I had an interesting experience recently that I think summarizes this whole problem.
I was in another city and rented a car and it came with navigation. I knew I could just use my phone, but I decided to use the navigation that the rental car came with, just for fun.
1. First, I knew the name of my hotel, but not the address. I tried to search the business directory. I had to input the CITY AND STATE, which is painfully slow on the pressure-based touch screen, but I did it and did a search. I couldn't find it.
2. So I took out my phone and found the address and went back to the navigation in my car to type it in.
3. I slowly input the city and state again before it lets me input an address starting with the number.
4. When it came time to pick the street name, it was ambiguous. There's one street name that looks right. There's another with a W in front of it. There's another highway number that could also be it. I pick one and I can tell it's not in the right spot. Now I have to start all over.
5. I start all over, input the city and state and address and I think I have it right. I start to navigate.
6. It can't find a GPS signal. Maybe it's the parking garage I'm in. Maybe it just takes a while. I sit there. I'm about 10 minutes in and I still haven't gotten any navigation instructions.
7. I get nervous because I won't even know what direction to turn when I leave the parking garage. I take out my phone and say "Ok google, navigate to the blah blah Hotel". It says "Ok, sure" and my phone has no problems finding GPS and I have navigation instructions pulled up in about 5 seconds.
> and my phone has no problems finding GPS and I have navigation instructions pulled up in about 5 seconds.
That's because your phone isn't actually using GPS ( e.g. Navstar or Glonass ) at that point, it's using cell triangulation or wifi-based location.
For example the fastest possible first-fix with Navstar from a warm-start, using cached prior-location and ephemerides, is 30 seconds[0]. From a cold ( position-unknown ) start, such as a car nav-system powered-down in a parking-lot for an extended period, the first-fix will take longer than 12 minutes. There is no technological way around that, it is an artifact of the system architecture.
[0] and that's for a top-end receiver than can sync to four satellites 'simultaneously' using time-division.
How often do cars change position while powered down? That is, why not always (even on "cold start") use the last known position as a starting guess? How do phones get GPS-quality location data even immediately after being rebooted?
Annectodatally, I remember that some years ago my phone used to take 5-10 minutes to find GPS whenever I asked for directions. Now adays, it's instantaneous.
The software has improved dramatically, using some combination of previously saved location, WIFI triangulation, and dead reconning to figure out a near accurate location to within 50 feet so long as you're in a city.
Car navigation systems can do better. They're not even 'pure' GPS services, they have access to mobile cell, they do online updates for maps, and their accelerometers are far better than phones. The software though is simply worse than what Google can provide.
Phones do more than use the towers for location information, they use the data connection to download information about the satellite positions, shortcutting a 12.5 minute step:
I wonder if the average car system really has the sensors for high quality inertial navigation. If they don't, the navigation won't work very well anyway until it has a decent GPS fix.
A warm start is actually typically faster than 30 seconds, averaging closer to 20 seconds. Additionally, almost all fixes using smart phones are hot starts. This is because smartphones use assisted GPS, they download almanac and ephemeris data not from the GPS network itself (where they are broadcast every 12.5 minutes and 30 seconds, respectively) but over a data network, in seconds. Similarly, smartphones have a pretty good idea of where they are already, because they keep track of their positions historically and they use cell tower triangulation as a secondary location system. From a hot start a GPS receiver could get a fix in only a handful of seconds, potentially.
I have some GPS receivers that would seem to contradict this. Is there something special about the way that cars receive GPS data?
My bluetooth GPS, connected to a non-cellular iPad tends to get lock in under 2-3 minutes, even when it gets turned off, tossed in checked luggage, and flown halfway across the world.
In German the passenger (front right seat) is actually called the "co-driver" (Beifahrer) and there is a cultural expectation to assist the driver with things like reading maps or passing drinks/food or even looking out for directional signs.
There is no such expectation for "guests" on the backseat(s), so this is a pretty distinct role.
This is exactly how my wife and I drive, whichever person is in the passenger seat is the co-driver. We are American, BTW, not sure how common it is for Americans, but I reckon it isn't uncommon.
Personally, I mount my phone right on a vent on the lower edge of my visual scan of the road. The infotainment displays in most cars are way too low to be looking at while driving, except maybe the pop-up screens in Mazdas and BMWs.
I'm honestly surprised they don't restrict that. Does anybody know why? I know different states have different speed limits, but I think a 85mph speed limit could cover them all.
Is it because Canada and Mexico? They have lower speed limits. Is it because the car could be exported to Germany and driven on the Autobahn? or what?
There were, until very recently, some roads in Montana that didn't have any speed limit during the day. They provided at least a legal justification that there was a legitimate on-road use case for going more than 85MPH.
I believe Montana gave that up in the last few years, so there wouldn't be much of a case against putting an 85MPH governor in cars, except I guess against the possibility that some state might at some point raise their limit.
Some states (e.g. Texas) have been raising their speed limits, seemingly in keeping with the safety enhancements in cars, which is an interesting example of "risk compensation".
Ah, the glory days. The speed limits returned quite some time ago (>12 years) in Montana after the stupid out of staters ruined it by killing themselves too frequently on their 'Montana autobahn experiences'.
Back when the national speed limit was forced to 55mph because of the energy crisis, Montana legislators thumbed their nose at it by making it a cash fine of $5 IIRC that did not go on your record.
> there wouldn't be much of a case against putting an 85MPH governor in cars
There are plenty of reasons not to do it. A lot of people take cars to the track, and not just those with high performance vehicles. I've seen people drag racing stock Camrys at a legit quarter mile track just because they wanted to see what it could do (not much).
Yes, but it also states that on a 2 lane road, you can exceed the speed limit for as long as necessary to pass on the left if the car you are passing is driving below the legal limit and you are at a point where it is legal to pass.
An example is that if the speed limit is 55mph, it would generally be allowable to speed up to 60 to pass a farm vehicle traveling at 45mph on a 2 lane road provided that you're at a location where passing is allowed (clear line of sight, and the center line would be dotted instead of solid, no oncoming vehicles that would have to brake, etc.).
The second paragraph of that act does note that some roads may have minimum speed limits posted which you're not allowed to go slower than provided the road conditions are normal.
Remember that footage of Japanese drivers fleeing from the tsunami floods? How many more would have died if their cars had been slower? How many more would have survived if their cars could have gone faster?
There are plenty of survival situations (e.g., tsunamis, volcanoes, tornadoes, gas explosions, etc.) in which it's desirable for your car to go a lot faster than one should drive under normal driving conditions.
Sure, but going higher than say 150 km/h for more than 10 seconds the car could phone that in and you'd have to justify it to the police or face a steep fine.
I would never pay a single unit of currency for such a car, even subsidized, and neither would most of humanity, including politicians.
I see plenty of very dangerous driving within speed limits, ie people unable to keep in their lane, playing with cellphone, randomly breaking in semi-empty roads and so on.
