Chevy is still all about knobs, which is the proper way to create car controls. Ford is pretty heavy into a full touch screen control center, which is really annoying as a driver.
Apple car is not the issue. It’s all the other touch inputs that I have on my car to control every basic function like the climate controls and other shit.
Apple car switches on, already the navigation is setup and the music is on… I don’t need to touch it again. I can switch songs on my steering wheel and I can ask Siri for basic shit like finding a playlist.
I don’t need to go through a touch menu or button to change the temperature or any other action setting while in motion.
in fact, much of CarPlay’s functionality becomes locked while the car is in motion, making that a moot point anyway, lol. the only things left to distract or endanger would be the OEM stuff, as you mention.
i don’t use it enough to know, but i think the UI varies a little between vehicles and models, so it may not be in the same spot for everyone-- or even look exactly the same.
as for a Siri command, you may try something like, “Set my notifications to…” or something like that.
I mostly use Waze for navigation. And the alerts button setting is pretty small. However I find that just having it on alerts is enough for day to day use.
It’s true that for new routes I do enable the full guided voice assist
So I'm assuming that means that they're admitting that they put a safety hazard in all those prior cars and are assuming liability for every accident where infotainment systems may have been involved, right?
If they're going to lie to pretend they can't include it because it's unsafe when every single person on the planet knows with 100% certainty that it's because they want their own cash/data hungry alternative instead, then putting said "unsafe" thing in their vehicles should absolutely expose them to liability.
There absolutely is not a theoretical possibility that "safety" was a genuine consideration in any way in this decision.
Cool, then I’m dropping GM from my list of cars that I’ll buy or rent. CarPlay is a must have in 2023, just like a backup camera. Literally nobody wants your shitty car OS thing, it’s guaranteed to be way worse than iOS and Android.
Seems like this ought to be a dealbreaker for many.
Let’s be honest, GM can’t make money off owners using this software. They can make their own and have owners pay a subscription like some Tesla owners do now.
To achieve this, GM’s new system — called Ultifi, which is making its debut in the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV — uses Google apps built right into the system, like Google Maps and Assistant, which GM hopes customers will use for more voice controls. It can handle things like calls and texts, and it can control the audio and climate systems.
Now you have an embedded Android device that is never gonna be upgraded for the lifetime of the car.
I highly doubt an aftermarket unit will work. Today, most units are integrated into the entire car system. Removing the unit from my car would mean losing access to a lot of functionality. I doubt the car would even accept a 3rd party unit. And this is not a Tesla.
You’d be surprised. Check AliExpress. There are aftermarket units built to fit perfectly into every dumb auto fascia they’ve come up with to prevent it. A simple harness adapted is usually sufficient to restore steering wheel controls etc.
I’ve heard of a couple of vehicles where you simply cannot replace the media centre because it doubles as climate control input etc but the simple answer is: refuse to buy those vehicles.
I know all that, the point is modern infotainments do way more than just play music. Look, I wish it was different, but most cars built today have controls in the infotainment that you can’t have anywhere else. Like very specific settings for interior and exterior lighting, consumption metrics, creature comforts, just to name a few. That’s not a simple case of getting the wires correctly installed like it was before. And good luck finding just the right car with a dumb head unit, even simple cars today are fitted with this stuff.
I’m dropping GM, because they are unsafe. I’m not going back to looking down at my phone while I’m driving.
Also, as a former 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt owner, I’d love to have a good chat about safety with the executives of GM. That is, if they aren’t too busy creating their new in-dash subscription model. Which is what this is really about, and we all know it.
Maybe they should first focus on their gross manufacturing shortfalls, and their other issues. Maybe take a look at that parking lot in Pontiac that’s bursting at the seams with Corvettes stuck in limbo, and their very pissed off purchasers.
It’s apparently quite a mess. Quite a few of the late summer and fall builds went into 3800 production status. That means it’s built, like it’s off the assembly line but sitting before the final inspection staging and shipping. So for some this went on for a couple months, and some people started questioning where the fuck their vettes were, like 3800 status usually doesn’t last for very long.
Then someone in Michigan noticed their OnStar got activated, and pinged the car and it was saying it was in Pontiac, not Bowling Green. So someone apparently went and looked and sure as shit, lot full of vettes. They took a bunch of shots of like heavy security but otherwise the cars just all sitting outside. GM was and is absolutely zipped about what’s going on, it’s under lock and key. Prevailing rumor is they needed heavy rework, some rumors are aimed at something to do with the DCTs, there’s also rumors that the bodies needed heavy reworking. Whatever the issue is, it’s a friggin snafu and a half. The boomers that have their orders sitting there were going thermonuclear because their Vettes have been sitting outside in the rain and snow. They just started getting delivered this past month, so guess we will see if some issues become apparent down the road. It’s maybe still going on too, like some cars are still getting stuck at 3800, and are returning pings a couple hours east of Bowling Green. Not sure I’d touch a late model 23 build, that’s for sure.
