Google and Apple in DRAG RACE: It's fanboi Mercs VS fandroid Audis Apple and Google are preparing to compete on yet another front. They reportedly plan to race each other to design the world's most powerful smart car dashboard. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show next week, Google isexpected to announce a new tie-up with Audi, which will see Mountain View help to design an in car computer …
And you don't replace your car every 24 months, it generally stays on the road for at least a decade... Given how slow and not-supported an iPhone 3GS is, compared to the current, supported generation, I wouldn't want a "smart" dashboard.
The dashboard should, as the OP said, have the basics. By all means have the ICE act as a front end to your fondleslab, but leave the dashboard out of it!
Yet *another* monthly bill for the mobile connection to the car? It's a constant struggle to keep the recurring monthly bills to a minimum.
(Hopefully the car might access your smartphones wifi hotspot and thus consume all your monthly data allowance. I still think that the car's entertainment system (stereo) should use the nearby house wifi at night to download podcasts and exchange service data. A few GB of BBC or similar educational podcasts would be far superior use of commuting time.)
Mobile data connections are often only designed to work at ground speeds of up to 160 kmh. Might be good enough for most cars, but the big Mercs might run into problems.
in the Audi MMI. Along with the 4 as well. Cradles still available for both, but not for the 5 because its bit longer than the space in the armrest.
I have two Audis - one owned in the UK, one leased oversees and they already work fine with Apple.
Why on earth would I want to spoil a car by adding more toys and gimmicks to it ? As you have said, its unnecessary.
as alluded to over on AppleInsider, Google seem to want to put Android in the car, i.e.: the car has it own OS, where Apple want it car to pair with your phone and use that as the 'brains'.
Seeing as cars have a much longer life span than a phone, Apple route seems to be the best, as you can upgrade your phone as much as you want and the BT/Wifi/Dock link will still work and use the newer and faster 'brain'. And all your content goes with you to your new car, in case your car is stolen or you total it.
With Google/Audi, your car hardware will be very obsolete within a short time.
The Google/Audi approach also lends itself more to the scenario of having another monthly bill for your car.
I, for one, would definitely walk out of the garage if the salesman told me this new car has Android on board.
Then again, I am one of those people who would never buy a new car again. Once bitten etc. (unless I win the Euromilions!! )
The nature of these corporate behemoths means that they are always behind the curve. Your cheap truck with an aftermarket head unit will likely run circles around this stuff and cost a lot less. It really doesn't pay to embed this kind of rapidly moving tech in a car with a much longer useful lifespan.
I have a 2008 Citroen C5. It has the most confusing, distracting and down right obstructive button-based UI imaginable.
Any attempt to locate and use the horn or hazard light buttons whilst driving are most likely to cause an accident. I suspect infiltration by Nokia engineers.
Fortunately the car mostly lives in the garage having expensive work done on leaky struts, pollution control systems, the dual mass flywheel, air con, remote tyre pressure sensors...
"There's nothing wrong with the dashboard now. We don't need cars with message updates, email and SMS notifications.
The dashboard should contain only the essentials, speed, fuel, temp.
Anything else should be read out to the driver with text to speech."
The idea is that the dashboard will provide visual information such as mapping like you find already in plenty of inbuilt vehicle satnav systems. As for matters like messages, the idea is that if you want that kind of thing you can have it read out to you. Nobody is going to be so stupid as to design something that's dangerous to use, and the legislators would not allow that to happen in any case.
I imagine that one of its virtues is that the dash will inherently be connected to the vehicle's audio system, so you'll get good quality announcements, and nice easy access to your (or your kids) portable music library.
It's early days yet, though. There's a heads-up of Apple's plans here.
> The idea is that the dashboard will provide visual information such as mapping like you find already in plenty of inbuilt vehicle satnav systems.
Ha Ha!
I recently had the displeasure of using the built in SatNav system in an upscale BMW. It was the single worst nav system I have ever used in my life. It had data that was 8 years out of date. Sure the HUD was flashy but the data behind it was pure crap. And that was a NEW car.
The car is becoming the ultimate mobile device
No, i think you'll find something like a phone is still the ultimate mobile device. I can use it both in a car, and a boat and a train and an underground tube and in a house and in the middle of a field and when i'm walking or even have it wake me up when i'm sleeping.
Whereas a car, i can only use when i'm in the car. It's very restrictive in it's use cases.
It's very restrictive in its use cases.
Very true. I'm in Birmingham at the moment and my phone is easily accessible. My car on the other hand is at Banbury train station so not much use right now.
I suppose the Twitter brigade will enjoy automatic updates as they pass every landmark. Facebook users can allow people to '+1' their destination or choice of journey(*). If you're going to throw away your privacy you might as well automate it. Anyway I agree with the first poster. A dashboard should tell me the basics with a small number of lights for warnings. Anything else can bugger off.
