If you’re like the vast majority of Americans, you have a smartphone in your pocket. And while the original purpose of these mobile devices was ostensibly for talking to other people, the truth is most of us use them for anything but talking to people.
Including interfacing with the system of modern cars. Android and Apple have been refining the abilities of Android Auto and CarPlay, respectively, for the last few years. Now, Cupertino wants to take that relationship further – a lot further.
In fact, it may be further than carmakers are willing to go. According to descriptions of the upcoming iOS 16 operating system previewed yesterday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, the specter of CarPlay may soon stretch well beyond the simple delivery of music and maps. If plans go ahead as described, it may be possible for Apple to infuse itself into every nook of a car’s display – infotainment, maps, even gauges.
Permit us a moment to acknowledge that the world’s car builders spend untold gazillions of dollars designing gauge clusters, infusing them with their own brand of style and function. Hundreds of hours are spent poring over details like character spacing and fonts. Do you really think any of them are eager to provide Apple the opportunity to replace all their hard work (and brand DNA) with Cupertino’s Day-Glo images and user experience? Not likely. Yet, at the keynote, the presenter said “Automakers around the world are excited to bring this new vision of car play to their customers.” Yeah, ok.
Perhaps someone should have asked them first. Journalists at The Verge certainly did, reaching out to a dozen car companies for their take on Apple’s grand new idea. Some responded with a variant on the “yeah, mmm-hmm” theme, with most simply spouting the notion they can’t comment on future product plans. While the talking head on the Apple stage didn’t verbally mention any specific car brands, the above slide was briefly tossed up on the screen before being whisked away.
What do you think? Well, actually, what do most of you think? We say that because we know wide swaths of the B&B still daily cars which barely have a functioning analog radio (and we love ya for it). As for the rest of you, riddle us this: would you let Apple – the company which once blamed us all for holding our phones wrong – take over your speedometer?
[Images: screenshots, Apple WWDC]
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Car companies will be more than happy to take Apple’s money and sell driving data to them or Allstate, Geico, fast food joints, police departments, etc.
Curious to understand Android OS in cars. How does the system in the Polestar 2 and XC40 recharge track our data differently than say, our phones?
“We say that because we know wide swaths of the B&B still daily cars which barely have a functioning analog radio”
This is 2022 TTAC not 2007 TTAC. We are all old and driving under warranty newer, fancier stuff now. The days of daily driving an Olds Intrigue or Dodge Diplomat are gone. You guys should be running ads for scotch, cruises, and prostate pills.
As far as the post goes, vehicle UIs and interior aesthetics are already massacred IMO so this doesn’t matter. I do have doubts Polestar and Volvo would jump to an Apple interface when they just introduced a Google-based one though.
I still tend to own older cars that don’t share my info with the manufacturer and my prostate is in phenomenal shape. Part of this is due to my being cheap (automobiles often make bad investments) and that warm fuzzy feeling I get from doing maintenance. While I could afford to make payments on a new vehicle, it hardly seems worth financing one right now and I tend to enjoy driving cars with switches and knobs far more than their touchscreen-loaded alternatives. Why pay more for something I don’t really want?
Younger people seem to be split on these issues. Half the people I talk to under 40 don’t seem to mind tech that invades their privacy, saying they either don’t think about it or believe it’s an acceptable tradeoff for modern features like flashy touchscreens. The other half seem to feel that companies don’t have a right to their personal information, still prefer buttons/knobs, and are fretting over their options in terms of modern vehicles. But I’ve not seen the same divide among older people who don’t seem to care one way or the other unless they’re die-hard auto enthusiasts. I’d be curious to see an age-based TTAC survey to see where everyone lines up.
This was me 13 and 9 years ago.
thetruthaboutcars.com/2009/10/piston-slap-diplomatic-immunity/
thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/09/ttac-is-going-racing-you-can-help-you-can-
win-something-you-can-laugh-when-we-crash/#comment-2203761
I’m not a fan of screen mania in new cars, but my gumption to keep a multi-car legacy fleet in service has dropped a lot since 2016.
Mine too. I just have a hard time crawling under cars even with ramps. Down to 2 vehicles now at one time I had as many as 6 at a time and enjoyed them all.
I know I’m going to hit that wall eventually. The vehicles I have cannot possibly last forever and I’m eventually going to get tired or working on them. Someday I’ll probably have to bite the bullet and actually own something brimming with touchscreens, electronic nannies, and perpetual connectivity. While the latter item is bound to see support abandoned as vehicles age, I am still looking into ways of safely disabling vehicle connectivity via dummy loads or yanking out the appropriate hardware. Sadly, this will not address touchscreens but I’m betting there will be a sizable aftermarket for people who would like to have more physical controls rejiggered into something better suited to their tastes. Fingers crossed.
I, too, enjoy doing maintenance on our fleet – primarily because it’s a fraction of the cost of a dealer job and I learn something nearly every time. With the newest vehicle in the quiver of four being a 2010 I’m doing a fair bit of maintenance across the lot of them. Engines are just fancy air pumps; everything else is either SAE or Metric; and the lone screen in the fleet isn’t even a touchscreen so it’s just a display.
tl;dr I’m hanging onto the auld stuff like grim death.
