4 ms·

that's a symptom of a bigger problem. Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party devi

by maxdo 3mo ago

that's a symptom of a bigger problem. Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI. It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

JoshTriplett 3mo ago
> Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win. > It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user. It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user. If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.
- BeetleB 3mo ago
  > On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win. I'd agree if it worked. Android Auto sucks. And I don't like that my auto manufacturer can wash their hands off it by pointing at Google. > If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so. As long as the car manufacturer gives me basic functionality (radio, stereo, Bluetooth, etc). Nominally they do, but it sucks in a different way from Android Auto. So I have to ping pong between these two. My prior car's aftermarket Bluetooth receiver was fantastic. The fact that I can't install something like that on modern cars is a huge regression.
  - maxdo 3mo ago
    why on earth you need an aftermarket receiver of Bluetooth? The cost of the module is few dollars. My cheap ac has bluethooth, just to connect it wifi, i used it once in it's lifetime. The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, what if you have several devices in the car etc ? it's such a horrible, broken, neurotic idea.
    - BeetleB 3mo ago
      > The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, Why would you get that idea? Do you have to pair your phone every time for all other Bluetooth products?
      - maxdo 3mo ago
        because that's the only way to use that CarPlay, if you need music, navigation, etc. if you have a standalone computer you don't have to do so.
        BeetleB 3mo ago
        I still have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not speaking in the abstract. I've done this before on older cars.
  - cyberax 3mo ago
    > Android Auto sucks. No, it doesn't. It's a very simple streaming protocol. It's literally a gRPC-encapsulated stream of h264 frames over a USB connection. With touch events and some car-related telemetry streamed back. You can implement it in a weekend: https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto You can create whatever you want, including just streaming videos onto the head unit or making it play Doom while driving (with steering wheel for input).
    - BeetleB 3mo ago
- maxdo 3mo ago
  you settle with one failure story for another failure story. there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.
  - JoshTriplett 3mo ago
    > there are companies with amazing software experience I don't want an amazing software experience. I want an unsurprising experience, ideally the one I already have. The only thing better than Android Auto would be to just provide a standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs. Then you wouldn't need two different standards (Android Auto and Apple Carplay), just one, which would also work with any new device that came along to break that duopoly.
    - maxdo 3mo ago
      you just stuck in this paradigm, this apple/auto surprised me so many times : - when you need to re-pair Bluetooth - when you forget the cable to charge and you need to drive - when you want to share your car to someone and they need to spend 5 minutes to accept every single ToS possible to simply put a GPS - several people with phones paired before, now you dealing with complete random you name it. - you listen music and you need to go out to buy something while others in the car None of these problems exist if you have a decent, dedicated computer in the car that just works, it knows profiles, it does need you to be always on wire, or on the line.
      - cyberax 3mo ago
        The TLDR; answer to all your problems is: "Just use a freaking USB cable". I rent tons of cars and my experience with the wired AndroidAuto is: 1. Plug it in. 2. That's it. It just works. No ToS or any other crap. 3. The same cable also supplies power! Some cars _may_ need me to press something on the screen to switch to AA mode, but it's rare. And it works perfectly with _everything_ on my phone. A navigator properly pauses my audiobook before announcing a turn, for example.
parineum 3mo ago
> It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI. Why doesn't op simply ask AI to write software to fix his problem?
- Rebelgecko 3mo ago
  A lot of the time, the head unit only accepts signed updates
  - parineum 3mo ago
    Software is solved so you just need to use AI to fix android auto or find a vulnerability in the head unit.
afavour 3mo ago
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user. Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced. In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.
janalsncm 3mo ago
> software is solved with AI Presumably every car manufacturer can use AI. Yet there are still bugs. If all bugs are solved with AI, and therefore every car manufacturer with access to AI writes bug-free software, the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.
- Reason077 3mo ago
  > ”the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.” This suggests the supply of AI is too limited, and there isn’t enough AI to go around. Solution: build more AI data centres.
dmitrygr 3mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 3mo ago
  Please don't act like a jerk on HN. We can disagree without belittling and jeering, and this style of comment doesn't make your position seem strong, at all. You've been here long enough to know that this is not what HN is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Telaneo 3mo ago
Given that the (user-facing) software that comes with the car is always broken (modulo Tesla and a few other modern exceptions), it's no wonder people want to replace that software with literally anything else that actually works. This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved. It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.
- izacus 3mo ago
  Err, Teslas aren't an outlier - the OTAs break shit all the time and in many ways they're worse than cars not getting OTAs because of that :(
  - Telaneo 3mo ago
    Yet they still manage to be better than the baseline, since that's located somewhere around the Mariana Trench.
    - izacus 3mo ago
      I've been driving many cars lately and I strongly disagree.
  - maxdo 3mo ago
    I can name you tons of things they fix over 5 years i own over the air. The ratio there is very very net positive towards a very good , well polished system, not an other way around. They even fixed once a semi broken hardware for me. Camera power started acting up. I called tesla they said you can come to service to replace or wait a bit we will release OTA that will decrease a power consumption, in 3-4 weeks they fix my custom problem without going to serive
Our_Benefactors 3mo ago
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user Hello, Elon Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.

by maxdo 3mo ago

JoshTriplett 3mo ago

> Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win. > It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user. It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user. If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.