No my counterargument is that there’s thankfully lots of alternatives on the market. I could care less what GM does at this point, honestly. There’s going to be some upset people at the dinner table next year, but I’m driving something else in 2024. The quality has just gone to absolute shit, and they are pretty clearly trying to rush everything out and come up with all these fucking pretend schemes why they are doing it and why options are missing. When it’'s got zero to do with safety, and everything to do with their new UAW deal, where they are going to try and find new revenue streams to offset their rising costs, while also charging everyone out the ass for their bullshit. Because heaven help if the executives or the worst CEO in their history has to give back the increases in their bloated salary/bonuses. Mary Berra couldn’t successfully run a fucking lemonade stand, let alone one of the biggest companies in the world.
This is not the comment of someone who doesn’t care what gm does.
Also your family is weirdly intense and cares far too much about someone’s choice of car manufacturer if “there will be some upset people at the dinner table”
And incredibly none of this has really any direct relation to the post or my comment.
I’m happy you have something to be passionate about.
My family is weirdly intense about my choice in car manufacturers because I’m from a small town, and growing up there was quite the vested interest in what I’m seen driving because I’m a GM dealer’s something something. It’s caused quite a few issues in my personal life over the years, which I’m not expecting you to comprehend or understand.
All you need to know my hatred for the modern day General runs deep. Mostly because it’s a company with a long institutional-like history and a deep integration into many communities, and was formerly a company that I cared very much about, for a variety of personal reasons and interests. But it’s also a company that has been run by a long succession of absolute fucking morons that have made a long successive chain of absolutely r word decisions. Like this one for example. So I mean I’m biased, and that needs to be stated. But this is still the stupidest fucking move by a company that I’ve read about all week.
Also the vehicles are terrible and I’m about to have to haul my wife’s POS GM for what feels like the 80th time this year to our local dealer (who is also complete shit, but I have a higher expectation of dealers than what is probably ordinary). I’m just over it.
The fact that cars have touch screens and capacitive surfaces are what makes them unsafe. Physical buttons work with apple car play and android auto and make them safer
Capacitive buttons need to die a painful death. I’m ok with some functions being capacitive or touch screen buttons, like little unimportant ones like accessing my 6th favourite radio station or whatever. Or even Carplay or Android Auto.
But when it comes to operating the HVAC or shifting gears, it shouldn’t be allowed that these aren’t mechanical switches with proper fail-safe backups. I don’t even think those shifter buttons in a lot of modern vehicles, or the shifting knobs, like what’s been in the Jeep SUVs for the past decade, are the best idea.
You know what’s unsafe? Putting a long-ass disclosure about keeping your eyes on the road that you have to close before you can use your infotainment center. We know how to drive, dude. Adding a distraction doesn’t improve safety, it makes it worse.
Like, could I just have the aux jack back please? I can frig with my phone before I put the car in drive and just push audio through the speakers, I don’t need to be able to sort through my playlists or make calls from the steering wheel, I’m distracted enough by billboards, for chrissakes. The only thing I like about my phone being connected to my car is that I can skip forward and back, that’s it.
Yeah what’s up with that?! My new car comes with a host of connection possibilities, but lacks a simple jack. I still use that 5th gen iPod, is it too much to ask for a connector?
Honestly it’s probably because you are likely in the minority in wanting this, at least according to the car manufacturers. Cell phones haven’t had audio jacks for a few years now. Most iPods are in junk drawers, dying long and slow deaths. Take a look around the next time you are in a crowd, the people with headphones on, like 90% of them are going to be airpods or other Bluetooth style headphones.
Ain’t saying I like it either, don’t get me wrong, but I imagine that’s probably the logic behind it.
I've a Mazda with Android Auto that doesn't use a touch screen. It's all controlled with a joystick/knob/button setup that is actually really nice. I wish my Nissan had a similar setup all the time.
In the Mazda I know how many physical interactions will get me the result I want, it takes barely more than a glance at the screen to know what's up. With the touch interface I have to put my eyes on the screen to confirm that the car didn't bounce when I went to tap a "button" and/or confirm that the tap was actually registered. I know that GM has to know that Android Auto supports non touchscreen interactions. If they're concerned about how unsafe touchscreens are, just add a knob to the center console that doubles as a 4-way joystick like Mazda has and all those concerns go away. It's really that simple and it IS miles better than using touch for everything.
Yeah, I do enjoy jumping into my wife’s Mazda every now and then, for just this reason. Touch screens requires too much attention be diverted away from the critical task of driving, as people need to look at the screen for the purpose of aiming a finger at a control on it.
The steering wheel controls for my Ford’s Sync are good for volume, music back/forward, and phone calls, but that’s it. It’s the reason I still need to use a voice assistant while driving. I really hate using the touch screen except at the start or end of journey.
