally tend to use Waze on my phone but like the Garmin navigation experience more overall.
Previously I had used my phone, but after taking a few small trips and the phone's GPS either placed me on an incorrect street, or was unable to get a steady signal - I decided I needed a Garmin.
I've been happy with it thus far, and with the lifetime map updates it's pretty nice. I do with the model I got had weather overlays, but that's just me being picky.
Better multi lane information is great. I would also like better info on which lane to be in for a turn taking account of the fact that soon after I need to make another turn and don't want to have to cut across a lane to make it
This can't be said often enough! Whenever I am driving somewhere new I constantly have to look at the screen to see on the map what the turn after the upcoming one is going to be so that I can chose the right lane. For that very reason my wife and I still tend to have the passenger navigate which comes down to supplementing the Waze directions which information about what lane to likely chose depending on the turn after the next. To me this seems like a obvious short coming and I am surprised it's not a feature one can commonly expect.
I got annoyed by how poor Apple and Google Maps were here in Japan so I tried a local third-party app, and the navigation in it blows anything else I've seen out of the water. Just the lane guidance is amazingly good, and it does things like highlighting your destination on the road signs you're looking at
Is the Garmin smart enough so if two routes temporarily share a stretch of road it doesn't tell you to get off the route you were coming from? For example you are traveling east on route 2, route 202 merges into 2. Rt 2 and 202 are the same road for a few miles, then rt 202 splits off (you are going to continue going east on rt. 2). My GPS tells me to get off Rt2 and to "turn right" on to 202. My ideal GPS wouldn't say a damn thing in this situation since I am staying on the same road.
As much as the size, placement, and car integration of my vehicle's (2016 CX-5) dash GPS is ideal, the fact that it cannot display Waze renders it mostly useless for my everyday commuting. Until I can do so via Carplay or Android Auto, I'll be using gaudy cell phone mounts.
Built-in car systems are usually at least 5 years behind the current tech, whether it was CD players, a USB port or whatever GPS system they started putting in.
As an example - I have a car with a USB port, but the music player interface is so atrocious and is missing key features that it's actually worse than my Sansa Clip from 2008. The car is a 2012 model.
I'd be perfectly happy if my car just had a dock for my iPhone, with an amp for the speakers. I use my phone for anything music, gps or phone-related while driving.
The only time I don't use it is when I can't get the friggin' bluetooth to connect right away.
When I bought my latest car, navigation package included few safety features I wanted to get, so I had to get them to get somewhat safer car. My car -- Mazda, comes with free 3 years of map updates. I am yet to update it, because I'm lazy. It also comes with optional paid for traffic service. Why do I need to waste my money on that, when I can get free (I know, I know) Waze, Apple Maps or Google maps which will get me where I need to get avoiding traffic. Despite driving 2016 model year vehicle, I GPS/entertainment center feels like from 2010 or so. So yes, I use my phone for navigations most of the time.
I cited my experience with the new Rav4 satnav in a recent blog post [1] on the difference between "requirements" and "needs". Tweeted it with "If you've lost something in your modern Toyota, it's probably hiding behind a settings menu". The current version isn't terrible; the version the car was delivered to me truly was. Inexcusable. Although there are benefits to integration, unless the delivery model changes to a more phone-like one I can't see myself buying an built-in satnav again.
The quality of phone based GPS directions has improved drastically in the last 3 years. I had a cutting edge GPS about 5 years ago in my car that did better than my phone. Now there's no comparison and I wished one could simply mirror their iphone/android display into the car's touchscreen without the pageantry of needing an Android Auto/iPhone.
Because built-in GPS is terrible. I recently bought a 2016 Mercedes-AMG vehicle that has sat nav as standard(on non-AMG models it's a $1000 (!!!!!!) option). The satnav is made by Garmin, and it's just awful. Truly horrible in terms of speed, usability, and it only gets updates once a year(you get a new SD card when you go for the annual service).
In the meantime, my TomTom 5000 satnav is still unbeaten - free lifetime upgrades, clear, fast interface, free and constant internet connection in every country of the world, with accurate traffic and speed camera updates. And it only cost me ~$250 new.
I just don't understand why anyone would get a built-in satnav over a dedicated device.
- The car model probably had the first iteration of Garmin satnav solution for in-dash car infotainment systems. Garmin's architecture was basically built for PNDs(dedicated device) based of their own internal custom OS. This was quickly ported to support in dash infotainment market. I am sure consequent releases got better in performance and usage.
- Garmin solution is optimized to perform well based on available resources. SD card read writes, low memory requirements, and other resource restrictions are accountable for the slow performance as well.
I am not trying to defend but just want to share the challenges that Garmin faced while they tried to gain market share. I am confident that their solutions will get better with time and deliver better user experience and innovation in the car.
This is why Carplay/Android Auto are so key. They're safer than using your actual phone, they offer legitimate maps apps (Google Maps/Bing Maps/Apple Maps/etc), and are somewhat future proof.
Too bad the MirrorLink consortium dropped the ball so epically. MirrorLink arguably does the same thing as Carplay/Android Auto and has been deployed to millions of vehicles, but nobody uses MirrorLink 1.1, why? Because to get your app certified takes tens of thousands of dollars, months, and tons of paperwork.
Carplay/Android Auto literally exist because the MirrorLink group created so many rules, regulations, and nonsense in the name of safety that MirrorLink 1.1 has like twenty apps total after two years(!). So if your vehicle has MirrorLink on the feature list, just laugh and forget it exists, you won't be using it.
PS - MirrorLink 1.0 allowed two way screen sharing, which was legitimately useful. MirrorLink 1.1 is a very different beast, most newer cars and phones only have MirrorLink 1.1 (no 1.0 at all). 1.1 defines things like how big buttons have to be, what kind of animations can play, how many button presses to reach each task, etc. Then everything has to be certified by an independent auditor.
