Finally a car manufacturer realizes it can't out-compete a software company at making good software.
The reason infotainment sucks so hard is that car companies want to "own the experience" and also want to cut costs, so they underinvest and create poor experiences.
Nope. There's a current mismatch between automotive hardware life cycles and consumer software life cycles.
This Volvo hardware is going to be a minimum of 3 years old before it ships and will have to function for 10 years+.
How good is your 10 year old phone? How does it match up to the average consumer experience today? How's the speakers, camera, audio, OTA software, and display compare to what's available today?
Not owning the software ecosystem is a good first step but will be severely hampered by not aligning hardware development cycle expectations.
Counter-example: My vehicle's infotainment unit (new in 2016) has received exactly zero updates. If Android is supported for "only 2-3 years" that's still a step up, not a step down from the status quo.
PS - I should clarify that the engine's computer received at least two recall updates. But Android doesn't try and replace that.
This, Android things, for example, is only offering guaranteed updates for 3 years which is not nearly enough support time... and people usually Volvos for 15-20+ years... Even Microsoft understands this better.
Everything in a car has to be certified for safety. Infotainment systems integrate deeply with cars - they consume and expose a lot of information that isn't guaranteed to be expressed over standard protocols, and most of them aren't even in consistent sizes or shapes.
An Android Things IOT device is guaranteed 3 years of updates. This is hosted on GCP and Google picks up the cost for this. However, if an OEM wants to extend the service beyond 3 years they have the option to do so (for a price I think).
Which used to be the case also for cars -- we even have a standard, ISO 7736 (aka DIN mount), for car stereos that can be swapped when the consumer wants to upgrade.
So in my 2002 el cheapo car, I can buy and install in ~ 15 minutes a 2018 infotainment system with a 7" IPS touch screen, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, Waze, Spotify Connect, all the bells and whistles you can imagine.
But of course car manufacturers realized this was costing them sales, both in form of less incentive to buy a new car, and less incentive to spend $2k on the "upgrade" option for the stereo when a better aftermarket unit is <$1k, so they moved away from this standard.
You can generally get replacement centre console surrounds that add DIN or Double DIN holes to cars that didn't come with it. I've done it to a few cars for friends. Search eBay for your car make/model + "double din". It's not available for every car, but it's available for a lot.
You can also 3D print your own. There's free downloadable models of the DIN slots that you can add to a 3D scan of your cars centre console. Then depending on your car's interior trim, fibreglass it, or trim it in leather/whatever you want. Or you can just buy the DIN/Double DIN housing, dremel out where your stock headunit is embedded, and mould it in. Plenty of people on car forums do this and there's lots of guides online.
Considering the absolutely insane premium prices for sub-par entertainment systems in modern cars, I've personally found the above effort completely worth it.
I'm currently adding a RasPi and 7" touch screen with GPS for Google Maps, 1TB SSD of media, Spotify (via Wifi tether to my phone), USB ports in glovebox for USB sticks of media or charging phones, and more, to a 2012 car that came with an embedded CD/MP3 player with no nav, no screen, and no DIN slot.
True but now they can offer their own systems that integrate far better with the car electronics. Such as controlling the HVAC or offering rear view camera in the in-dash system. Those are good opportunities for lock-in which they'll no doubt take advantage of.
The TV ecosystem solved this by splitting the screen apart from the set-top/streaming box (and then put them together again in the form of smart TVs, but most people I know just disable the internal smarts and use their own stick anyway.)
Why not just specify a "dashboard control tablet" form-factor, and have an empty spot there, expecting the user to supply their own (and replace it every year or two, as people tend to do with other mobile devices)? It'd be this decade's tape/CD player module.
This is yet another example of a car company unable to realize that they just don't make good car infotainment dashboards. This will just lead to further fragmentation of the Android ecosystem.
Maybe a dumb question, but do companies often support -both- AndroidAuto and AppleCar play? Or do they do lock-ins and partnerships...because if they lock you in, it really defeats the purpose.
My experience is the same. For day to day, bluetooth phone<->car connection beats Carplay or Android Auto. Wireless autoconnect is key, should've been in the V1 of those standards.
I never bother with Carplay for less than a 1 hour trip.
We use CarPlay all the time, it works almost instantaneously after plugging the phone and it is always responsive. The primary beef that we have with it is that you cannot use Google Maps. Though Apple Maps is definitely many times better than the built-in navigation system.
As you say, it is probably a problem with some hardware.
It seems based on other comments that it varies wildly by manufacturer. Several others in here mentioned issues with the same vehicle I have. Really unfortunate, it’s clearly better than the built in software. Maybe there is hope that Volvo will issue an update that improves stability.