These are my experiences from highways from most weekends. In towns, speed limits make much more sense and could be enforced by speed bumps or stationary radars
You have to weight it against the gain at the other end. I'm nearly certain that more lives would be saved from inability to exceed speed limit, than would be lost by speeding away from something.
Simplest explanation - because a car can be taken on a private road(off road track, racing circuit) and driven as fast as you like. Yeah, you are not going to do that in a prius, but theoretically, you could.
All new cars in EU have to be limited to 155mph by law, but manufacturers are allowed to remove that restriction if you complete an advanced training course. So for example - mercedes will remove the speed limiter on your AMG vehicle, if you finish their advanced amg handling course.
> All new cars in EU have to be limited to 155mph by law
Can you give a source for that? To my knowledge the 155mph limit is just an informal agreement between BMW, Merc and Audi, and not law. The agreement also expired a decade ago.
I am fairly sure that you can just buy an RS6 or an AMG Mercedes with 190mph top speed, no courses required.
Well, I bought an new AMG vehicle 3 months ago, so I happen to know that the only way to remove the limiter is to attend one of the AMG training courses. I imagine if you greased enough elbows you would get the limiter removed without doing the course, but there's certainly nothing you can do to order one from factory without the limiter.
And yes, I've done a bit of digging at it appears you are correct - it's not actually the law, just an agreement between manufacturers.
Edit: Ok, I've looked through technical specs of all AMG vehicles, and it looks like every AMG model from A to S class is limited to 155mph unless you do the course, but the AMG GT isn't. So....yeah, I'm just completely wrong on this. My apologies.
The main reason car companies don't put (un-overridable) governors for 85mph in cars is that their sales would instantly plummet.
That said, all "fast" cars sold in the US do have governors at 140 mph if memory serves. The same car sold in Germany has no such governor.
As much as I remember there is a gentleman's agreement between the German car makers that they restrict the motor power after 300 km/h (about 190 mph). A teacher told me that this should be the velocity a normal untrained person is safe to drive on the German autobahn.
They circumvent this with their own car tuners which release the cars without this restrictions (AMG for Mercedes Benz as an example)
> 300 km/h [..] normal untrained person is safe to drive on the German autobahn
German here. No normal untrained person should be driving at those speeds. The general recommended speed for the autobahn is 130 km/h. Typical speeds on the middle and left lanes are up to 200 km/h though most days the typical "high" speed is probably closer to 170 or 180.
With good weather, no traffic and no roadworks (hah) you might be able to go over 200 km/h for a while but unless it's a long straight stretch you're probably way out of your comfort zone unless you're an experienced driver.
I would say a normal untrained person is safe to drive at speeds up to about 180 km/h. Most ordinary cars seem to handle noticeably worse with every 10 you go beyond 160 km/h or so.
And of course the entire discussion of typical speeds is philosphical when most of the Autobahn has speed limits (roadworks often limit the speed to 60 or even 40 km/h (or less) and even on normal parts the speed limit frequently is as low as 120, 100 or 80 km/h).
This depends on the car, the better the car, the more stable it feels at higher speeds, especially when maneuvering. In cheap weak ones 130 kmh feels like it's taking off, in great ones 200 kmh feels... adequate.
I got once 220 kmh with by older BMW 330d on unrestricted part of German highway, but it's quite stressful experience. You feel via your senses how fast everything is, you feel how long it takes for car to break to something more reasonable (ie 150) because of other drivers - this happens all the times, so it's almost never a smooth ride. And you know that any issue with the car like tire blowing means instant horrible death, and probably not only yourself.
Most normal tires have rating till only 220 (that is for new ones!), at speeds around 250 and more you will trash whole tires in 1 day (and you need good ones, not some cheap chinese crap with no grip), and whole car is just suffering much much more compared to regular driving.
Interesting one time experience, but even me I don't go over 150-160 on an empty road during day.
Even 250 km/h is a bit extreme for "normal" drivers. See your sibling comment -- even if the car can do 250 safely it can be very difficult to drive safely at those speeds.
It is because the car can’t judge on itself whether exceeding a speed limit is in fact illegal (heck, it can’t even detect the limit with 100% reliability).
How’s that? In some jurisdictions (I would imagine in most, but can only speak with certainty about Czech and Slovak ones), it’s legal to do anything that would otherwise be illegal if you do in the course of protecting a person from imminent danger to their life. There are nuances to it, but the gist is that.
So imagine your son was bitten by a snake. Ambulance won’t get there and back to the hospital (because they won’t have a serum with them) fast enough. The fastest, best way to save your son is to drive him to the hospital as fast as you can. Fuck speed limits, a life is at stake, and it’s perfectly legal for you to ignore them (or any other laws you have to break to save his life) while doing so.
The car wouldn’t be able to judge this. It would have prevented you from driving fast enough and your son would die, even though the car’s restrictions would not be preventing any illegal behavior at the time.
I've always been puzzled as to why cars don't come with speed governing as a (default off) option. I'd love to be able to lend my car to my child with the max speed set to 60mph or govern my speed to 65 on long freeway trips so I don't have to constantly check my speedometer (this is different from cruise control because I could easily slow down below 65, just never go above it).
Slightly fancy cars have been pushing this with per key controlled limits, so you can let your kid drive with a max speed limit, a max volume limit, etc.
Most cruise control systems come with a limiter as well though, so you can set a limit and then the car will never exceed it.
Also, no offence, but if you can't trust your kid with a car, then maybe you shouldn't be lending them it in the first place? Or get them a less powerful car for the start?
Depending on where you live and the sorts of roads you drive, accidents often come from corners/junctions/road conditions/acceleration etc rather than just MAX_SPEED.
A speed limiter is an incredibly one dimensional tool to try and modify accident chance.
i can imagine quite a few situations where any reasonably small limit on speed would end up in horrible crash (ie overtaking trucks in single lane mountain roads)
Some cars already have that, at least my 2008 Peugeot 607 has. While driving, push the button to select max speed and you're done. Controlling same way as cruise control. Although it leaves an option to go faster if you push the accelerator down to the floor.
Wouldn't work for controlling child, but on a freeway would work just as you expect.
My car has a speed limiter that I can turn on, but weirdly it can't be used in combination with cruise control. My use-case here would be cruising at one speed, then speeding up a bit to get around someone (think motorway/highway), but I don't want to go above the speed limit.
I wonder if it's perhaps because of industry lobbying. The incentive to buy a 400+ BHP BMW M3 (or whatever) would probably be somewhat stymied if it were limited to a mere 85mph.
And there are plenty of way less expensive cars out there with 300+ BHP. Again, not much point if you're limited to 85mph, which means the car industry has one less lever to pull to charge premium prices for premium models, and thus makes less money. And we're talking about an industry that's already, at least in some quarters, struggling.
It's the same reason that we could but won't lower all speed limits by 15mph or 30mph. It would save many thousands of lives per year, and it would decrease economic output a bit. But the only cries that would matter are those that say driving slow is annoying/not fun.
