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Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

CarPlay and Android Auto were gamechangers. Every built-in infotainment system I've seen so far has ranged from garbage to mediocre at best - in cars ranging from econoboxes to six figure cars. CP & AA blows them all out of the water.

I don't care how crappy the infotainment is anymore in a car as long as I can plug in my phone.

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I did some contracting for Mercedes in Germany and Toyota in Japan and learned why this is the case.

The people in car companies (engineering and management) are typically "gear heads". Not only do they care about the mechanical systems, they care enough that they'll make sure certain customer-invisible things (internal to engine, for example) or customer-subconscious things (in Mercedes' case how the hinge on the door works) are "just right". Kind of the equivalent of "I'll spin up another server when the load gets to X% just to have a good safety margin" or "this onboarding path could look like a dark pattern -- let's work around that just in case".

The embedded software developers for engine control are serious. Among the mechanical engineers the folks writing control software for steering stability or performance-vs-efficiency code were treated with respect ("I don't understand what you do but sure, happy to explain this mechanical system"). But the people doing the UI were basically considered marketing.

Seat must be comfortable. Visibility good (cough Prius).

Oh the audio system? Automatic seat adjustment? Bluetooth? Let's write a requirement document, or even just a requirement powerpoint and send it out for quote. It's not that important and cheapest bidder is fine.

Audi and Porsche contract Bose for the sound system. The decision is usually based on usually industry alliances, not necessarily the cheapest. The German automakers also have a stake in Here Maps, that's why you'll se it on their vehicles. If they don't have a stake they'll usually pick a German company or buy shares in one.

> Oh the audio system? Automatic seat adjustment? Bluetooth? Let's write a requirement document, or even just a requirement powerpoint and send it out for quote. It's not that important and cheapest bidder is fine.

Ford Sync 2 (aka MyFordTouch) is exactly this. The interaction design is actually good, people clearly thought about how to go from screen to screen and it would be highly usable, except that the response time is god awful. Rumor is Ford outsourced to Microsoft who outsourced to someone's cousin who wrote it in Adobe Air or something. If it wasn't slower than molasses, it would be pretty neat.

Former Microsoft employee that worked on MyFordTouch for a little while.

> Rumor is Ford outsourced to Microsoft who outsourced to someone's cousin who wrote it in Adobe Air or something

That's actually pretty close. From what I understood Microsoft and Ford worked pretty closely on SYNC and that was a large success. Ford came back to Microsoft to have them do Sync 2.

Microsoft gave them a quote saying it would take $X and Y time. Ford said it needs to be cheaper and faster. Microsoft told Ford "We can't do that, here are some of our preferred contractors for Windows Embedded, maybe they can."

Some time later Ford came back to Microsoft saying "Please fix this" and that was around the time I joined. I actually heard a Ford VP say "This is the worst quality problem we've had in my time at Ford." He had been there during the Firestone tire debacle. (He was talking about cost in lost sales, obviously iPods not working wasn't as bad in the grand scheme of things as cars rolling over.)

The "backend" of the system was written in C++ on Windows Embedded. The user interface was written in Flash with some insane stringly-typed interface to talk back and forth with the C++ layer. And that's how I became an action script developer at Microsoft for a (very) brief time.

iPhones worked decently with the system. Android barely worked at all (Ford didn't care much about that at the time). Windows Phones actually worked pretty well since all the employees at the time had them and that's mostly what we'd use for developing.

It was the worst job I've ever had.

Ford Fiesta owners got this awful Sync 2 system and a poorly designed transmission. When I purchased, the Sync system seemed like something I could deal with at the time. It aged poorly. It seems like it is getting slower, but that's probably just in comparison to using newer systems with CarPlay.

I also have this added bug where sometimes (once every 6 months or so) the Sync system gets stuck on when I turn off my car and open the door. The screen goes off and the radio keeps playing. Only way to resolve it is to disconnect the battery.

You might try the engineering menu shortcut when the Sync get stuck. I haven't had that happen to me, but it's worth a try. Hold eject and next track for about 2 seconds; it may be easier than disconnecting the battery or pulling a fuse.

WARNING: The engineering menu starts a speaker test in a few seconds if you don't cancel it, and it's very loud. You want to cancel that.