Eh, it’s instant on in my car (a Citroen) but I suspect they start booting the electronics when I unlock the car. In the 3 months I have had the car it have never crashed but twice CarPlay refused to find the phone and required a reboot of the phone.
You need a better, stronger lightning cable for your car. Apple OEM cables can’t take the wear and tear in a car. As long as my lightning cable is good, so is CarPlay. You can also go the wireless route as an alternative
Unfortunately, mobile processors seem to still be undergoing the same rapid increase in power that desktop systems used to, and the OSes and applications are being built for top-of-the-line phones. Even my iPhone 6 struggles with modern versions of iOS, despite being under 4 years old.
Hardware improvement cycles are not some the same curves they were 10 years ago. So, short of a massive breakthrough, the improvement we can expect in the next 10 years will much, much smaller than what we saw in the last 10 (which was already much smaller than what we saw in the 10 before that).
They can still shoot themselves in the foot by intentionally buying underpowered hardware, but that won't be the fault of hardware trends, it'll be the fault of making a bad initial choice.
I mean, the iPhone is only 10 years old, and the difference between the first generation and the iPhone X is astounding.
That said, I generally agree with you: I think a lot of the advancement we'll see in the coming years will be in the VR/AR space, which will present a different enough experience that users won't be comparing it to existing interfaces.
I think there's a larger story, which I'll explain through a personal anecdote. I purchased the Samsung Gear 3 LTE smartwatch because I've always hated how mobile phones get in the way of personal interaction, but then was very disappointed to find out it ran Tizen and not Android Wear, which means no Google Assistant.
So one the one hand you have Google Assistant: great voice recognition and queries against the Google search engine, and on the other hand you have Samsung which doesn't own a search engine and can't compete in the voice search market.
So it looks like Google is going to dominate the entire hands-free computing world (smartwatch, cars, and home assistants)
Google I/O is tomorrow so hopefully they'll announce some Android Wear with LTE and voice assistant.
Wear OS currently accounts for about 18% of the wearable market share. There's also a WearOS session scheduled for I/O so they're still interested. The major hurdle has been the SoC. WearOS devices are still using the antiquated 28nm Snapdragon 2100 SoC which was created in 2014.
If you want Next-Gen infotainment with Assistant and Maps, you need to buy a new shiny Volvo car... or, you know, just use your Android phone and hack a Raspberry Pi and install Crankshaft on it.
Crankshaft does all of the above, plus it doesn't talk to the cloud, doesn't require you to be connected to "the cloud," doesn't collect your data, doesn't ask you to buy a new expensive car, doesn't nudge you to subscribe to any service, and has a stallmanism approach to software freedom.
It is alpha-level software, so no. It's not an official or even related to or certified by Google or Android. It's totally a hobby. But we hope you give it a try and have fun with it when it's safe to do so."
It's nowhere near the commercial applicability car manufacturers require. Nobody really cares about private users because thats not where the money is..
The switch to Google Maps will definitely be nice since their current maps are crap. Not sure about the other pieces but it probably can't get worse than it currently is. I have the newest XC90 and the on-screen stuff is absolutely horrible. I run into many bugs every day and the response from support has been abysmal.
My wife got an XC90 about 2 years ago and I have to agree. Even changing the channel on the radio is bad - I press next channel, next channel, and it takes me back to the first channel repeatedly.
The car looks and handles great, but we won't be getting another Volvo just because the electronics are so bad.
Agree. I have the same vehicle and am simply astounded at how bad the entire UI is. How can a company like that with such a good brand ship something so awful in their flagship product?
Considering the lifecycle of a car vs an Android device, they better just build in a touch screen w/ a HDMI + USB connection, and let the compute brains get swapped out inexpensively ...
>> Considering the lifecycle of a car vs an Android device, they better just build in a touch screen w/ a HDMI + USB connection, and let the compute brains get swapped out inexpensively ...
> This is literally what Android Auto and CarPlay are.
The in-dash systems these days do a lot more than they used to. Mine (VW Atlas) has 50% of the temperature control, all vehicle settings, etc baked in. All could theoretically be maintained and upgraded, but these are not really separable from the car itself.
I like the idea of them being upgradable, but it would seem to depend on more software and API discipline than I imagine VW or any the other manufacturers being interested in.
Relatedly, the lifecycle of a lease is much closer to a phone, so for owners of the 30%[1] of cars out there that are leased, the upgrade cycle will presumably keep them "up to date". If the car manufacturers are pushing us more towards away from ownership (analogous to phones, software, etc.) then there is little incentive for them to make significant investments in upgrade-ability. And like legacy phone hardware companies, they are too busy preparing new phones to give much love to upgrading older ones.
They're just industry standard CANBUS signals sent over a wire, there's no technical reason a third party head unit couldn't support all this extra functionality.
Hopefully either of those will still work with latest gadgets 10 years from today.