> It's the same reason that we could but won't lower all speed limits by 15mph or 30mph. It would save many thousands of lives per year
You make the erroneous assumption that drivers will suddenly obey the new speed limits. That isn't going to happen. Second the fatality rate and total number of motor vehicle crashes is lower now than it was when the NMSL (National Maximum Speed Limit) was in effect.
AFAIK, that's a restriction on the driver, not the car, so if anything happens as a result of access while moving, it's the responsibility of the driver.
no, they are doing it to prevent lawsuits. In fact, on Ford's Sync 3 system, they have a huge disclaimer that pops up when you enable Android Auto or Apple Carplay, saying that anything that comes up on the car's screen is controlled by Android (or Apple) and therefore Ford is not liable -- go sue them instead.
Certainly, but cars are also mandated to have a weight sensor in the passenger seat to disable the passenger side airbag when there isn't an adult sitting there (so they don't kill children in car seats).
Can't we at least compromise on that requirement? If there's a passenger, unlock the controls.
> Certainly, but cars are also mandated to have a weight sensor in the passenger seat to disable the passenger side airbag when there isn't an adult sitting there (so they don't kill children in car seats).
On a somewhat related note, this graph[1] show that the deaths of children in cars due to heat stroke started increasing after 1998 (which is when passenger side airbags were mandatory equipment in new vehicles).
Car seats can no longer safely be placed in the front seat due to the air bag risks. Children who fall asleep in the back seat combined with sleep deprived parents can lead to an "out of sight, out of mind" scenario where children are forgotten in the back seat of cars. It happens every summer.
That's only in certain jurisdictions, I guess? Around here cars either have a big warning sticker not to put children backwards in the front passenger seat or have an option to disable the airbag. I don't think I've seen one that does it automatically. The only use the sensor gets is making noise when the passenger doesn't use the seat belt.
I'm pretty sure my dad's ~2001 saab 9-5 had an indicator on the dashboard as to whether the passenger side airbag was turned on. Of course, I could be misremembering.
It appears that passenger side airbags that automatically disable are not required, but they were explicitly allowed ca 1997 by the NHTSA (as well as allowing a manual on/off switch). So my original point was somewhat mistaken. Of course, cars do have a weight sensor to alert you when the passenger seatbelt isn't fastened, so still, the car knows when you have a passenger.
I assume Toyota made this choice to reduce exposure to torte lawsuits.
If so, then perhaps the real blame lies with legislators. They could revise torte law so that drivers, not manufacturers, are the ones responsible for the safe operation of a vehicle. But apparently legislators are unwilling to make such changes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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 :
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
Smartphone maps are so superior because they are always up to date, can provide real-time traffic data, can tell you to take an alternative route and can provide other data about places to eat, etc.
While a lot of car GPSs have some of this, they are no where near what Google Maps or Apple Maps (or a targeted app like Waze) has. I bought a new car last year, and intentionally didn't get the GPS, even though my car has a 7-inch touchscreen. I would never use those crappy maps when I have my phone with me. If the car supported Carplay, I would 100% use maps through that.
This is why Carplay and Android Auto are the future. Their apps, APIs and data are so superior to whatever car companies can come up with.
Yeah, I'm not sure why car companies invested at all in attempting to build their own mapping software. It's a hard thing to do well, and I had been using GPS in the car since Windows 98 + Microsoft Streets + Garmin eMap + serial adapter running NEMA days. PC or smartphone navigation software has always been better than what is available in cars. Additionally, while the upgrade cycle for phones is yearly for some people, the upgrade cycle for cars can be 10 years or more, and good luck ever getting a software upgrade after buying a car.
Whatever car I buy next, I wouldn't buy without CarPlay. There are also replacement stereos which support this (e.g. Pioneer appradio) but given how most cars don't still use a 2 DIN slot for the radio and have much more integrated systems (drive modes, HVAC controls, etc on the "radio"), it's not even possible to upgrade many without losing significant factory functionality.
My hope is that auto mfgs wise up and realize that they've been wasting billions developing these in-house systems, and instead switch to just having the car be a dumb monitor + speakers with a connection to your phone which runs all of the non-critical systems.
> ... and good luck ever getting a software upgrade after buying a car.
Nissan wants ~$800 USD for a map upgrade (which is just a microSD card, if I understand correctly) for my 2014 Nissan Altima and Dodge wants a little under $200 for a map upgrade for my 2013 Dodge Ram. Yet I can freely download updates and perform map upgrades myself on my 2014 Harley-Davidson motorcycle in about 10 minutes using just a USB flash drive.
Ironically, the Harley is the only one of these that I would ever actually consider paying for.
On the rare occasion that we find that the maps aren't up to date, either the girlfriend or myself will just whip out our iPhone and open up the Maps apps instead -- just as described in this article.
I'll probably stop paying extra for all of the "upgrades" the next time I buy a vehicle. I typically spring for every feature/option package that's available but they are becoming less and less "worth it" as time goes on.
"I'm not sure why car companies invested at all in attempting to build their own mapping software."
Given how much the OEMs charge for the systems (often it's a $2K upcharge), plus how much they charge for updates (typically $150 - $200), the manufacturers undoubtedly saw it as a potentially profitable product development effort.
I've always wondered why it took manufacturers so long to put in a 3.5mm jack into head units--it would have saved us a lot of awful tape adapters in the 90s and CD changer emulators in the 2000s.
I know its trendy right now to hate on the removal of the 35mm headphone jack but this comment is simply false. You can charge it while using the headphone jack - you just need a silly dongle or a dock to do it.
which is less than any super cheap android/whatever can do.
seriously, wrong and arrogant move. if we users are stupid enough to vote with our money for this, then of course it's all our fault collectively. i know i won't
Does Carplay allow choosing which maps app serves the maps, or are you forced to use the apple maps? I'm sure people love Apple's app but it's given me many, many, many too many illegal directions for me to ever trust it.
I have CarPlay in my 2016 VW Golf R and the only map app that shows up is Apple Maps. I can still use Google Maps; I just plan my route on that app, and then bring up Apple Maps in CarPlay if I need to actually see a map. Google Maps continues to send driving directions through the car audio system even while Apple Maps is displayed. Still hoping Google Maps becomes an authorized CarPlay app eventually.
Neither Carplay nor Android Auto have multiple supported maps apps yet. Android Auto only allows you to use Google maps, but I don't have a problem with that since Google maps is very good. IIRC, they announced at the last Google IO that they're going to be supporting Waze in the near future.
Automakers have wizened up that they aren't the software companies they had hoped to be, however, the alternatives on offered in Android Auto and Carplay aren't too appetizing of alternatives to them.
While I do see telematics going the "dumb terminal" route, Google and Apple's approach of becoming a major reason why you buy a car has brought automakers into an uneasy truce with big tech. Cars just become more data pipes to fuel the ad engine while becoming a primary interaction point with drivers, cutting auto guys out of the information loop.