PPS - Most depressing part is: MirrorLink could certify Carplay/Android Auto themselves, and instantly add both to millions of existing vehicles on the road. But they're never going to simply because they're effectively in competition with both.
Apple takes backwards-compatibility very seriously for MFi protocols, because they know that the "accessories" are cars that people keep for a long time.
I used to work at a company making iPod car kits--we took an interface from 2006 (with a hard-wired 30-pin connector), hooked it through a FireWire->USB charging adapter, a 30-pin->Lightning adapter, and it worked fine with an iPhone 6.
I distinctly remember iPhones complaining about "obsolete device" when plugging them into a few years old Audi and VW cars around iPhone 4 era. That was then followed up with connectivity and charging issues.
I have an old car and it definitely doesn't work with anything newer than a 2G iPhone. No errors indicated, just can't hack it. It does work with a usb stick full of mp3s, though.
Could be FireWire charging--the original iPhone and earlier iPods could charge off 12V (FireWire), whereas the 3G and up only took 5V (USB). Adapters were available (although Apple didn't make them themselves)
Also with the early iPhones, if accessories were just "Made for iPod" certified but not "Made for iPhone" (which usually required TDMA emissions testing and iPhone testing) a message would pop up.
Carplay/Android Auto are just, at their core, dumb protocols for transmitting screen information and receiving back touch inputs. If you go disassemble Mirrorlink 1.1 apps they use the VNC protocol behind the scenes, the protocol isn't complex (the certification nonsense is all artificially added).
The reason for the fragmentation and pain in this particular space (infotainment units) is a combination of: raw greed, vehicle makers trying in vein to retain control, not-invented-here syndrome, and "safety."
The only issue I see with Carplay/Android Auto is that Apple & Google should have worked together to create a single protocol, which would have made implementation easier and likely resulted in a faster rollout. They both benefit by having the infotainment unit hand off to their respective smartphone OS.
Because CarPlay in 2016 doesn't support the new hotness of 2018, because we are an industry of attention-deficit twentysomethings.
Granted, were I forced to choose between attention-deficit twentysomethings and bureaucratic, glacial fiftysomethings … well honestly, I don't know which I'd choose.
If you're describing mercedes as the glacial50somethings, you're not aware that more often than not Mercedes are the first to market with a huge amount of every feature imaginable in the history of automaking. Want to see what features regular cars will have in 10 years? Go check out an S class today.
Things like onboard navigation, voice controls, parking sensors? All 90s technology on the S class. Autopilot came before the Tesla's, radars, adaptive suspension, etc are all things from several years ago in the S class land.
They just use that line to showcase all the cool things that a car can do.
Believe it or not, Android Auto and Carplay are a single standard underneath. They both use the same core technologies (very similar to Miracast) to do what they do.
Why would I pay hundreds of $currency for a new head unit or thousands for a new car, if I'm already walking around with a device capable doing all that? Android Auto/Car play should just run as a dedicated mode on the phone.
I think display placement is much more important than size. Using a phone for nav that's sitting in your cupholder is terribly dangerous, but using one clipped to your dash inside your field of view seems okay.
GPS units like Garmin use touchscreen instead of physical buttons and are safe, road legal. Tesla ships cars with a huge touchscreen console - safe and road legal. That's a pretty weak excuse.
We could also debate that things that hinder concentration while handling "2 tones of steel" are :
Agreed. I got the cheaper model of my car when I custom ordered it to not have the NAV addon because I knew I'd use my phone and didn't want to pay $2500 USD extra for my car.
As someone who had a 2012 Challenger, and recently went to a 2016 Challenger, have to agree... the backup camera, and moreso the blind spot indicators have been great improvements.
What is it about American cars[1] and tiny rear view windows? I once got a Ford Fusion rental in the US; I was surprised how little I could see of what was behind me.
I have never had the same issue with European/Japanese vehicles.
1. My sample size is small, I could have been unlucky. Anti-glare coating on rear view mirrors on American cars makess night-time driving awesome though, I wish the European/Japanese vehicles would copy that
The technical term is an 'electrochromatic auto-dimming rear-view mirror'. It's been an option on higher end cars/trims for the last ~5 years, even in Europe. On eBay there are DIY kits too.
Not high-end at all, my Fiesta has it as standard.
It's a fantastic feature, it just annoys me that the sensor gets hit by the car ceiling lights when they're on, so if the light is on you get a completely dark mirror. I call it a quirk because it sounds better than "terrible design".
> Anti-glare coating on rear view mirrors on American cars makess night-time driving awesome though, I wish the European/Japanese vehicles would copy that
In Europe and Japan (and most of the rest of the world), automotive headlamps conform to the relevant ECE standard which allows for less glare compared to the US standard (defined in FMVSS 108). So, at least in those markets, the anti-glare coating isn't as necessary.
Anecdotally, having recently driven a rental Mercedes C200, rear visibility was abysmal there too. Luckily it had a camera. I guess it's less a European/American thing but rather depends on the car (type).
My Toyota Camry had the same limitation but I later found even the lower end models have a video in jack on the display module to connect a third party camera. Got one installed for $150 including labor.
Even with good rear view, I find the backup camera super useful. In fact on my car I wish there was a way to have it running no matter the shifter position; I have a Ford Escape and the car must be going in reverse for the camera to activate. The most useful feature are the guide lines overlaid on the video that bend according to steering wheel position, and crosshairs that let me position my hitch to within half an inch of a trailer coupling.
Luckily the NHTSA is requiring backup cameras on 100% new cars by mid-2018.
Yep. A better approach these days would be to have the car dash component simply be a display/remote control surface for the phone rather than have all the software in the car.
I appreciate that approach has certain disadvantages for device and car makers, but really, the only additional value they could add from my perspective is a more convenient display location and larger, car-centric controls. The apps, the configs, accounts, audio, etc. I only ever use my phone anymore anyway.