One reason why I will keep buying Mazda as they have said they will stick with this idea. Physician controls please I don’t want to have to fuck with a touchscreen to crank the AC or Heat
I have a 2016 with no android auto support, and my biggest pet peave is that the infotainment system is absolutely the worst I’ve seen.
I’ve been planning a long project of replacing it with a customized tablet, but I’m afraid whatever I land on won’t integrate that push wheel control well, because it’s just so damn nice
My Mazda is a 2016 CX-5. It was a limited option in 2016, but it was an option, and it only cost me $400 to purchase the upgraded head unit and have it installed by my Mazda dealership. I don't know what model yours is, but 2016 is the year that you can actually look into the option depending. It was going to run me more than $400 to do my own AA solution with the risks of losing the steering wheel or knob controls, so $400 for the upgrade that retains all of that without any hacky workarounds was a godsend.
I bought mine used, so I didn’t really have the option to upgrade anything but the tires. The head unit has some pretty bad pressure cracking in the screen, so really it would be a full replace regardless. I used a open sourced hack at one point to add AA to the default software, which worked for a while, but I started having issues with it freezing and hard-resetting while I was driving and using google maps on it, so I had to take it off (i think AA made an update that broke the hack)
I'm not the original owner of my Mazda either, I had the upgrade done well after the original sale of that vehicle. I had also looked into the software modding scene but decided that an official upgrade costing only $400 wasn't worth the potential headaches of hacky homebrew updates I had to service myself.
Yea, I’m just also generally really disinterested in OEM software, and on principal I believe I should have exclusive rights to my own data and the data of the things I own. It still enrages me that in order to pull data about the car systems that are normally accessible through the headunit, I basically have to decrypt binary signals from the canbus myself, since they intentionally do not make those codes available.
TL:DR, i’ve made my life so much harder with my principles, but I am who I am
It’s a very thin argument about it being buggy and/or users picking up their phones when that happens. There’s no way they have data to quantify that. I use voice commands exclusively and as others have said the only things I wrestle with are climate and non-integrated functions. It’s way safer to do AA or CarPlay in my experience.
It’s GMs bet to lose here. I would immediately pass on a vehicle without CarPlay. My old Toyota had a horrible interface and I was quoted $300 just to update the map, not even a new radio, literally just a software update. No thank you.
Car manufacturers should get out of the dashboard design business. Just have an API standard for devices to control the car, and a USB port for users to plug in whichever device works best for them. You want a bunch of physical buttons? Cool, go down to AutoZone and buy a button panel that matches your needs. You want a big screen with carplay and a bunch of widgets? Mount your old iPad there.
The regulatory side would be the hard part. Devices would have to meet some safety standards and the car would have to refuse to drive unless an approved dashboard was connected, but it could be done.
This would inevitably put the manufacturer in a bind though. You’d have a pile of pissed off customers standing in a line one morning for you, because Apple or some third party pushed an update that suddenly makes the product incompatible with your car, and they’d be screaming at you about it. You’d have techs piled around a car scratching their heads, like is it the car that’s fucked up, is it the device? All without knowing that some third party has randomly done something unbeknown to the person who is scratching their head trying to figure it out. It’s frustrating when your Android Auto isn’t working suddenly for reasons like this one, this I personally know all about. But could you imagine if it was suddenly the whole dashboard that wasn’t working?
Also it beholdens you to third parties to provide solutions that you can’t really control from a quality standpoint, but any quality or compatibility issues will 100% affect the customers perception of your product. For example, “I can’t get my iPhone to work in that piece of shit car, I fucking hate that far so much,” because they can’t control the car suddenly either.
Don’t get me wrong, your idea is neat, and it would be cool if you could get that all to work, for sure. But it’s also fraught with peril, you know what I mean?
First sensible comment I’ve seen. Don’t know why so many people want to be forced to use proprietary software, whether GM’s, Apple’s or Google’s to use their car.
Yeah because I’m sure GM’s shit will be better. Idek why I’m addressing this: we all know GM doesn’t want to pay Apple or Google. That this is really about more renting and never owning. They just want more money.
GM, just say that. We know you’re a gigantic money-hungry corp. You all don’t have to lie and pretend to care about safety. We’re not a bunch of idiots. We get it, even if you all suck for doing this.
I’d say I hope GM crashes and burns again, but then the government will just bail them out again.
We know you’re a gigantic money-hungry corp. You all don’t have to lie and pretend to care about safety. We’re not a bunch of idiots.
Alas, as long as there is doubt, there are a large number of suckers who are willing to give the benefit of the doubt. We are a bunch of idiots, collectively. That’s why shit like this works.
This is all about maintaining and selling your data for themselves. There was just a report out last week about how cars are one of the most data insecure devices you can own because of how poorly all the big auto manufacturers treat their customers.
I doubt it’s about paying Apple or Google, so um much as their ability to extort car owners to pay them. Nobody in their right mind will buy the $10/month Bullshit Subscription ™ from GM when they can just plug in their phone and use Waze.
Add comment