Think of all the car owners with iPod connectivity crying in their new 5 years old cars all over the world. By the way, today's iPhones do not support iPod connectivity. And I'm talking about protocol, not about hardware port. Which is a hassle to replace in quite a few vehicles too.
My car has a 2005 Kenwood head unit with a 30 pin connector. It has worked fine with every iPhone including my iPhone 7, using a 30-pin to Lightning connector. What support is missing?
True, but same can be said about built in google maps. What happens when volvo stops paying the license? I think right now android auto/carplay/mirrorlink are the best we got
Fully replaceable industry standard DIN mounts in dashboard is the best we got. Well, had. Car info, rear camera etc could be shown via mirrorlink-like setup inside of a replacable head unit.
Maybe we could have car stereo game going again and it'd start to improve. Today's infotainment suuuuucks. Thank god for steering wheel buttons. Otherwise they wouldn't be safely usable while driving. And yes, skipping songs or adjusting volume must be physical knobs to make it doable without taking eyes off the road.
Volvo already supports both. I can’t speak to android auto, but the CarPlay experience is awful. I’ve also used CarPlay in several GM vehicles with similar disappointing results.
Honest question, are there people that have had good CarPlay experiences?
Yep, carplay was the sole deciding factor of my last car purchase and I've been happy with it since. There are some cars I've rented with absolutely horrific carplay integrations. Audi for some reason didn't use a touchscreen so everything is selected using their pretty terrible control wheel. A kia I rented turned on night mode on maps whenever the daytime running/parking lights were on - really weird. Nicest carplay I've had was a 2018 dodge charger. That screen they used was beautiful and huge.
I have an Audi now with Android auto, and I prefer their non-touchscreen interface to the touchscreen one. Cars and touchscreens just don't work in my opinion, I'd much rather work using just a scroll wheel and selector.
Although AA might be better suited to it than carplay is.
And I mirror your feelings, AA was a significant factor in my purchase, and it is a non-negotiable feature in my next car purchase.
It will be interesting to see how useful this will be vs. vanilla Android Auto & CarPlay.
I've had CarPlay for the last couple years, and I use it exclusively now. Even for things like radio, I've started using the Sirius app via CarPlay instead of the native radio interface. I don't use built-in navigation either, I just use my phone's on the same head unit.
What kind of benefits can the deliver through a tighter integration? And will they be able to keep it up-to-date as easily I keep my phone up-to-date? Will be interesting to watch.
The level of customization an OEM can do is pretty remarkable. This is Android Auto in an Audi Q8 and it looks nothing like Vanilla Android Auto or Carplay for that matter.
I know this is not what you trying to point to in your comment, but I just watched that video and I'm really surprised at how bad the system is.
Yes it looks completely different, but delay between user action and response is horrific, sometimes over a second and sometimes doesn't even do anything. It's like those cheap Chinese after market systems, that runs poor hardware and just barely works. And all of this in a new 2017 car, imagine this after 5 or 10 years, will be totally useless... Hopefully Volvo will do a better job with usability of the system.
~20sec music play and then followed pause. Just not sure what to say about that. Even the guy narrating gets confused and almost clicks for the second time to start the music. Then followed menu selection, not as slow, but still noticeable slowness in response. Later one when he clicks other buttons action follow much more rapidly, which indicates to me a weak processor.
Yeah - I was thinking 'if only they had some simple way that you could upgrade the internal hardware every few years' aka buy a new phone.
Plus you can stick the phone/tomtom on the windscreen. I find that rather than being something in my view that's annoying I end up using it as a heads up display, so I don't have to look down at my speedometer any more as it's right there on the windscreen.
That's basically what CarPlay and Android Auto are, with the addition of specific app UIs when they are projecting to the car display and a few other bits of shared data between the phone and car (for things like steering wheel controls).
Volvo supports both of those as well in their current infotainment systems.
I genuinely don't understand why cars suddenly
have to have tablets built into them.
Back in the 1990s, in-dash sat nav was a premium feature only available on high-end cars. The first all-in-one TomTom wasn't introduced until 2004, and before that people in sales were willing to pay a big premium for sat nav, as a business expense.
Hence, car companies _think_ an executive/luxury car needs to have a screen in the dashboard because that's just how it's been for as long as they can remember. And they think putting premium car features in midrange cars makes them more appealing to buyers.
In the US, all new built cars are required to have reversing cameras from this month, so they need some screen in them. Once you have that there, it makes a fair amount of sense to start to use it for other functionality when not reversing and to use it to replace the old media interface.
Err, both of them can in practice, the only difference is whether the data is bought or self-collected.
In practice Volvo would probably just sell the data to others (i'm pretty sure they already do sell it to everyone from insurance carriers to you name it), and Google would probably just keep it.