And, yes, I have built in nav and never use it in favor of the phone. I also have a Bluetooth-to-FM relay device for the audio.
That's exactly what Android Auto is (can't speak for Carplay) --- it's a dumb terminal which is controlled by your phone. All the real software runs there.
I believe all the car provides is a screen, some speakers, a microphone and (possibly) a touch surface.
It's not a dumb terminal, it's a fully fledged car nav system from the car manufacturer, which also (secondary function) serves as an external screen for Android Auto/CarPlay. A dumb terminal would be dead until you connected the phone to it (and also cheaper).
The 2016 VW Sportwagen I does have a touch screen console either with or without Nav. The SE model and below does not have Nav and SEL does. I got the SE because it was the nicest model without Nav.
Built in Nav in cars is so shitty that I would personally pay extra to not have it.
Point taken for being a nav or not, but those touchscreens are still functional as in being a car stereo, contact manager (for BT calling), handling settings for the car computer etc.
But to answer my question why there's no standalone mode for Android Auto/Car Play - probably because they struck a deal with car vendors to sell more extras with the cars or newer cars.
So if you drive something older - fuck you and consume.
That's not a realistic option - most cars use their head units to control everything, from audio to car and safety settings. Those are essential features you'd be missing.
I've had this problem a long time ago (10 years) with my Honda and was able to pull out the control module out of the dash and just leave it in the space behind the new dash. But that's a case by case solution.
Honestly, the blame lies with the carmakers. They made these terrible digital dashboards in many cases with no after market upgrade paths. Obviously their incentive is sell/lease you a new car every few years... so why would they make it easy to upgrade. No incentive
Biggest reason I ended up getting the 2016 model vs 2015 (which had a much bigger discount) because of Carplay/Android auto. I won't be a frustrated by the digital NAV that never is upgraded.
I'm hoping the Carplay/Android auto compatibility is there for at least 6+ years of new phone models. But honestly I don't know how much I trust the above mentioned phone vendors.
This feels familiar - I have a 2014 Volkswagen with touchscreen, bluetooth audio, calling, contact management, MirrorLink, etc. - about 1 out of 10 times upon starting the car the iPhone won't be able to connect to the car. It will only work again if I stop the car for a few minutes and start it again. Of course there are no VW software updates to be found and I'm not interested in bringing my car in to be serviced for this. All I want is Apple to be the software vendor of my car.
However using CarPlay of course requires me to buy a new car. There's no upgrade path which is very, very disappointing.
I have a 2016 VW Sportswagen that I use with my iPhone all the time. Everything just works and in 10 the Maps app in Carplay has gotten better.
About a month ago I was driving with a friend of mine in the passenger seat. Driving 45 minutes to some trails upstate. I asked him to put his Maps on (Android) so I don't need to get my phone out of my bad and fuck around with it while driving. He's got Galaxy 6 edge+ so I figured it just work... Boy was I wrong.
When he plugged it in nothing happened except autoplaying some music. Since I'm driving how no idea how to make it work. Turns out you need to download an App from the app store to make it work... but Android gives you no notification about it.
Then there's a whole on-boarding process you got to click through. Then you need to agree to let the Android connect to the Car all in all about 5 different agree prompts. Took about 30 minutes to get this going.
After all that the car would lose Android Auto connection with the phone every few minutes. Apparently it's a know issue with that model of Android and VW.
What a terrible experience. For a while I was thinking of getting an Android phone next time I need a new phone (break, slow/sluggish). Not going to happen now.
> How horrible, you had to install a single app and click "Next" a few times!
If you include the "guide" that you have the scroll through and then the 5 "Accept" popups for allowing the car to connect to the phone it's like about 9 clicks. Pretty crappy UX.
But really it's the whole process of getting setup. The Android phone didn't put up a prompt when plugged in to tell you you needed to download the Android Auto app. My friend had to Google how to make this thing work.
Compare that to the CarPlay experience. Connect, click accept once in car UI and accept in iPhone to allow the car to access it. From plugin to navigating on the dash about 30 seconds.
> If you include the "guide" that you have the scroll through and then the 5 "Accept" popups for allowing the car to connect to the phone it's like about 9 clicks. Pretty crappy UX.
Isn't that just the standard Android permission prompts?
I wonder if phone VR adapters could be useful for driving. With a wider angle camera, and maybe some AR niceties like sticking trip info below the windshield or overlay the nav directions on top of the roadway I could totally get into it. And I would kill for something that solves the solar glare issue.
The problem with Android Auto, at least by the test I saw done by c't magazine is that it doesn't always work. It's a M android device to N cars relationship, creating a lot of combinations that need to be tested. At least in the test I saw if it worked depended on the phone. Pretty much the same problem miracast has and why google probably developed the chromecast.
I guess MirrorLink is trying to solve that problem by more thorough testing.
> It's a M android device to N cars relationship, creating a lot of combinations that need to be tested
I'm certain that Android Auto compatibility is part of the Android Compatibility Test Suite that all OHA OEMs have to run for phones in order to get Google apps. The tests probably are not perfect
Not sure about that. In many cars you have to take your eyes pretty far down from the road to look at the radio. Touchscreens honestly don't belong down there, I'd much rather have physical controls I can operate by feel.
Phones can be mounted in the visual scan across the windshield (close and small enough to not occlude anything).
I use the built-in GPS about 99% of the time. I keep a mount in the car just in case I need to use my phone for navigation, but that almost never happens.
The built-in navigation isn't great. It lacks some pretty obvious options (it doesn't offer multiple routes, and you can't give it intermediate waypoints) and its routing is occasionally stupid. Although the big screen shows Google Maps, the actual routing is done using an onboard database which is not as good as Google is. But it's good enough that the convenience of just using the big screen in the car outweighs the superior results I get from my phone.