That's partially what's been holding up adoption. You have entire divisions inside big auto being threatened. Their "new feature" pipeline also starts coming from Google and Apple, requesting deeper control and functionality in the car as consumers demand a more seamless experience.
Even then, the AC and other integrated controls could easily be ios/android apps and integrated into the device's connection... Yes, a given app for a/c might suck, but the rest of the ux doesn't have to.
Acura wants me to spend something like $179 to update the maps for my in-car navigation system. For that money I can buy a windshield phone mount and a nice cable with cash leftover to take the wife out to dinner.
It's not just the money, it's the time. Lexus wants me to wait two days to special order navigation software for my car. Which leads to the question: why the hell do I need to wait 2 days for software in 2016?
Try being international, you get bounced around to a bunch of broken links on their website trying to find the "correct" software version. Then half the time you can't download it because your country (Australia) is a "security risk" and they can't export software for a device on retail shelves.
They're not the only one, I recently bought a Nissan and I have to pay around the same amount for a new sd card which contains the update to be shipped which is a waste of time and money compared to just opening Google Maps every morning.
You also forgot that they are fast with responsive UI. And that's only if you compare the best of the car built-in GPS. If it is not the top of range (which btw is not related to the price of the car), the UI is generally awful.
If you are a google/apple map user. Searching for an address is a million type easier: roughly type some part of the address and it will find it. No such luck with car gps.
At this stage you wonder why car manufacturer even bother. They should just allow to plug a tablet and run software made by people that understand software, and restrict themselves to providing a simple interface to car metric, hud and maybe cameras.
I really don't understand why they bother with most of the 'fancy' systems they put in.. Its like everything is half-assed.
I have a 1 year old truck, that has Satellite audio, Radio, 4G wifi hotspot, etc, and somehow, I have to set the clock manually in the settings, using crappy buttons..
Honda does this. Using their HondaLink interface, you plug in your iPhone, then you can choose which GPS system you prefer to appear on the display -- Honda's or Apple's. And of course, Apple's GUI lets you access the web to search for your destination using a simple text or voice interface then navigate using either Google's or Apple's or Mapquest's or Microsoft's maps.
IMHO it's the smart web-based search interface that makes web-based maps so superior to car maps. And yes, the web-based live traffic data is nice to have too.
This 10x! Car manufacturers are reinventing the wheel. I wonder how Tesla does this though, its display looks pretty cool but never had the chance to play with it.
Tesla's system is pretty good, and it's the only one that is. Then again, Tesla is the only car company that employs people who actually understand software.
And the UI on the apps seem to be better. I have an old Land Rover, and whoever wrote the software didn't consider that you need to be showing the current location of the car when displaying a junction. It's no use to me seeing a junction, which can be very complex in the UK, and then not giving an indication of how close I am to it. Am I a mile away? 100m? Oh, I missed it.
Seems to have traffic info though, even though it's quite old. Around London it basically displays a huge jumble of arrows, to the point where you can't see the Thames.
Seems to me what they need to do is just let the phone use the touchscreen in the car. You want to show movies to the kids anyway, and your media will all fit on the phone.
> Seems to me what they need to do is just let the phone use the touchscreen in the car. You want to show movies to the kids anyway, and your media will all fit on the phone.
That's exactly what Android Auto and Carplay do. On my Ford with Sync 3, I installed the Android Auto app on the phone. Then I plug the phone's usb cable into the car's usb port, and the dash display transforms to something controlled by the phone.
I once asked what it would cost to update my Prius' built-in navigator maps: cirka 200 €. And after few years it would be again out of date. I'm not sure whether to blame the car manufacturer or navigator software supplier for the situation, but at least this is very short-sighted thinking from Toyota.
By the way, I still prefer the built-in unit because it has better integration with audio system and windscreen HUD. The usability is actually pretty good despite its age.
Similar issue: the built-in navigator can show realtime location-aware traffic warnings from TMC broadcast, but only if they are non-encrypted. In my country they switched to commercial / encrypted TMC broadcasts few years ago, rendering the feature unusable for my car, and Toyota won't update the navigator unit to support encrypted TMC.
And even if the auto companies could do something as well as Google/Apple, it would still be several years out of date once it finally shipped in new cars.
I know my Audi has Google Maps, and real time traffic.
I think one of the other issues is how many GPS systems refuse to let you enter addresses en route and make you stop and / or pull the handbrake. This increases frustration hugely.
The Audi system says "please don't do this while driving" - you say "Okay" and are able to do so.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Semi unrelated question: Am I the only one who wished navigation apps allowed more precise control of route complexity?
Just a slider that goes between "minimum number of turns" and "most efficient" would be nice. Optimizing a route for complexity vs efficiency is a very important consideration when planning a route. A way to do that in a navigation app would be really nice. I appreciate the intention but taking four extra turns and a one way street or two to save one minute when going somewhere that's one turn off a main road is rarely a good idea. If I'm driving rural state highways for three hours I'd much prefer to go 150mi on two roads than go 120mi on ten roads.
The answer to your question is: because it's hard to make some of these adjustments on-the-fly and still have reasonably fast queries.
On embedded devices, space and processing power are limited - so you need to perform optimizations to speed things up so it's usable. These optimizations usually limit the flexibility of features like you're requesting. That's a basic trade-off.
For server-side routing solutions, you need response time to be fast so you can scale - again, you need to optimize your data and you lose flexibility. Route calculations are CPU heavy, it gets very expensive to serve lots of users if your route calculations aren't fast.
There's a lot of algorithm research being done in this space - the last 5 years have seen some really smart new approaches. However these haven't been deployed commercially in very many places.
If you'd be happy with 10s of seconds to calculate a route on your phone (offline), then you can have all the flexibility you want :-) This is rarely desirable, so very few implementations are as flexible as you want.
In reality, the metric probably needs to be a lot more complex than what I hacked together here. It's actually more like "don't turn left across traffic, left turns are ok onto one-way streets, etc", my metric was simply based on turn angle, and there are a bunch of scenarios where that falls down.
The rule probably works well in travelling salesman-like scenarios - you want to optimize the route to deliver multiple packages.
Having played with adjusting these kinds of metrics quite a bit, it's never as easy as you want :-(
Similar thought, but in cities, I'd prefer to cross major streets and make left turns at signaled intersections. I might save 2 minutes on my 30 minute commute, but those are incredibly risky and stressful maneuvers. I use my GPS because it has saved me from an hour of traffic more than once, but I don't need to risk my life to save 30 seconds.
I want "I am unwilling to make u-turns." They are illegal by default in the city of Chicago, but if you miss a turn, Google will try to get you to make a dangerous and illegal u-turn. If you ignore that, it'll suggest you another one further down the road. No thanks, I'm not turning around on Michigan Ave at rush hour.
I've looked into this. Apparently you set turn restrictions per-intersection in the maps data editor. No one has the patience to go check "u-turn not permitted" on all the Chicago intersections that don't have it currently, so we're stuck without major architectural changes from Google.