They already have your location, and based on how fast you're moving they know if you're in a vehicle. Based on how you leave that vehicle in a certain spot and come back to it, they already know that's your vehicle.
You are assuming I carry any device Google is capable of tracking on my person. If a car comes with Google Maps built in, it is no longer a car I can consider for purchase.
I'm actually super impressed with the recent progress that the Android OpenStreetMap client has made. In the past six months or so it's gone from virtually useless to being a full Google Maps replacement (at least for my use cases).
I found the actual map quality quite lacking, unfortunately. Your mileage may vary by location, of course. I had been testing using OSM for a project to get some data, and MapQuest both had the OSM data and their own proprietary data. I compared the two and it was really painful to try and work with OSM's data.
Man I was really hoping they would bootstrap something awesome. Since they were acquired by Geely I was thinking that they would go there own path and pave a way for AI cars in China’s future.
Maybe they are just evaluating it to get an idea of what to copy in the future?
I need Google maps more then most as have poor sense of direction. But so dangerous looking at phone. Love to just have Google maps built into the car.
Unrestrained Objects can cause or worsen accidents (e.g. phone under the brake pedal). Plus there's better integration with steering wheel controls and a closer microphone for voice control.
Phones themselves aren't a problem if used safely, such as running Android Auto (full screen app version) and having it mounted so it can hear voice commands.
The problem is that people try to jerry-rig a poor man's version using Google Maps app, a phone sitting loose in the cup holder, and no voice commands ("let me pick it up briefly to pick a route").
It is the difference between ideal usage and real world usage. Built into the vehicle gives you closer to ideal usage every single time.
Just about everyone I know has a car mount. Used to be they required all sorts of extensive setup/install. Now however you have that mounts that you can get for 2 for $8 on Amazon.
I own a Volvo but not a mobile device? Any "advanced" tech baked into a vehicle makes zero sense to me. Tech runs in to 2-3 yr leap cycles. An auto can last you (+ a 2nd or 3rd owner) 10+ years.
Why would a manufacturer intentionally hurt the Blue Book value of their vehicles?
So, can I replace these or are they embedded-embedded?
The Google Assistant seems to have custom code, so it would be understandable, if I can't replace that, but then it's hopefully at least possible to turn it off.
Anyone with concerns about privacy and thinking about buying a car in Europe should have eCall in mind.
An European citizen unwilling to have an embedded system that tracks location, accesses mic and transmit GPS data has three options: burn the SIM card module, buy a pre-April-2018 car or something outside the EU.
By the looks of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tC_NX5D8AA) the latest Suzuki Jimny still doesn't have a built-in navigation or anything like that, it will probably be on my to-buy-list in 6 or 7 years when (and if) I decide to buy a new SH car. I like my cars with a very plain and simple interior, just AC and a basic radio/CD player it's perfect for me.
This is the opposite for me. I'm switching from an iphone to an android mainly so I can use android auto with google maps support in my new car. Google assistant is the cherry on top. This would be nice though since I would not have to switch phones just to get around apple carplay forcing their garbage maps on me.
Apple carplay and android auto allow you to view windows displayed by your phone on your car screen. While I can use google maps with it and get the voice directions, it does not support displaying the map on my car screen for google maps, only apple maps. I want to be able to quickly look at the physical map on the big screen in my car while driving like so: https://www.google.com/search?q=android+auto+maps&tbm=isch&s...
CarPlay does not let you use any maps app aside from Apple Maps. Which is a dealbreaker since where I live Apple Maps are terrible (and Google Maps aren't great either, I use a local mapping app)
Can you follow up on that? What if the Volvo, other than Google's involvement, was otherwise the best vehicle for you? Would you get an otherwise worse car, just because of the G stamp on it?
Probably yes. I don't think cars need 'bundled' software any more than computers do.
Open standards such as the DIN dash mounts for in car entertainment systems do just fine. I've never seen an integrated audio system that I like, usually they're junk to begin with and they are obsolete long before the car is and hard - or sometimes even impossible - to get rid of.
Well, I like how they are not hard on design and their kept focus on the safety since. That fits to my character. Of course I could still get a volvo, but a year earlier / non-android version.
Interesting considering that Volvo are Chinese owned. Since their parent company are at the front of EV development and since the 5 year plan of China is 80% of the global EV market it looks to me like we will have lots of Waymo cars in due course. Maybe they have decided to go with mere Carplay for now with a view to future Waymo tech being what the real deal is to be.
In car tech is set on autopilot features which stymies development of anything that does not share that future. You can't invest $$$ in the next dashboard gizmos if you know that autopilot is going to 'change everything'. So it makes sense to just hnd it all over to Google now.
The reason infotainment sucks so hard is that car companies want to "own the experience" and also want to cut costs, so they underinvest and create poor experiences.