It is getting better, which is one thing most cars can't say. We recently got the ability to have it avoid toll roads, for example, and while that really should have been there from the beginning, it's pretty cool that it can be added after the fact.
Navigation is one of the top complaints from Tesla owners in my experience, and I agree with a lot of those complaints, but it's not bad enough to have me going for my phone except in rare cases.
Out of curiosity, does the Tesla system pay any attention to the number of people in the vehicle? For example in the sf bay area, there are some places where going from one highway to another (eg 101 to 85) is a left exit for carpools and right exit for solo occupant.
Most gps let you pick to include or exclude car pools, but it is such a pain to change the setting that it is usually left on excluding car pools. But Tesla could know exactly how many people are in the car, and do the right thing automatically. It would also affect journey times since car pool lanes are often quicker.
Interesting question. No such option is exposed, and I don't think it's doing anything clever with seat occupancy sensors. I'm not sure how aware it is of HOV restrictions in the first place. I think that for routes which are only restricted at certain times of day, it will freely use them, and for routes which are always HOV it will never use them.
There are also some HOT lanes around here (where you can either drive for free with 3+ people, or pay a toll with less) and it never routes me onto those, even though it happily routes me onto other toll roads. Not sure what's up with that.
* voice commands for navigation actually work. Recognition is quick and accurate.
* Should you need to type in an address, Tesla treats you like an adult, and lets you do it while the car is moving.
All the other recent cars I've driven won't even let the passenger enter an address unless the car is stopped.
I use the built in GPS, and I use it even for my daily commute. The biggest factors for me are that it uses google maps, it is traffic aware, and the screen is large enough to show detailed traffic for the route.
The UI just got a refresh with version 8.0 and it is now even easier to use. With a single swipe I can navigate to home or work (it is location and time aware, so it will navigate me to the right destination automatically), and the navigation now sticks to the top half of the screen when I have two apps open. I tend to leave the nav in fullscreen mode though since I like to see more of my route.
Its critical for long distance trips because it will also navigate you through superchargers automatically as needed, and will tell you how long you will need to charge at each, along with an estimate of your trip time. I have taken a lot of long trips since getting the Tesla so this has been invaluable.
Supposedly the next update will use the navigation to guide the autopilot (it will take exit ramps between highways automatically).
Even in the Model S, I use my phone's directions. Tesla's map app is great, and the UI is _really_ good (even better in the latest update!), but their source for navigation is garbage (and also their routing algorithm).
I hear it's cause whatever they use works offline, but also because Google wants them to send back real time data, but Tesla doesn't want to (forgot where I heard this though).
I would much much prefer to use the Tesla UI for nav, but the directions are really that bad.
I've used the built-in nav for about a year, and had to go buy a phone mount.
My wife just bought a brand new Toyota Highlander and I can confirm that the nav system is terrible. I can only imagine how much that turd increased the purchase price.
Which is really depressing. Toyota make fantastic vehicles but they're being outclassed by others simply because their infotainment system feels like a relic from the early 2000s.
They've also doubled down on their refusal to not include Carplay/Android Auto. They're putting something called "SmartDeviceLink" which is yet another MirrorLink 1.1 clone (which is itself a disaster), but this time controlled by a different consortium of companies.
Although amusingly the other major auto maker putting SmartDeviceLink in their vehicles, Fort, has already given up and put Carplay/Android Auto into their latest Ford SYNC3 infotainment system software. Leaving Toyota the only major company providing SmartDeviceLink.
I legitimately think Toyota will slump in sales when seemingly every other major manufacturer has Carplay/Android Auto. All because Toyota is greedy and wants to profit off of the infotainment unit rather than the vehicle itself.
They've also doubled down on their refusal to not include Carplay/Android Auto. They're putting something called "SmartDeviceLink" which is yet another MirrorLink 1.1 clone
I just do...not...get this. In what alternate reality do they live that would cause them to think "this time will be different"? History has shown time and again that your proprietary special snowflake platform is not going to cause app writers to flock to you when there's something like CarPlay/Android Auto available. I mean, MirrorLink was a pretty good idea, didn't have any real competitors at the time, and it still sold like dog shit sandwiches. Save everyone some time and money, suck it up, swallow your pride, and just put CarPlay/Android Auto on there. Because as I've said elsewhere in this thread, not only will I not buy your proprietary infotainment system, I won't even buy your car.
Even I, a long-time geek who will endure a lot of pain to get something working, cringes at the thought of the hoops I'd have to jump through to get "SmartDeviceLink" to an even minimally useful state. My CarPlay head unit also has MirrorLink, and while I was waiting for Pioneer to update the firmware to include CarPlay, I thought I'd give MirrorLink a whirl. First, I apparently needed to go get a special cable. Yeah, fuck that, you exceeded my tolerance for friction in the first sentence of your user manual. CarPlay? Plugged my iPhone in, waited to see what Apple's special version of frictional hell would be and...it just worked. There's your competition, car makers, and if takes more than just plugging my phone in I'm not buying it.
If Waze came to Car play and android auto I imagine a lot of people would use it. The only navigation I currently use is Waze and I use it every single time I'm driving, even if I do not need directions. The ETA, routing, and the alerts are useful even if you know where you are going.
Builtin GPS was pretty much the only requirement I had for the last few cars I got (both VW) and tbh I'm not that disappointed. The only thing really lacking is decent search, once you have an address to input it's mostly ok, but it's true that the temptation to just say "fuck it, I've found it on Maps, let's just use this" is there. If there was an easy way to copy or "stream" the address to the car via bluetooth, I think most people would use it.
It looks like the field is in flux anyway, VW keeps dramatically changing the UI in every new car.