"Avoid u-turns" should be next to "avoid highways."
I'd actually rather have the device tell me to turn around at a convenient place. Finding a place to safely go the other direction is part of learning how to drive and the exam anyway, and how to do that is at the discretion of the driver. Could be a U-turn, could be a roundabout, could just be going into a side road and using a drive way. But as you note, the map data rarely has the information where is possible or allowed.
My biggest issue is the lack of control over routing in general. I've several times been in the position where all routes on the navigation device pass through the road in front of me, yet I'm sitting in the car looking at a road closure. At that point I know there's a way round the obstruction, but the navigation is of no use in finding it.
A simple "don't use this road" marker seems to me like a really useful feature, yet I've never seen it in any of the satellite navigation systems I've used.
Nope, you're not the only one. I primarily use Waze, but its hyperoptimization drives me nuts. I'd like it to weight "pain" into its calculations, such as (left) turns, to reduce the number of times when a route includes a large number of road changes that, in aggregate, save 1-2 minutes on a 30-minute trip.
I have found Apple Maps to be the absolute worst offender of route complexity. Although sometimes we use it for the specific purpose of taking the scenic route.
It will almost always suggest a confusing “shortcut”, which takes more time because it doesn’t account for all the additional turns, stop signs, speed limits, etc. It would be nice to have an optimization slider, or even a global setting for which mode you prefer.
You must be using google maps :) I have a garmin standalone unit, and android on my dash, making it easy to contrast and compare. Google likes to pick the clinically shortest route, expecting that traffic lights and left turns take no additional time. When ignoring them and taking a more sensible route, you find that their elaborate complexity by their own calculations would have made at most 1 minute of difference.
Google has been improving over the years, but still hasn't caught up with the user friendliness of garmin. Garmin seems to give the kind of directions that a human navigator sitting next to you would. Google seems like a machine that knows nothing of the real world!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As a counterpoint to the comments here bringing up the point that the maps on one's phone are always up to date, I'll bring up the point of offline access.
Yes, often the maps are bad, out of date, and require one to go the dealer and pay money to get an update. However, once out of the city, and cellular data ceases to be a thing, Google maps and similar applications built with an assumption of an always-available Internet connection become kind of useless. Yes, you can add maps for the areas you are planning to be to your offline areas, but that requires planning ahead. And if you ended up somewhere you didn't plan to be, well, good luck.
The UI for these in-car navigation systems is bad, but at least you have _a map_, instead of a featureless void with a blue You Are Here in the middle. Personally, I like a map book for such situations. Sure, it's ancient and obsolete technology, is quickly out of date, but the UI is quick an easy to learn, and it doesn't require power to use.
Development and support lifecycles for automotive systems are much longer than consumer electronics. They probably started speccing it out and developing hardware 10 years ago and will support it for the life of the vehicle, whereas that cheap phone may never receive an update after the day you buy it.
A lot of that comes down to the fact that people have a much higher expectation for a car than a phone: if the map in your car fails due to some weird bug, the potential downside is a product recall and lawsuits; if the maps app on that phone has the same bug, they might just point you at the you-get-nothing EULA or suggest you download the latest Google Maps app or buy a new phone instead.
This is why things like Apple's CarPlay / Android Auto make so much sense since they're basically just a remote UI for your phone: the functionality requirements are orders of magnitude simpler, you can upgrade independently, and the car manufacturer isn't on the hook if you install a navigation app with a bug.
The CPU, Display, etc of a car is designed extremely conservatively. Cars lasting 20 years are not uncommon, vibration, temperature extremes, and direct physical abuse (kids, fingers, ice cream, feet, fists, pounding, etc). Not to mention being turned off for months. Car buyers are also pretty sensitive about monthly costs (thus no data connection).
Your smartphone is designed to die around 2 years (expoxied battery), is designed for something like 40F - 100F, and will survive a light rain if you are lucky. All the while charging you $50 a month.
The 2 year phone replacement cycle used to be driven by innovation and large performance/capability increases. Which have pretty much stopped. 2 year contracts on sponsored phones used to drive them as well, mostly stopped. So manufactures seem to have decided on making phones 0.6mm slimmer and expoxing in the battery to drive the replacement cycle.
You just made a great argument for investing MORE in GPS software in a car than in the phone: get it right the first time so you aren't stuck with useless software for two decades–that's a waste of everyone's time and money.
I'm all for awesome car nav in a car. Nice touch screen, fast updates, current traffic, up to date maps, etc.
Unfortunately every car I've seen (including some rather expensive cars) look like Maemo Mapper from my ancient (pre-android pre-iphone) Nokia 770 tablet.
However I'm weird, I have a note 4 with a replaceable battery, wireless charging, 3GB ram, and a microSD slot. A phone that could easily last 5 years. It's VERY hard to find similar on the market today.
Swapping out a unit every 2 years (or why it craps out) for $200 sounds like a good deal compared to a terrible one that lasts 20 years and costs $10000 to replace.
> and direct physical abuse (kids, fingers, ice cream, feet, fists, pounding, etc)
Considering that tablets in the hands of babies are commonplace (with special distraction apps) it seems that phones / tablets have or need to have this too.
Software is the life blood of your smartphone. It's probably one of the reasons, if not the most important reason, that you bought the phone. If it's no good, you probably won't buy that brand of phone again. Software is a primary focus of the company that provides it, software is seen as a key differentiator, and it's taken seriously. Market researched, designed, tested, iterated on.
The software in your car is just another of the thousands of line items on the bill of materials, along with brake calipers and lug nuts. The car company sourced it from the cheapest supplier that could manage to sign a contract and barely throw something together--and did so 5 years before the car was even built, using even older technology. Whoever actually wrote the software may be several tiers down the supply chain and have no idea what the end user wants. They're implementing from a list of requirements someone from the vendor wrote, then it's off to supply the next vendor. Not to say one's software developers are any better or worse, but the mentality is totally different. Software is a cost to minimize and, if possible, mark up when selling.
Because the smartphone software is being continuously iterated and is critically evaluated by a billion people on a daily basis.
The car software was customized for that particular vehicle's combination of knobs and buttons, will be a check-box on the feature list, doesn't have any alternatives (except the phone) once you've bought the car, is lacking real-time traffic and constant map updates, was designed five years ago, was sold from a tier-two supplier to a committee at a tier-one, who sold the whole instrumentation package to an OEM, is burdened by safety and legal requirements (the vehicle must be in park, because you can't know whether it's the driver or the passenger doing the programming) ...
The problems are numerous. Two things seem like a possible fix:
1. Let it hook up to your home wifi or tether to your phone. We're close to having phone data plans that can handle that in the US.
2. Provide two things: A standard set of controls (wheel, buttons, touchscreen) and an open app store. Android or iOS compatibility would be nice for developers.
Together, these would mean that even if their own developers didn't get a good solution in place, the market could fix it later.