I hear you, Tele Vision. Sounds like we are in very similar boats.
Fight the good fight but remember that all things must die.
While I can appreciate the attributes of new and older vehicles, you know when you toss that computer in your pocket into the console of your old $#!tbox you are still giving up 99 percent of that same data. even if you are rocking a modern flip phone it runs a pared down smart OS that still sends a bunch of info back to the mothership. Apple likely handles this data better than most car companies anyway.
That’s a fair point. Apple has been better (but still not great) about 3rd party data harvesting. Though I expect this to change when and if it starts putting its OS into millions of vehicles and has to partner with automakers.
My smartphone barely leaves the house anymore and runs a VPN whenever it’s in operation. Though I would jump on any product that promised the maximum amount of data privacy at this point. I’m tired of being spied on so every company I already paid can make even more money off me. Things have gotten beyond ridiculous and I’m happy to put in a little extra work, money, or time into countering it. Here’s hoping the market sees there’s money to be made there.
Millennials and younger, in general, are totally fine with the trade-off of giving away personal data for the features and apps with their phones. It is frightening actually that our privacy is being sold away by all these companies. The first big hit will be insurance; mandatory monitoring will be coming. Of course to keep the feds away, they will say the monitoring is to offer discounts and those who don’t opt in will pay more. You know, just like what gas stations do in order to surcharge credit cards – just say cash is discounted. It’s all a scheme to milk more out of the sheep…
“…scotch, cruises, and prostate pills.” I almost spit my coffee all over my desk, still chuckling.
And I want none of the screens except my phone that goes in the mount for Waze and music.
I’ve always said this was what all the iCar nonsense was about. Apple doesn’t want to make a full car they are trying to get in the door using software. IE: get your new Land Rover with Apple “iDrive” system. Since everything is already on your phone its your personal key, for example when I get in the car I want all my settings not the wife’s – and this goes beyond just music and maps, it cover climate controls, ambient lighting, seat position, etc. So why not have this tied to Apple’s system?
Never understood why automakers keep trying to write UI and didn’t just outsource it to Apple. A licensing deal is likely way cheaper then a ground up, self developed (and hated) interface. OEMs must already have the data that shows that once CarPlay is offered users only use that interface and never touch their crappy built in maps or audio interface options.
As for OEM giving up on this level of control I see it working like the high end audio options in cars. They will charge extra for the “Apple option”. Apple has a strong security push so I don’t this turning into data collection as much as a pay-to-play environment. Android / Google offers “free” services because they are in the data selling business. So totally different business model here. As a result I expect a hefty fee for the full feature set of CarPlay.
“Never understood why automakers keep trying to write UI and didn’t just outsource it to Apple. ”
Because the reason Apple can make it look nicer, is at least in part because it is a lot cheaper and easier to write software that mostly works, than software which always work.
Adding “cool” “fade effects” on speedo needles, along with your-mum-looking avatars informing you you are perhaps driving to fast, loses a lot of luster, if you have to deterministically demonstrate that all the extra code will _never_ fail.
Handing over every single informational screen to some third party, to mangle through millions of lines of code who may or may not result in it being displayed correctly, makes exactly no sense at all, if the goal is getting information maximally reliable.
Like making it easier on the Old Guy Who Falls Down Airplane Stairs to launch a nuclear strike, by providing him with an app for doing so on his IPhone. So that Apple can then use a fashionable “AI Algorithm” for facial recognition, which can recognize when Old Guy looks intent to conduct such a launch. Great!
This was sort of what was discussed on here a week or two ago. It seems like Siri works a lot better for voice commands than a lot of the built-in voice recognition systems. So why not be able to say “Hey Siri, climate temperature 72 degrees synced.”
It was in one of the discussions on VW’s latest infotainment fustercluck.
Of course the devil is going to be in the details, along with how much of your information will be made ripe for plunder.
The challenge is where the processing happens.
If it’s on the phone, the car needs some sort of backup interface for when the phone loses connection, runs out of battery, crashes, or whatever else. And by the time you have put in the work to create that backup interface, you lose much of the advantage of outsourcing to Apple.
If it’s in the car, how does Apple make sure the car is capable of keeping up-to-date with phones for a certain period of time, and generally maintain the quality control that it usually achieves by keeping everything on its own hardware and within its own walled garden?
If that question can be resolved I see a lot of potential here. Apple on its worst day designs better interfaces than most of the automakers ever have, and the graphics they showed yesterday are more legible and informative than the gauges in any car I’ve ever owned. I’ll be interested to see what comes out next year.
While people are debating what to put on your screens, Deagel was forecasting the end of Western Civilization:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210101125922/https://www.deagel.com/forecast
From Sept 2020
Question: Do automakers understand the automotive business?
Answer: No they do not.
All your screen are belong to us.
Verbal – spot on. I’m sticking with my barely functioning analog radio units that I have and have disabled the modem in my ’19 F350 to prevent communication with the Ford mothership. Apple would be one of the last corporations I’d trust to give me added value to anything I own.