I've always hated built in GPS for two reasons. First and most important - the damn maps are always viewed from directly above the car so the map is 2D and North is always at the top. There is a lot of effin' mental work to try and figure out which damn way your car is pointing and whether you need to turn left or turn right because you may be driving "down" the map and shit is reversed. On my phone or on my garmin I get a perspective view of my car and it's position on the earth. There is no confusion about which way I actually need to turn.
Secondly, the vast majority of built in GPS is on a console a good 6 to 12 inches below the windshield. Meaning I have to remove my eyes far off the road in order to look at everything. My garmin mounts to my windshield or dash. It is a quick glance and then eyes back at the road.
>the damn maps are always viewed from directly above the car so the map is 2D and North is always at the top.
Both my previous car (2013 Ford C-Max hybrid) and current car (2014 Audi A4) both had options to adjust whether the nav map view was locked to cardinal directions, or if it followed the car's perspective.
Funny. My main complaint is the opposite. The phone is using a confusing 3D interface instead of the simple 2D interface that I want. And because software is just great and doesn't have any bugs, it sometime won't even remember to always use the 2D projection that I requested.
After reading the article, I think the non-clickbait title should be "Most drivers who own cars with built-in GPS systems _sometimes_ use phones for directions".
I am pretty happy with my built-in system - it is fast, always on, integrates well with the car, provides dual-screens (in dash and bigger console screen output), free quarterly OTA map updates, uses Google for POI search, live traffic. Most important I don't need to fish my phone out of pocket, mount it somewhere and connect cable for longer trips.
Yet I am also sometimes (1%?) use phone for directions. Most of the time it is when I need to lookup something nearby and I am not in the car.
392 comments
[ 7.6 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadOTOH the interfaces of built-in navs &al tend to be unmitigated disasters.
At the end of the day, phone integration (Android's Auto and Apple's CarPlay) are probably what you want.
also satellite radio and weather/traffic is useful. if i want directions my phone will play them audibly over bluetooth while i look at my dash map (it's the same map!)
i think any car with bluetooth and a halfway decent regular map will be useful for years to come. my parents have a 10 year old car with a map that's still useful for basic nav.
The "big-screen dinosaur" is incredibly helpful for showing routes and directions, much better than the dinky smartphone screen.
Easily replaceable, cheaper, better design.
No thanks.
I assume most people take their phone around with them these days. I have a magnetic mount in my car, so as I'm sitting down I just lay it on the magnet on the dash and go.
For $400 I'll stick with my phone. If only Mazda got CarPlay working on their dashboards as they've been promising for two years now.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the touchscreen/command knob is the way things are now. You can't do terrestrial radio, satellite radio, bluetooth, USB music playback, etc with a single knob and 20-character display. All of these features have worked their way into being standard now. Nobody ships an AM/FM radio.
And now that backup cameras are mandatory in the USA as of the 2018 model year, you're going to need that LCD display anyway. So it's easier to throw all the HMI/IVI on that board and be done with it.
The Mazda Connect is run off an NXP iMX6 SoC, which is very powerful yet affordable enough to put in Mazda's base models for no upgrade charge. It's also highly hackable. =)
Oh, and HVAC is still done with physical knobs in a convenient location.
So weird that it came with a CD player, though. I thought those would have been gone by 2016...
Will it recognise an ext4-formatted drive, or does it require FAT, NTFS or something else?
Perhaps there are two people in the car charging their phones?
I really, really don't understand the hatred for CDs. Why, someone downvoted my original comment because I noted that they can be useful for a long road trip! Honestly, I'd expect that to be non-controversial: CDs require no data connexion; they are a physical audio format, which means that they can be converted to MP3, FLAC or whatever else one likes; they are owned by you, unlike a streaming music service's tracks.
I think that they still have their use cases.
(as an aside, why am I getting hit with 'you're submitting too fast' recently? I'm really not submitting that many comments!)
The 2nd easiest-to-use interface in our vehicles is the USD$85 Pioneer DIN 1 head unit we put in our '81 VW camper van. It does all of what you list, as well as Pandora and (some other music service). Lots of buttons, not just one knob, but I'll bet that display doesn't do a whole lot more than 20 characters.
The most easy-to-use interface we have is CarPlay on the aftermarket head unit in our '04 Scion xB. Any cars we buy in the future will have CarPlay or no sale. I'm done with crap ass automotive UIs done by some designer trying to make her mark on the world. And though I'm sure some makers have UIs that don't suck, I'm not going to the trouble to find out which. CarPlay or nothing.
Unfortunately it also runs less smoothly and it's uglier and RDS traffic info is less reliable than phone one. At least for me the simpler UI and phone battery saving rally outweigh the downsides though.
(I got my nav included with the car, but compared to VAG group which charges 1000EUR+ for nav unit, 400EUR didn't seem to be all that much IMO.)
Integrated navigation systems can provide more value than what a phone can. The obvious point is that the screen can be bigger, but more valuable is integrated with the car audio to turn down music when giving directions. When driving in tunnels and there is no GPS because it can talk to the car it knows the speed and can provide better estimations. And having permanent buttons right on your dash that you can hit without taking your eyes off the road is something that no phone will have. These are the type of features that a integrated navigation system should absolutely nail.
The navigation in my 13 year old car might be a dinosaurs, but in the world of car software what matters more than age is usability.
Now on the flip side I have used various navigation systems that are almost the exact opposite and are always a pain to use. If that is all you have ever experienced it is entirely understandable that you might think that this years system is a dinosaur. Having recently car shopped I was saddened at the state of many of the systems I tried. They probably have 10X as much computing power, but they were slower and more difficult to use. I could easily see how someone who bought one of these thinking how next years model would be better simply because it would be faster from the faster computer when it is clear that it was lazy coding and a failure to prioritize usability.
In my '13 Hyundai, the navigation UX is pretty good, but I swear that the entertainment part of it was written by a summer intern.
This is also the case using e.g. Waze via Bluetooth connection to the car.
