Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Now that it is complete, I'd love to learn more about the work they had to do to port it over.

They've been talking about Waze for AA for over a year, so I'm guessing quite a bit of work had to be done to make this possible. In particular did they need to make any design changes to Waze to make it easier to use via the AA interface?

Unfortunately my 2016 vehicle only has mirrorlink v1.1+. Which unlike mirrorlink 1.0 doesn't actually mirror your phone, instead it is a proprietary app ecosystem with ten low quality paid for apps, even assuming any smartphone still supported mirrolink (which almost none do).

I wish there was just a single open standard in the vehicle industry. Toyota for example is refusing to do AA/Carplay and is starting yet another "standard" called SmartDeviceLink.

View on HN

I'm disappointed Toyota went that route. When I was looking for a new car last year, CarPlay was a requirement so had to strike them off. Really wanted to buy another Prius too. It's also keeping me from going tesla too, I'd really love one but I just can't stand manufacturer developed entertainment systems. Ended up with a Passat that supports CarPlay, android auto and mirror link.

Did you look at the Volt?

Yeah, it was my runner up. At the time I lived in an apartment where it wouldn't have made sense as they had no charging around

I live in an apartment, still like the volt. 1) I grab free charging when I can, 2) it was an extremely cheap 3 year lease (even as a 15k mile a year lease)

I guess I lucked out, my workplace and apartment both offer free L2 chargers

That's where Ford gets it right. They too are working on SmartDeviceLink, but also offer AA and Carplay so consumers have a choice. Toyota are currently offering nothing usable, and plan to one day only offer SmartDeviceLink.

I love Toyota's vehicles (reliability, looks, features, safety, etc). But when our Prius V gets replaced, we won't even consider Toyota as their infotainment units are antiquated, voice recognition terrible, and smartphone connectivity non-existent.

Toyota reminds me a lot of Nintendo, in the sense that neither company really grasps how consumer behaviour has changed with smartphones, digital services, and the cloud. Toyota are literally losing sales due to their obstinance on this, all to save a few dollars in navigation upgrades.

> I love Toyota's vehicles (reliability, looks, features, safety, etc). But when our Prius V gets replaced, we won't even consider Toyota as their infotainment units are antiquated, voice recognition terrible, and smartphone connectivity non-existent.

Have you ever considered getting an aftermarket infotainment unit? Choosing a car by infotainment seems like the tail wagging the dog.

> Unfortunately my 2016 vehicle only has mirrorlink v1.1+. Which unlike mirrorlink 1.0 doesn't actually mirror your phone, instead it is a proprietary app ecosystem with ten low quality paid for apps, even assuming any smartphone still supported mirrolink (which almost none do).

Both versions of the protocol stream apps rendered by the phone. v1.1 allows to create third party applications for it. Previously apps could be only provided by phone vendor. ML was never supposed to stream the screen of the phone constantly due to potential driver distraction. The devices that did this were probably uncertified and/or buggy.

> Toyota for example is refusing to do AA/Carplay and is starting yet another "standard" called SmartDeviceLink.

Well they do have a plenty of reason to not like AA/Carplay. Both give total control of head unit experience to Apple or Google. Which is a risky decision when you are dreaming about gradually moving from selling a product to providing related services.

> Both give total control of head unit experience to Apple or Google.

Which is to say they give total control to the device the user already has and uses everywhere else, so that they get a consistent experience. Anything the auto vendor provides will never be able to match that.

Yes, obviously. They both make head unit more appealing to the user. The cost for car vendors here is that they are suddenly dependent on a third party if they want to push any features on top of that experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com