I wonder what has happened to GM, why Ford and Lincoln logos (and even Volvo and Polestar!) are in the picture above but none of GM brands. What’s going on?
From both the headline, and the text, it’s pretty obvious that the author isn’t happy about this possibility. And there’s no way he’s going to write a news article on the subject without some degree of editorial comment.
Ok, after an attempt (I’m a former computer technician, admittedly in the pre-Windows 95 days, was one of the beta testers on the first version of 95) to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 in one full swoop – which Microsoft said was not only possible, but simple – the end result is that I scrapped everything in my house for the world of Apple. Mac, MacBook, iPad, iPhone, even an old iPhone 4S functioning as an iPod touch. I’m hardly an Apple fanboy, just a satisfied customer, the stuff works.
I like Apple CarPlay, and it’s an expected feature on any car I own. It works. And, quite frankly, I don’t care if my digital readouts on the dash have the design function that the automobile manufacturer original intended, or if I’m seeing them thru Apple’s eyes. As long as the system works, the information given is correct, I’m happy. And the possibility of going from car to car without having to learn a different set of buttons, switches, and touches is a plus in my eyes.
Sorry, I refuse to panic at the thought of Apple taking over my car.
Even in cars equipped with GPS and old pre CarPlay systems, I’d opt for just using my phone.
if it has car play it makes little sense to use your phone since on both car play and android auto the processing happens on your phone
I strongly doubt automakers *want* to continue to sink time and money into UI if they can get out of it, at least the volume manufacturers.
As for if I personally want Apple to do the whole thing instead? Whole heartedly yes. I just got a 2022 Wagoneer, which is graced with what’s supposed to be a high-end multi-screen experience.
…and compared to even the most rudimentary CarPlay experience, it’s slow, buggy, and pretty lacking.
I would trust Apple to get this right vs. the auto makers. Case in point: About 25% of the time, usually when we’re on the road trip, my X7 fails to load my driver profile, and I’m forced to drive as a “guest.” Attempting to load my profile fails because it’s locked–apparently my driver profile is a matter of national security. In guest mode, my HVAC settings, recent GPS destinations, mirror and seat positions, and HUD settings are all messed up. It’s infuriating enough to make me consider shunning BMW for life.
I sure hope you can see the utter ridiculousness of the situation you’re describing.
Apple is known for designing intuitive user interfaces. Automakers are not.
Having said that, I am fine with Apple having input in my vehicle UI so long as I get a click wheel where my thumb rests on the steering wheel.
“I sure hope you can see the utter ridiculousness of the situation you’re describing.”
Is that because you drive a rusted out ’87 Civic and I’m describing first world problems on a $90K vehicle?
Imagine that…. an expensive, complicated BMW SUV with malfunctioning electronics.
We were a 1 and done family with BWM SUVs. They’re not reliable past 50k miles. Or in your case, under 50k miles.
“They’re not reliable past 50k miles. Or in your case, under 50k miles.”
I wouldn’t describe my frustrations as a reliability problem. Reliability problems leave you stranded on the side of the road. I’ve owned eight BMWs and never been stranded on the side of the road. All auto makers are trying to incorporate too many software features before they are fully debugged.
Does it have promise? Definitely. Do I trust that it will pan out and not present dangerous bugs and inconsistencies between models? Hell no.
Carplay and android auto are both very clear improvements over manufacturer infotainment systems, and it was evident from their initial mention what the promise was. I have a much less clear idea of how they would manage to add value to the instrument gauges however. I do have a clear idea on how they could screw this up and cause accidents however.
How cute that the screens shown present about 60 square inches of blank maroon and/or gray background, conveying no information whatsoever, while destroying any night vision adaptation that the “driver” might have. You’re going to need some good pedestrian-avoidance tech, when you can’t see the road.
(Dishonorable mention to the analog gauge manufacturers who have been using cheap LED arrays in their instrument clusters since the mid-2000s. Some either don’t dim enough for night-time driving, or flicker when dimmed to a comfortable level.)
I don’t want Apple determining the fonts or layout of my car’s gauges, but I’d be fine with integrating Carplay more into the dashboard than is now typical – for example, placing the navigation map (from Apple, Google, Waze, etc.) in the center of the screen, lighting up big arrows when there’s an upcoming curve, integrating info about nearby gas stations or EV chargers, changing the color of the speedometer if I go 5 or 10mph over the limit, and the like. All wireless, please.
Compared with the super-gimmicky digital dashboards we’re seeing from OEMs, I’d be just fine with an Apple-designed gauge panel. At least it would be simple and legible.
I would welcome the chance to have a customizable instrument display in my next car, and by customizable I mean the ability to display any piece of data I want from the ECM and other systems in the place I want it.
That being said, I am not sure Apple-izing everything is such a hot idea. Currently, the newest car I own is a 2012 that doesn’t have built-in CarPlay, but has most of the functionality it provides. My other 2 rides have a CarPlay head unit which is about 80~85% of my desired level of tech. A heads-up display would probably cover the remainder. I certainly don’t need or want an outgoing data stream tattling on me constantly.
Seeing how reliable my company supplied iphone isn’t…yeah…now take that kind of reliability and integrate that into my car? Nope.