If you live in a place where new roads are built with any frequency, car GPS's become quickly obsolete.
I also find that a car GPS often requires you to use your smartphone anyway, to look up the address of your destination.
The interface was what I loved though. The screen popped up out of the dash* which meant that it was super easy to see without looking down at the center console, and it didn't replace our radio or other screens with the nav, the screen was nav only.
The controls were cursor based (not pointer, but just menu selection) so the buttons were on the back of the steering wheel, so you didn't even have to take your hands off the wheel to run it. All it needed was a 4-way pad and an enter and back button. There was an IR wireless remote that the passenger could use.
One of my favorite features was that it easily supported multiple waypoints, search along route, and it stored routes even when you turned the car off. Taking a multi-day road trip? No problem!
* How the motorized screen still worked on a 10 year old volvo is probably a small miracle considering what didn't work on that car.
The struggle for Waze is keeping their traffic data up to the minute, the struggle for cars is keeping their roadmaps on par with a decade-old atlas.
Sometimes Waze gets a shortcut for me that actually saves maybe three or four minutes...but at the expense of driving down dangerous roads and making numerous turns. Typically it's not even worth it.
About the only time Waze is worth it is when there is an extraordinary event, such as a very bad wreck or a closed road. In those circumstances rerouting can save time.
At least Waze is up to date. Apple sometimes gives me impossible routes (e.g. illegal turns) and has some street and highway names that have been out-of-date for at least six months. Google on the other hand has an infuriating way of asking me to confirm reroutes that supposedly save me time, and giving me only a few seconds to do it. But Waze has a muddy, horrible interface. All these services have flaws.
If you have a truly intelligent system it would spread the load across the roads equal to what they can handle rather than the system now where everyone seems to take the "main" road leading to congestion on that road and quiet side streets.
Similar to Braess Paradox :- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27_paradox#Traffic
In some European countries, streets are configured to prevent through traffic. That leaves them quiet for the enjoyment of residents.
Their fair share of traffic is very low, only traffic to or from a building on the street.
Property owners claiming rights to how public property near them is used is rediculous
So do main streets.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2008646
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191261504...
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1181966/
I have read a paper (which I can't find now) that claimed that cooperative optimization had visible effects on overall routing with as little as 7% of the traffic population participating in the cooperative routing scheme. So it doesn't even require that everyone use the same scheme to get some benefits, which is nice.
If you're buying a new car today, the reason to get navigation is for the LCD screen and not for the GPS. The LCD is used to see the rear view camera image for parking. Also, playing music shows the song titles.
http://www.coastaletech.com/index.htm
I use my in-dash GPS to gauge distances on big trips. If I really need to know where I'm going, I use my phone.
I could have sworn the US govt mandated that all new cars, after some soon to come year, must have rear facing cameras. Perhaps I heard incorrectly.
I've been happy with it thus far, and with the lifetime map updates it's pretty nice. I do with the model I got had weather overlays, but that's just me being picky.
Screenshots: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3855/14390588297_f2743d8f05_b....
https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5233/14573660131_396715c2bf_b....
As an example - I have a car with a USB port, but the music player interface is so atrocious and is missing key features that it's actually worse than my Sansa Clip from 2008. The car is a 2012 model.
The only time I don't use it is when I can't get the friggin' bluetooth to connect right away.
http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/
[1] https://blog.agendashift.com/2016/10/06/better-user-stories-...
In the meantime, my TomTom 5000 satnav is still unbeaten - free lifetime upgrades, clear, fast interface, free and constant internet connection in every country of the world, with accurate traffic and speed camera updates. And it only cost me ~$250 new.
I just don't understand why anyone would get a built-in satnav over a dedicated device.
- The car model probably had the first iteration of Garmin satnav solution for in-dash car infotainment systems. Garmin's architecture was basically built for PNDs(dedicated device) based of their own internal custom OS. This was quickly ported to support in dash infotainment market. I am sure consequent releases got better in performance and usage.
- Garmin solution is optimized to perform well based on available resources. SD card read writes, low memory requirements, and other resource restrictions are accountable for the slow performance as well.
I am not trying to defend but just want to share the challenges that Garmin faced while they tried to gain market share. I am confident that their solutions will get better with time and deliver better user experience and innovation in the car.
-- SW developer and long time user of Garmin
Too bad the MirrorLink consortium dropped the ball so epically. MirrorLink arguably does the same thing as Carplay/Android Auto and has been deployed to millions of vehicles, but nobody uses MirrorLink 1.1, why? Because to get your app certified takes tens of thousands of dollars, months, and tons of paperwork.
Carplay/Android Auto literally exist because the MirrorLink group created so many rules, regulations, and nonsense in the name of safety that MirrorLink 1.1 has like twenty apps total after two years(!). So if your vehicle has MirrorLink on the feature list, just laugh and forget it exists, you won't be using it.
PS - MirrorLink 1.0 allowed two way screen sharing, which was legitimately useful. MirrorLink 1.1 is a very different beast, most newer cars and phones only have MirrorLink 1.1 (no 1.0 at all). 1.1 defines things like how big buttons have to be, what kind of animations can play, how many button presses to reach each task, etc. Then everything has to be certified by an independent auditor.
PPS - Most depressing part is: MirrorLink could certify Carplay/Android Auto themselves, and instantly add both to millions of existing vehicles on the road. But they're never going to simply because they're effectively in competition with both.
Even if CarPlay/Android Auto last more than five years, I expect new versions will come out which render old vehicles incompatible.
[0] http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-average-c...
So what was the deal with that?
Also with the early iPhones, if accessories were just "Made for iPod" certified but not "Made for iPhone" (which usually required TDMA emissions testing and iPhone testing) a message would pop up.
Carplay/Android Auto are just, at their core, dumb protocols for transmitting screen information and receiving back touch inputs. If you go disassemble Mirrorlink 1.1 apps they use the VNC protocol behind the scenes, the protocol isn't complex (the certification nonsense is all artificially added).