I would guess because the in-car navigation is a relatively new thing to car companies, and largely outside the specialties they've developed.
Ask a car company to design a useful and functional suspension system, an engine, a transmisison, a brake system, and they'll have little trouble doing so. These are all things that rather fundamental to having a functional car, and the car companies have had decades to work out the various difficulties in engineering and building such things.
However, a nav system is not (yet) a hard dependancy of a functional car. As such the man hours that car companies (or their contractors) have put into their (non-essential) nav systems likely pales in comparison that Google has put into maps.
You're comparing two vastly different things. Maps for Google (I assume people are referring to google maps) is a very important part of its business, up there with gmail.
But maps for car companies is an afterthought, a secondary luxury feature.
You can't expect car companies to drop billions on mapping and full time software devs in perfecting the navigation system.
The way I see it, the best way would be for them to use google maps in their car. There'll probably be a slew of privacy issues with that though, because you can close the maps app but it'll be more difficult to control the GPS system build into you car.
Sure, but I expect Google could make a kazillion dollars with some kind of licensing deal to provide Android and a stripped down offline version of Google Maps as a backup if there's no data available to car manufacturers.
Customizing an existing Android-for-cars platform sounds like a way better plan than whatever junk these manufacturers are shipping today. I've seen better systems in the 1990s in terms of responsiveness and performance. The only thing consistently worse than the UI in cars is the UI in set-top boxes which I can only presume are designed and implemented in North Korea and intended to run on CPUs made in 1985.
Apple is probably working on this exact thing, so I'm surprised Google hasn't made any inroads here. They can take more chances than Apple can.
>some kind of licensing deal to provide Android and a stripped down offline version of Google Maps as a backup
I don't think a default offline android will ever be in the picture. If everyone is offline, how will it make money? (android is free, so its far fetched to think it will start charging for that). It is risky for google to just give away lot of map data. Google spent a lot of money trying to acquire it. If it starts distributing it in a nice little package, people will start flashing their in-car devices with it.
I refuse to believe that Google can't pre-fetch ads and monetize their maps in other ways. Want your company logo to appear on the map itself? Pay up. I'm sure fast food chains and places like Starbucks would fork out to get custom pins.
Garmin has tons of map data too, and they "give it away" when you download it for your device. The offline mode might not have all the detail of the live version, but it could be good enough for travelling in remote areas without reception.
HERE Maps / HERE WeGo (whatever the hell it's called now) has supported offline map downloads from day one, between every Windows / iOS / Android phone I've owned I have had the entire US downloaded from day 1.
+1 for maps.me, I've been using it for more than a year in multiple European countries and it's been rock solid, even if it sometimes takes a while to get a fix (though that's probably more of a problem with my phone than with the app).
> However, once out of the city, and cellular data ceases to be a thing, Google maps and similar applications built with an assumption of an always-available Internet connection become kind of useless. Yes, you can add maps for the areas you are planning to be to your offline areas, but that requires planning ahead. And if you ended up somewhere you didn't plan to be, well, good luck.
I'm one of the few who still uses a Nokia smartphone (from before the deal with Microsoft), and it has an application called Here maps that allows you to download maps for offline use. I have all of the US, Canada and Mexico pre-loaded into it. It takes around 3 GB of space on the phone IIRC and I haven't had any issues with lack of map data at least in the areas I drive (plenty of which do not have adequate cellular signal on any network).
I realize this isn't a perfect counter, but Google Maps (on Android, and probably iOS) allows you to download "offline areas", and you can store just about many of them as your phone has storage for.
This means that as part of your trip preparation, you can download the maps and use them on your trip in the boonies. I don't know how well it _uses_ them, nor what amount of data connection it still wants, but it saved us a bunch of mobile data usage on our last trip.
The offline areas are useless. They are basically just prefetching the map-tiles. You can't do anything while not online, not search in the offline area, map a route or anything like that.
Here maps blows this out of the water in comparison.
I find google maps offline support pretty good. Seems pretty smart with caching, and if I'm going somewhere in the middle of nowhere without a signal I'm usually using the navigation to get there. As soon as you ask for a route it preloads all the maps.
I usually plan my routes while on wifi (restaurant, bar, home, or work) to avoid any cellular data charges. Similar for music and podcasts I use for driving.
There are offline mobile navigation systems that are easier and cheaper to keep up to date than the one in your car. For example, Sygic provides free updates once you purchase the initial license.
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
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.
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...
My new Tacoma has a hybrid system called Scout GPS. The idea is that you run the app on your phone, and it does all the heavy lifting WRT GPS, computing routes, etc., and the dashboard display is basically a moderately dumb UI that displays maps on the screen.
In theory, it's a best of both worlds situation; the UI doesn't really need to change very often; what is most important is the maps/POI information, which can be downloaded either in-app or via an update. Practically, the UI is just irritating enough that I end up using Google Maps anyway, and just letting the voice directions get me where I'm going.
(edit: punctuation, because my inner copyeditor won't shut up)
I've often wondered, while using the somewhat substandard media navigation of my bluetooth enabled car stereo which has a touch screen, why there isn't some standard for specifying a very simple, somewhat static visual interface for bluetooth touchscreens (or screens with a set number of external buttons). A very constrained HTML, perhaps, that apps could choose to supply to provide better control through external interfaces.
For example, let Android or iOS supply an interface to view my contacts based on the reported dimensions of the screen and capabilities. Let Pocket Casts present a list of podcasts to choose from. Let Pandora show my thumbs up/down stored for the song, and register my new preference. If I'm at my desk, and I'm using one of these apps, there's no reason a simple app that provides the same interface couldn't provide me info about the connected phone through bluetooth, to let me know who is calling me, let me stream my podcasts through my desktop speakers, etc.
Does this exist, and I just don't know about it (or it isn't implemented by anyone)?
I think that is more or less exactly the idea behind Android Auto and CarPlay for iOS. The problem is that many manufacturers still don't support it, and customer demand isn't high enough (yet) to force them to. I went ahead and bought the Taco, even though it didn't have Android Auto, because it was otherwise a good truck, and the bluetooth support was Good Enough™. Until enough people don't behave like me, support is likely to lag.
Thanks for the heads up. Interestingly, Android has the Desktop Head Unit for displaying Android Auto stuff on the desktop, but it's presented as a developer debugging tool. I'm not sure, but it looks like the actual car head unit is supposed to be using android, which I sort of understand from their point of view of wanting a good implementation not left up to the car manufacturers (and their history of poor software quality and updating), and also to increase marketshare. I imagine CarPlay is similar.
That's a shame, because I think they missed out on a real opportunity to attempt to define a standard that could have been useful for more than a closed ecosystem, and more than just cars. I'm sure it would be less featureful than what they came up with, but I think that would have been justified with the expanded scope. Imagine, if you will, if your phone could just as easily export controls to some virtual/augmented reality device you are wearing, without having to run the Android Auto operating system on that device. Such a shame.
