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Comment by JadeNB | Hacker News Reader

> Personal opinion: Charging only is what a cigarette adapter is for.

But hardly any new cars have that ….

> Allowing me to use the car's interface to control my phone is a nice tool. It probably adds to the safety of my driving, since I can skip audio tracks using physical controls on my steering wheel instead of a touch screen.

It seemed that paulsutter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686844) was suggesting a setting that prevents this automatically for people who never want it, not removing the capability for people like you who do want it.

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> But hardly any new cars have that ….

I'm in a 2019 Subaru Outback, and I have two. One for the front seat, one for the back.

WRT a setting - CarPlay must be explicitly enabled, and has a per-vehicle pairing. I imagine Android has a similar requirement.

Android Auto bugs you every time you plug the phone into the car. I had a rental that had it and I was curious to try it since it seemed like something I may want in my next car. It was slow as fuck over bluetooth (a little faster over USB) and offered pretty much nothing more than what a magnetic mount and a bluetooth audio/phone connection would offer. It was 1000x quicker to just bring Waze up on my phone as I'm walking to the car, slap it on the magnet (up high on the dash, adjacent to the screen), and let the bluetooth connect automatically. I deleted the android auto profile and just stuck with regular bluetooth audio/phone.

"But hardly any new cars have that"

Even a Tesla Model 3 still has a 12 Volt cigarette adapter port. New cars still include them because of all the accessories out there like inverters and tire inflaters people want to use.

And my Model S.

It seems extremely rare for me to find any car in the US market that does not have at least 1 12V outlet. On a very recent model car I own it has 4 plus a 110V outlet!

Yeah, they don't seem to include the cigarette lighters themselves anymore (the plug with the nichrome coil or whatever it is that heats up when pushed in), but the outlets are still there on my most recent car, and every rental car I've driven recently.

I think I meant to say what you said—that there's no actual cigarette lighter any more—and just confused that with the adapter outlet itself being gone. Thank you for clarifying!

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