The reason for the fragmentation and pain in this particular space (infotainment units) is a combination of: raw greed, vehicle makers trying in vein to retain control, not-invented-here syndrome, and "safety."
The only issue I see with Carplay/Android Auto is that Apple & Google should have worked together to create a single protocol, which would have made implementation easier and likely resulted in a faster rollout. They both benefit by having the infotainment unit hand off to their respective smartphone OS.
Because CarPlay in 2016 doesn't support the new hotness of 2018, because we are an industry of attention-deficit twentysomethings.
Granted, were I forced to choose between attention-deficit twentysomethings and bureaucratic, glacial fiftysomethings … well honestly, I don't know which I'd choose.
Things like onboard navigation, voice controls, parking sensors? All 90s technology on the S class. Autopilot came before the Tesla's, radars, adaptive suspension, etc are all things from several years ago in the S class land.
They just use that line to showcase all the cool things that a car can do.
Even if they just default to a remote desktop with touch screen interface, that's still fine for most in car applications.
CarPlay works well enough though no Google Maps, having issues with Android Auto mostly due to issues on my phone side :(
Larger display and physical buttons are really quite a good idea when you're driving 2 tons of steel at 60mph.
GPS units like Garmin use touchscreen instead of physical buttons and are safe, road legal. Tesla ships cars with a huge touchscreen console - safe and road legal. That's a pretty weak excuse.
We could also debate that things that hinder concentration while handling "2 tones of steel" are :
- listening to the radio,
- talking to the passenger(s),
- singing.
Common sense would also advise to enter the destination, set music etc. before starting to drive.
I have never had the same issue with European/Japanese vehicles.
1. My sample size is small, I could have been unlucky. Anti-glare coating on rear view mirrors on American cars makess night-time driving awesome though, I wish the European/Japanese vehicles would copy that
The technical term is an 'electrochromatic auto-dimming rear-view mirror'. It's been an option on higher end cars/trims for the last ~5 years, even in Europe. On eBay there are DIY kits too.
It's a fantastic feature, it just annoys me that the sensor gets hit by the car ceiling lights when they're on, so if the light is on you get a completely dark mirror. I call it a quirk because it sounds better than "terrible design".
In Europe and Japan (and most of the rest of the world), automotive headlamps conform to the relevant ECE standard which allows for less glare compared to the US standard (defined in FMVSS 108). So, at least in those markets, the anti-glare coating isn't as necessary.
Unfortunately, there are inconsiderate idiots engaging high-beams everywhere in the world.
Luckily the NHTSA is requiring backup cameras on 100% new cars by mid-2018.
I appreciate that approach has certain disadvantages for device and car makers, but really, the only additional value they could add from my perspective is a more convenient display location and larger, car-centric controls. The apps, the configs, accounts, audio, etc. I only ever use my phone anymore anyway.
And, yes, I have built in nav and never use it in favor of the phone. I also have a Bluetooth-to-FM relay device for the audio.
I believe all the car provides is a screen, some speakers, a microphone and (possibly) a touch surface.
Built in Nav in cars is so shitty that I would personally pay extra to not have it.
But to answer my question why there's no standalone mode for Android Auto/Car Play - probably because they struck a deal with car vendors to sell more extras with the cars or newer cars.
So if you drive something older - fuck you and consume.
Honestly, the blame lies with the carmakers. They made these terrible digital dashboards in many cases with no after market upgrade paths. Obviously their incentive is sell/lease you a new car every few years... so why would they make it easy to upgrade. No incentive
Biggest reason I ended up getting the 2016 model vs 2015 (which had a much bigger discount) because of Carplay/Android auto. I won't be a frustrated by the digital NAV that never is upgraded.
I'm hoping the Carplay/Android auto compatibility is there for at least 6+ years of new phone models. But honestly I don't know how much I trust the above mentioned phone vendors.
Anything I connect to that system would be categorically better than any OEM car interface.
About a month ago I was driving with a friend of mine in the passenger seat. Driving 45 minutes to some trails upstate. I asked him to put his Maps on (Android) so I don't need to get my phone out of my bad and fuck around with it while driving. He's got Galaxy 6 edge+ so I figured it just work... Boy was I wrong.
When he plugged it in nothing happened except autoplaying some music. Since I'm driving how no idea how to make it work. Turns out you need to download an App from the app store to make it work... but Android gives you no notification about it.
Then there's a whole on-boarding process you got to click through. Then you need to agree to let the Android connect to the Car all in all about 5 different agree prompts. Took about 30 minutes to get this going.
After all that the car would lose Android Auto connection with the phone every few minutes. Apparently it's a know issue with that model of Android and VW.
What a terrible experience. For a while I was thinking of getting an Android phone next time I need a new phone (break, slow/sluggish). Not going to happen now.
The connectivity issues with VWs are a valid complaint, but not pushing bloat on everyones devices really isnt.
If you include the "guide" that you have the scroll through and then the 5 "Accept" popups for allowing the car to connect to the phone it's like about 9 clicks. Pretty crappy UX.
But really it's the whole process of getting setup. The Android phone didn't put up a prompt when plugged in to tell you you needed to download the Android Auto app. My friend had to Google how to make this thing work.
Compare that to the CarPlay experience. Connect, click accept once in car UI and accept in iPhone to allow the car to access it. From plugin to navigating on the dash about 30 seconds.
Isn't that just the standard Android permission prompts?
- set the destination in Android Auto friendly UI,
- clip his phone in the car holder.
Done with no extra fuckery as you described.
I guess MirrorLink is trying to solve that problem by more thorough testing.