If any Mazda employees are here, take note. This is all I want: let me set a route on my smartphone, you project it on my in-dash screen and it talks through the stereo. The built-in system is garbage and I gave up after 2 weeks. I'm currently looking for a good dash-holder for my phone so I can use it to navigate
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.
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.
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.
Even though my car stereo has pandora on it.. I usually just use bluetooth playback with pandora or skype from my phone as the google maps ux is much better and the directions work while listening.
Honestly, the car ux for entertainment, etc in general feels like something that should have been state of the art half a decade ago... it's too slow, unresponsive and irritation imho, depite positive reviews.
For references it's the fullscreen uconnect interface on a 2016 dodge challenger. Also, the fact that it's 3g instead of lte on the antenna makes the mobile hotspot option worthless and not even a consideration.
A bit late, but had meant spotify, not skype.. :-) I plan on letting XM lapse at the end of the free term as I really don't use it, and the cost is more than pandora and skype combined.
The car manufacturers just contract it out to companies like Johnson Controls, who make the system in my Mazda. It's running embedded linux and the interface is a bunch of javascript files. One of the bigger problems I see with this system is that Johnson Controls just doesn't give a shit about maintaining an old system unless a safety issue is presented. They're better off selling improved systems for use in newer model cars as a sales tactic. Android Auto/Apple carplay pretty much remove the ALWAYSBEIMPROVING component. Johnson Controls could pretty much just sell the same head unit/LCD combo for the next 10 years and no one would notice.
I build car dashboard software. You are right. The SW is shit. Exceptions, from what i've head are Volvo and Daimler. Don't know the kind of resources Tesla puts into their SW and am not sure if it's not just hype.
I'll second Volvo, we bought a used 2003 XC-90 several years ago and the Nav in it was great. Even with the 10 year old discs it found 95% of what we needed by name or waypoint and the interface was incredibly easy to navigate while driving. I chalk that up to the fact that it's _not_ a touchscreen, which means you can build muscle memory and menus were super predictably.
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.
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.
The Audi navigation works well sometimes, and I really like the integration into the car (using the most up to date maps, they give free map updates for 3 years).
However, the routes are not the most efficient, and although it supposedly uses Sirius for traffic, the data isn't very accurate. Google Maps often gives me a much more efficient route that can be twice as fast given current traffic conditions, but is more "unusual".
Audi's GPS likes to stick to main roads that become heavily clogged. And even though I have an update that came out within the last 2 months, it still doesn't have a major construction project that has been completed for a year added, and always tries to route you around it.
So basically I use Google Maps for navigation within the city or areas that I'm familiar with, and Audi's navigation for long trips (ie inter city highway trips) where the route will mostly be the same on both systems.
That being said, the GPS in my car ALWAYS gets an accurate lock right away. My phone (Nexus 6P) has an awful GPS that doesn't work in hilly areas or around tall buildings and constantly loses the signal. It barely works inside the car, and even then the accuracy isn't great. Guess the all metal phone really kills the GPS signal, since the Nexus 6 had an amazingly good GPS with high accuracy in the same conditions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why not buy one of the cheap aftermarket Chinese Android head units? When I was looking to buy a car I specifically looked for double DIN compatibility so that I can later easily install my own head unit. I would not want to support a car manufacturer who is abandoning the DIN standard for aftermarket head units. I want this central piece in the car to be upgradable. A car without double DIN is like a computer case without any slot to put an HDD.
There are very nice units with native Android experience. They usually have either a 7" or 10" screen. There are also some discussions of the various chinese units on xda forums in case someone is here interested...
Don't waste your money on a cheap Chinese unit. It's hard enough to justify buying the name brand units that cost way more and run worse than a $50 Walmart phone.
The aftermarket head unit market has been in shambles for a few years now. Demand has dropped dramatically and units have stagnanted for years, in some ways even moving backwards.
I would love to see DINs make a comeback in cars, hopefully it would breath some fresh life into the HU market.
Reading the comments I appear to be the exception. I lease a 2015 BMW 4-series which I added "Professional Media" to and the nav works really well. I've driven plenty of other cars where the nav is useless, but not all are bad.
Reasons to use it over my phone:
* 11" screen shows me a high quality map overlayed with current traffic, with 1/3 split for lane guidance when needed
* Directions also shown directly on the dash - no need to look far away
* Spoken instructions dim the music volume
* Pretty accurate traffic information with automatic OTA updates
Downsides:
* Voice control is shitty; saying "set destination to leamington spa" will change to a random radio frequency
* Slightly awkward to send routes from PC to car, has to be via Remote Control App
You aren't really the exception, instead you're just fortunate enough to have one of the few in-dash navigation systems which isn't absolutely terrible.
Most of the features you've named are exactly what Android Auto/Carplay provide, but without limiting you to just a single maps/navigation vendor.
You're likely leasing that vehicle for 1-3 years. Do you think that if you purchased that 4-series that the navigation would still be updated and solid by the end of its 9-15 year vehicle lifespan? I certainly don't. But I do an apps platform like carplay/android auto will continue to provide quality apps for at least that long.
CarPlay/Android Auto certainly improve quality on average for most cars, but I'm not convinced they will solve the problem of outdated technology.
I previous had a Mercedes with "Apple Certified Connectivity" which was great, until they switched to lightning cables and the connectivity broke.
Whilst I'm sure CarPlay/Android Auto will last longer, I don't believe there won't be any breaking changes in future that will break compatibility. Given that we replace phones a lot faster than cars I can see a future where there are cars which only support CarPlay version X, and the standard is now version Y.
At that point you then end up with no navigation or media, because you aren't going to use an older phone just to have it work with your older car.
I'm in the UK and my maps get updated frequently (it often has a % downloading bar for the update) and when I compare with my phone the route and traffic is very similar to Google Maps.
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.
That was my biggest problem when I recently bought a car -- almost all of the ones with the options I wanted (out of dealer stock) also included the $800 manufacturer's GPS. Which is something completely useless to me since I could get by perfectly fine with Android Auto. So I ended up paying for a feature that I would not only not use, but was such inferior quality (it can't locate either my home address, or work address -- for home, it routes me to a house several miles away, and for work it sends me to the movie theater 3 blocks east).
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,
People prefer better user experience over worse user experience. More news at 10.
Seriously, I am blown away that car manufacturers manage to pitch navigation systems as a value add to the car. "Would you like to spend an additional $1500 for a system with a UI workflow developed as the first GPS satellites were being launched? For an additional $50/mo you can even keep the information up to date so it doesn't suggest you drive across the hoover dam."
Why is Tesla one of the few car manufacturers who actually pushes real updates to their car's dashboard system (and for free, others charge absurd fees if they do give minor updates).
I hope that by 2020 it is the expectation that your car will continue to update and improve its interface over the years you own it.
I say this because people point to smartphones as always being more updated- and there's no reason for this.
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.
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.