BeetleB 3mo ago
> On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win. I'd agree if it worked. Android Auto sucks. And I don't like that my auto manufacturer can wash their hands off it by pointing at Google. > If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so. As long as the car manufacturer gives me basic functionality (radio, stereo, Bluetooth, etc). Nominally they do, but it sucks in a different way from Android Auto. So I have to ping pong between these two. My prior car's aftermarket Bluetooth receiver was fantastic. The fact that I can't install something like that on modern cars is a huge regression.
- maxdo 3mo ago
  why on earth you need an aftermarket receiver of Bluetooth? The cost of the module is few dollars. My cheap ac has bluethooth, just to connect it wifi, i used it once in it's lifetime. The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, what if you have several devices in the car etc ? it's such a horrible, broken, neurotic idea.
  - BeetleB 3mo ago
    > The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, Why would you get that idea? Do you have to pair your phone every time for all other Bluetooth products?
    - maxdo 3mo ago
      because that's the only way to use that CarPlay, if you need music, navigation, etc. if you have a standalone computer you don't have to do so.
      - BeetleB 3mo ago
        I still have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not speaking in the abstract. I've done this before on older cars.
- cyberax 3mo ago
  > Android Auto sucks. No, it doesn't. It's a very simple streaming protocol. It's literally a gRPC-encapsulated stream of h264 frames over a USB connection. With touch events and some car-related telemetry streamed back. You can implement it in a weekend: https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto You can create whatever you want, including just streaming videos onto the head unit or making it play Doom while driving (with steering wheel for input).
  - BeetleB 3mo ago
maxdo 3mo ago
you settle with one failure story for another failure story. there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.
- JoshTriplett 3mo ago
  > there are companies with amazing software experience I don't want an amazing software experience. I want an unsurprising experience, ideally the one I already have. The only thing better than Android Auto would be to just provide a standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs. Then you wouldn't need two different standards (Android Auto and Apple Carplay), just one, which would also work with any new device that came along to break that duopoly.
  - maxdo 3mo ago
    you just stuck in this paradigm, this apple/auto surprised me so many times : - when you need to re-pair Bluetooth - when you forget the cable to charge and you need to drive - when you want to share your car to someone and they need to spend 5 minutes to accept every single ToS possible to simply put a GPS - several people with phones paired before, now you dealing with complete random you name it. - you listen music and you need to go out to buy something while others in the car None of these problems exist if you have a decent, dedicated computer in the car that just works, it knows profiles, it does need you to be always on wire, or on the line.
    - cyberax 3mo ago
      The TLDR; answer to all your problems is: "Just use a freaking USB cable". I rent tons of cars and my experience with the wired AndroidAuto is: 1. Plug it in. 2. That's it. It just works. No ToS or any other crap. 3. The same cable also supplies power! Some cars _may_ need me to press something on the screen to switch to AA mode, but it's rare. And it works perfectly with _everything_ on my phone. A navigator properly pauses my audiobook before announcing a turn, for example.

parineum 3mo ago

> It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI. Why doesn't op simply ask AI to write software to fix his problem?

Rebelgecko 3mo ago
A lot of the time, the head unit only accepts signed updates
- parineum 3mo ago
  Software is solved so you just need to use AI to fix android auto or find a vulnerability in the head unit.

afavour 3mo ago

> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user. Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced. In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.

janalsncm 3mo ago

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

Reason077 3mo ago
> ”the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.” This suggests the supply of AI is too limited, and there isn’t enough AI to go around. Solution: build more AI data centres.

dmitrygr 3mo ago

[flagged]

tomhow 3mo ago
Please don't act like a jerk on HN. We can disagree without belittling and jeering, and this style of comment doesn't make your position seem strong, at all. You've been here long enough to know that this is not what HN is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Telaneo 3mo ago

Given that the (user-facing) software that comes with the car is always broken (modulo Tesla and a few other modern exceptions), it's no wonder people want to replace that software with literally anything else that actually works. This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved. It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.

izacus 3mo ago
Err, Teslas aren't an outlier - the OTAs break shit all the time and in many ways they're worse than cars not getting OTAs because of that :(
- Telaneo 3mo ago
  Yet they still manage to be better than the baseline, since that's located somewhere around the Mariana Trench.
  - izacus 3mo ago
    I've been driving many cars lately and I strongly disagree.
- maxdo 3mo ago
  I can name you tons of things they fix over 5 years i own over the air. The ratio there is very very net positive towards a very good , well polished system, not an other way around. They even fixed once a semi broken hardware for me. Camera power started acting up. I called tesla they said you can come to service to replace or wait a bit we will release OTA that will decrease a power consumption, in 3-4 weeks they fix my custom problem without going to serive

Our_Benefactors 3mo ago

> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user Hello, Elon Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.