I'm certain that Android Auto compatibility is part of the Android Compatibility Test Suite that all OHA OEMs have to run for phones in order to get Google apps. The tests probably are not perfect
Not sure about that. In many cars you have to take your eyes pretty far down from the road to look at the radio. Touchscreens honestly don't belong down there, I'd much rather have physical controls I can operate by feel.
Phones can be mounted in the visual scan across the windshield (close and small enough to not occlude anything).
Do you use the in-built GPS, or just use your phone?
I would think if anyone has it right, it would be Tesla.
The built-in navigation isn't great. It lacks some pretty obvious options (it doesn't offer multiple routes, and you can't give it intermediate waypoints) and its routing is occasionally stupid. Although the big screen shows Google Maps, the actual routing is done using an onboard database which is not as good as Google is. But it's good enough that the convenience of just using the big screen in the car outweighs the superior results I get from my phone.
It is getting better, which is one thing most cars can't say. We recently got the ability to have it avoid toll roads, for example, and while that really should have been there from the beginning, it's pretty cool that it can be added after the fact.
Navigation is one of the top complaints from Tesla owners in my experience, and I agree with a lot of those complaints, but it's not bad enough to have me going for my phone except in rare cases.
Most gps let you pick to include or exclude car pools, but it is such a pain to change the setting that it is usually left on excluding car pools. But Tesla could know exactly how many people are in the car, and do the right thing automatically. It would also affect journey times since car pool lanes are often quicker.
There are also some HOT lanes around here (where you can either drive for free with 3+ people, or pay a toll with less) and it never routes me onto those, even though it happily routes me onto other toll roads. Not sure what's up with that.
* voice commands for navigation actually work. Recognition is quick and accurate.
* Should you need to type in an address, Tesla treats you like an adult, and lets you do it while the car is moving. All the other recent cars I've driven won't even let the passenger enter an address unless the car is stopped.
* Map display is fluid and uncluttered
The UI just got a refresh with version 8.0 and it is now even easier to use. With a single swipe I can navigate to home or work (it is location and time aware, so it will navigate me to the right destination automatically), and the navigation now sticks to the top half of the screen when I have two apps open. I tend to leave the nav in fullscreen mode though since I like to see more of my route.
Its critical for long distance trips because it will also navigate you through superchargers automatically as needed, and will tell you how long you will need to charge at each, along with an estimate of your trip time. I have taken a lot of long trips since getting the Tesla so this has been invaluable.
Supposedly the next update will use the navigation to guide the autopilot (it will take exit ramps between highways automatically).
Even in the Model S, I use my phone's directions. Tesla's map app is great, and the UI is _really_ good (even better in the latest update!), but their source for navigation is garbage (and also their routing algorithm).
I hear it's cause whatever they use works offline, but also because Google wants them to send back real time data, but Tesla doesn't want to (forgot where I heard this though).
I would much much prefer to use the Tesla UI for nav, but the directions are really that bad.
I've used the built-in nav for about a year, and had to go buy a phone mount.
They've also doubled down on their refusal to not include Carplay/Android Auto. They're putting something called "SmartDeviceLink" which is yet another MirrorLink 1.1 clone (which is itself a disaster), but this time controlled by a different consortium of companies.
Although amusingly the other major auto maker putting SmartDeviceLink in their vehicles, Fort, has already given up and put Carplay/Android Auto into their latest Ford SYNC3 infotainment system software. Leaving Toyota the only major company providing SmartDeviceLink.
I legitimately think Toyota will slump in sales when seemingly every other major manufacturer has Carplay/Android Auto. All because Toyota is greedy and wants to profit off of the infotainment unit rather than the vehicle itself.
I just do...not...get this. In what alternate reality do they live that would cause them to think "this time will be different"? History has shown time and again that your proprietary special snowflake platform is not going to cause app writers to flock to you when there's something like CarPlay/Android Auto available. I mean, MirrorLink was a pretty good idea, didn't have any real competitors at the time, and it still sold like dog shit sandwiches. Save everyone some time and money, suck it up, swallow your pride, and just put CarPlay/Android Auto on there. Because as I've said elsewhere in this thread, not only will I not buy your proprietary infotainment system, I won't even buy your car.
Even I, a long-time geek who will endure a lot of pain to get something working, cringes at the thought of the hoops I'd have to jump through to get "SmartDeviceLink" to an even minimally useful state. My CarPlay head unit also has MirrorLink, and while I was waiting for Pioneer to update the firmware to include CarPlay, I thought I'd give MirrorLink a whirl. First, I apparently needed to go get a special cable. Yeah, fuck that, you exceeded my tolerance for friction in the first sentence of your user manual. CarPlay? Plugged my iPhone in, waited to see what Apple's special version of frictional hell would be and...it just worked. There's your competition, car makers, and if takes more than just plugging my phone in I'm not buying it.
[0] http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/05/18/waze-come...
It looks like the field is in flux anyway, VW keeps dramatically changing the UI in every new car.
Secondly, the vast majority of built in GPS is on a console a good 6 to 12 inches below the windshield. Meaning I have to remove my eyes far off the road in order to look at everything. My garmin mounts to my windshield or dash. It is a quick glance and then eyes back at the road.
Both my previous car (2013 Ford C-Max hybrid) and current car (2014 Audi A4) both had options to adjust whether the nav map view was locked to cardinal directions, or if it followed the car's perspective.
Newer ones give you directions on the dashboard and I've never even seen a system that doesn't give you a 3D map.
I am pretty happy with my built-in system - it is fast, always on, integrates well with the car, provides dual-screens (in dash and bigger console screen output), free quarterly OTA map updates, uses Google for POI search, live traffic. Most important I don't need to fish my phone out of pocket, mount it somewhere and connect cable for longer trips.
Yet I am also sometimes (1%?) use phone for directions. Most of the time it is when I need to lookup something nearby and I am not in the car.
You can preload Google Maps onto the iPhone for say Point Reyes. You won't be able to find a route but GPS location and the map should be good enough.