It's really simple - how hard is the UX of my phone vs. the car's system. I've _never_ seen a builtin car version have a UX that wasn't ridiculously complex and frustrating to use.
There are two concrete, real examples, of a routing UX that anyone can just try out - just grab an android phone or an iphone and directly copy the experience. Just sit down and try the most basic goal of using a nav system - enter and address and start and do it on your car system and on either phone.
Oh, wait, differing goals. I, as a user, want a usable system. The maker of these awful nav systems have an entirely different goal. They are trying to sell an "option" upgrade to car makers who then include it in "option packages" with the car... usability is way way down the list after bells/whistles/marketing/subscription sales
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.
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.
>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.
Native GPS systems are painfully slow, in my experience. I have a Subaru Impreza 2014. Its GPS usually tracks a full block behind we're I'm at. If I'm not paying attention and make a turn based on the voice-guidance alone, it's often a wrong turn. Re-routing takes a long time as well; too long to be useful. Additionally, I have to pay for annual map updates if I want them. To someone's point earlier, all interaction with the map is disabled while the car is in motion. It would be nice if it were unlocked so a passenger could use it.
So I use Google Maps on my phone. It's significantly faster, shows more meta-data relative to my route, e.g., delays and alternate route suggestions, and if it has to re-route it's usually immediate.
I have looked at the comments here and everyone is talking about the superiority of their phones and how carplay and Android auto are so much better.
And this leads me to having a Steve Jobs moment: I wish the car dash computers would work as simply as smart watches where they are just dumb remote controls for phones.
I don't have Android auto or carplay. But I have used moto360. And I find that is all I really ever need when driving. The voice recognition is awesome. The interface is simple. And like all simple things it leads the mind to wish for more.
It seems like the car manufacturers tried to swallow too much at once and sucked at all of it.
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 don't. My 2013 Prius has an excellent GPS and I'm not too concerned that the maps are a bit out of date. I still get accurate traffic data from XM.
There are advantages to the built-in navigation - it works when there's no GPS signal due to inertial navigation (compass and tire rotation). Mine has a head-up display so I can see navigation cues without taking my eyes off the road. The voice synth is much better than Apple Maps or Google Maps.
I've only had to pull out my phone a couple of times in 3 years.
Seems like the best advantage of in car navigation is the GPS. Seems like many car GPS are rock solid, lock quickly, and can handle short outages because they know the speed and compass direction.
Maybe car windows are tinted more often now? I often get a marginal signal in my car, seems worse than in my house.
Anyone had luck with a magnetic attached bluetooth GPS they can put on their car roof or similar to improve a smartphone's GPS signal inside a car?
The tragedy of proprietary technology.
There is a need for competition so sure, saying "let's integrate Google Maps into everything" might not be a win for us in the long term, but we don't need a hundred different navigation systems. Just integrate one of the top players in the field and be done with it.
Better yet, open the damn design to allow modification by customers (/local garages).
I remember seeing my dad drive his brand new BMW 5 series with a beautiful widescreen display in the dash. The screen has a little shelf under it, so it was the perfect place to set his iPhone with the directions he actually wanted to follow. The built in GPS essentially provided the same directions, but the UX of the phone apps and the audible directions are just so much better.
My issue isn't so much the pain of entry — although it is a pain — as the fact that Google Maps provides better directions, taking into account current traffic conditions, than my car's system.
OTOH, my car's system knows about highway amenities like food & gas, and has a neat feature where it displays a preview of what certain turns look like.
I can't use my car's GPS because the car is from Japan and it has Japanese language only and only maps of Japan. And you can't just download map of any other country, and you can't even change the language.
So, yes, I'd better use my phone's GPS: maps are always up-to-date, I can choose between Google Maps and Apple Maps (or any other), can select any language.
This is a little like a more extreme version of the smart TV situation: for the most part there are rarely prizes for coming second, so many people ignore the built in stuff. For many it would be better if they came without GPS and used the money for other things, but it seems many are unaware of this too!
I have a 2015 Mustang with GPS, no carplay, and I always use Google Map on my iPhone (and everyone in san diego assume that i'm a tourist because of that haha).
Same for my friends with their cars, I never saw them using their built-in gps.
I already used carplay in another car, but apple plan on it is not as good as google map.
Haven't tried built-in GPS, but I prefer using my phone over my standalone GPS because it's much faster. My standalone unit takes forever to boot up, has too-long delays when navigating between screens, and overall is just frustratingly sluggish when trying to use.
My car's map was so out of date when I bought it it instantly became useless to me. My wife sitting in the passenger seat cannot select destinations while we are driving so it is far easier to just use a phone with the added benefits of up-to-date maps and traffic.
As far as I can tell the only upsides to car navigation (embedded or a standalone TomTom or something) is independence from live data link and battery constraints. Unless I'm going somewhere without a data connection, I think the phone is strictly better.
You can't buy car features a la carte like the "build your car" tool on every auto maker's site suggest you can. You're forced to buy the "tech package" which includes the GPS because you want something as simple as bluetooth
Nothing is really close to the functionality of Waze or Google maps. All the purpose built devices run an inferior product with a sloppy interface. Users are going to use the superior product in their pocket.
I would rather have a nice phone holder built in car, than a builtin navigation. It is so obviously you can't compete with the likes of Google & Apple in terms of UI.
Why not just have a nice phone holder built into cars rather than these systems. It would integrate with the speaker/mic in the car and charge my phone.
i really just want a chromecast equivalent for my car. phones get updated every couple years but cars last much longer. it simply doesn't make sense to put too much smarts in the car itself but i do see the value in a well placed screen and integration with the cars audio system.
Really the thing you want here is for your smartphone to have access to the car's GPS receiver, which is huge and sensitive and can use all the power it wants. The phone can just treat it as a peripheral.
I was in another city and rented a car and it came with navigation. I knew I could just use my phone, but I decided to use the navigation that the rental car came with, just for fun.
1. First, I knew the name of my hotel, but not the address. I tried to search the business directory. I had to input the CITY AND STATE, which is painfully slow on the pressure-based touch screen, but I did it and did a search. I couldn't find it.
2. So I took out my phone and found the address and went back to the navigation in my car to type it in.
3. I slowly input the city and state again before it lets me input an address starting with the number.
4. When it came time to pick the street name, it was ambiguous. There's one street name that looks right. There's another with a W in front of it. There's another highway number that could also be it. I pick one and I can tell it's not in the right spot. Now I have to start all over.
5. I start all over, input the city and state and address and I think I have it right. I start to navigate.
6. It can't find a GPS signal. Maybe it's the parking garage I'm in. Maybe it just takes a while. I sit there. I'm about 10 minutes in and I still haven't gotten any navigation instructions.
7. I get nervous because I won't even know what direction to turn when I leave the parking garage. I take out my phone and say "Ok google, navigate to the blah blah Hotel". It says "Ok, sure" and my phone has no problems finding GPS and I have navigation instructions pulled up in about 5 seconds.