(*)Or manoeuvre. If you liked the way I negotiated that roundabout '+1' me :-/
Actually, I think you'll find that a car is already a "mobile" device. Always has been.
The (British) English use of "mobile" when talking about portable phones is a hangover from when those phones were fitted to cars, and thus were made "mobile". Every earlier use of the term "mobile" refers to something on wheels.
The difference between the two will be that Apple derived cars will only drive you where the company thinks you should go, while Android derived cars will give you a massive choice of destinations but will have a TouchWiz control that replaces the steering wheel with something unusable like a joystick.
And the Android car won't be allowed to go around corners without getting sued by the Apple car.
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I think the Audi keeps wanting to go back home for some sensible motoring, you know on the autobahn foot down overtake back in lane etc etc. Here most people get set up to overtake but they seem to forget to overtake and just stay there bumbling along oblivious to what is going on around them.
Anyway you don't have to own an Audi to be a Jerk when driving
Please give me dumb switchgear and not 'smart dashboards'. I want RealButtons and RealSwitches that are tactile, provide positive feedback and don't jump around depending on display mode. And also mean I spend less time taking my eyes off the road to try and figure out what the GUI is doing. Which is probably telling me I'm about to crash and would I like to choose from one of this list of personal injury lawyers?
So if they get one of these things working......who the heck is going to risk an upgrade?
Of course they could force an "auto" upgrade (sorry about the pun), but then people would not get in the car again until they are sure the thing works. Could this be the answer to traffic reduction?
Surely the obvious thing is a Standard here?
My car CAN have an iDevice linked to it, but it can also take a USB stick, and has a nice very standard Bluetooth integration, so my android device works fine with my car....
Sure there are a few extras I would like, such as being able to pre-plan a route on my pc/phone and send to the car, but I would want that to be a standard of some kind not google or apple or MS only...
Proprietary links only in a car costing £40k+ would limit your market...
Can't you just make a custom, but standardised set of extension to ODBII and expose that over an optional USB Bluetooth device, and let the apps interact over a standardised set of APIs across all platforms?
You know, like how ODBII works. Standard stuff for revs, tempts etc, extensions for ABS, lights and so on.
Just have another extension for in car comms that anyone can talk to and then let someone choose if they want to use it.
I probably won't though - despite being constantly online etc I've got no time for SMS/email/calls etc when I'm driving. I'd rather concentrate on making sure I don't spear my ton of metal, glass and flammable liquids into someone/something else, thanks...
Steven R
Guess when MB & BMW link up with Apple, Audi was forced to go with Android but Android is based on copying IOS when they had a chance to peer in the labs of Apple but since their access was cut off, they ave fallen further and further behind - it's like Ford going with WINDOWS and watching their buyer ratings plummenting. Google cannot design an interface - look at their interface design for anything - it's an unholy mess of random icons and text. Audi's satisfaction ratings will plummet.
look at their interface design for anything - it's an unholy mess of random icons and text.
A logo, a text box, a "search" button and an "I'm feeling lucky" button. I don't know how it could get much more simple?
Unless you mean the phone OS, that has.. you know.. the same grid-of-icons display that mobile phones have had since the first mobile phone with a more capable display than "two lines of text and some indicators"? The one with the phone dialler right there on the front page?
I can see how you might get confused. If you're the sort of person who gets confused when the computer asks you to hit the "any" key.
Please in the name of fuck just use blue tooth. How fucking difficult is it? Just farm all the audio from the phone via blue tooth to the fucking stereo in the car. Or just use a cable. Not a fucking iPhone cable. Just a normal 3.5mm jack so that anything can connect to it. Why can I not connect my note 2 to my BMW via blue tooth? They both have blue tooth. It doesn't work. It's not supported. And to add insult to injury the bloke who owned it before had it fitted with an iPhone dock. Tosser.
The USDOT has given the auto industry 2014 to come up with a dashboard layout that doesn't distract the driver similar to cellphone use and texting while driving... 2013 new cars came with center console touch screens that required driver attention while the car is being driven...using a cell phone while driving is illegal in the USA...
IMHO=the 2010 Prius 2 is an example of doing a glass dashboard right, and the center console has aircraft lighted switches for functions... the next year you got a touch screen to shift gears n park= really stupidly unsafe to use while driving...
I really wish these folks well as the touch screen is not wanted by actual drivers and the USDOT...RS.
I like Honda cars. I'd happily buy another one.
But as an Android fan, I'm not sure I'm happy buying a car that's geared specifically towards an iProducts.
My car radio is iPhone enabled (not Android), and it already annoys me I'm missing out on clever functionality because of a specific integration :(
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