Why not run Linux?

The OS wasn't the problem (although Sync 3 went to QNX, and I guess this Android thing is probably Linux). It was the front end that was so slooooooow

Did they regress on Ford Sync 3? Because I find it terrible. The UI design for simple things (eg, song playback) is not great. Targets are small. The weird 'FordSync' combo is weird and it seems like the addon-apps section is dead. Luckily it has AndroidAuto - but even that has weird issues with volume level.

Sync3 was better than 2

Sorry, I don't have access to a Sync 3. From a quick look at the tutorials, it looks like Sync 3 refined the look of the UI, which looks nicer, but is probably harder to use, because the buttons looks like they have smaller borders, so it would seem easier to hit the wrong ones. Also, it looks like there's more buttons on the screen, which again makes it easier to hit the wrong ones.

Sync 2 looks like junk, but if it wasn't so slow, I think that would be fine.

Sync 2 had a hook for addon apps, but never got any. Also, they killed the thing to send directions to the car before I even got my car (it seemed like it was poorly thought out anyway), and the vehicle health report too. Still lets me use an app to find the car / unlock the doors / etc; but only if the car hasn't gone into deep sleep to stop it from killing the battery.

This is so very slowly changing.

Volvo has been really good in this case (especially as they target the luxury segment very prominently now).

The cheapskates at Audi suddenly released amazing A1 and A3 last year with big bright fast touch screens and CarPlay/Android Auto included by default on all models (and they kept the relevant physical buttons, too!).

I've seen VW slightly improving with new models, too.

I remember seeing posted on here, someone trying to reverse engineer or reverse compile the code for a VW ECU unit. I would love a deep dive into, say a BMW or Porsche ECU, steering/suspension software, etc. Although I assume the likelihood is low, because I am sure they are closely guarded proprietary secrets.

Still, though, a decompiler that dumps ECU firmware into LLVM byte code? How cool would that be?

Yes!

I've been in late model Porsche's, BMW's, GMC's, Honda's, and Ford's.* It's weird being in an $80k Porsche and thinking "this is garbage" because the infotainment system is so poorly designed.

Just get me into Carplay and let me go cough Toyota [0].

*I don't own any of these

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2019/04/29/carplay-toyota-2018-cars/

Porsche does one very cool thing - they released car play capable head units for cars going back to the 1960's:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32254313/1960s-porsche-91...

There have been lots of AA-compatible DIN-sized head units. It's a standard, hence the name.

Yeah, but they all look terrible. Would you want some orange glowing Pioneer monstrosity in a 1960's 911?

Plus DIN is a mechanical standard from the mid-80's. Are 1960's Porsche's compatible with that standard?

Hahaha, oh thanks for posting this. We bought a gently used 2018 Corolla just this past autumn. The interface isn't all that bad, I have to say. And it works seamlessly with my phone. But if I can sort out CarPlay... I just might have to dig into that.

If it's 12th generation (E210) you can get a firmware upgrade to support CarPlay.

Thanks for this. I'll look into it. I never dug deeper into the interface than: does it work with my phone and ... does it work. It has done both so far, but if I can add CarPlay I'll do that.

The new 911, I think, uses CarPlay. I actually hate the idea of only carrying CarPlay and not Android Auto or vice-versa. You should carry both. I don't get locking people into an ecosystem to use a car or making people have to replace the head-unit just to use their phone with their car properly, but then you lose all of the benefits of the head unit as it goes with the car (like A/C controls, etc?) It makes no sense.

I bought a Subaru over the Toyota because the infotainment system in the Toyota was so bad. I just want carplay in my car. I would have chosen a different make had I realized how big of a PITA not having wireless carplay was going to be. I just want to get in my car and have carplay start from my phone. I'm will to pay more money for it.

I wish I could say the same. Unfortunately, my experience with Android Auto has been abysmal. Before the pandemic, I used to use it on my commute every day. At least once a week, it just wouldn't work and I would have to go through the ritual of trying the following things, until it started working again: * turn the car off and on again * turn the phone off and on again * forget and then re-create the Bluetooth pairing * delete the car from Android Auto and add it again

Also, it would randomly decide to stop heeding voice commands.

On top of that, any time there's an update to either Android Auto or Spotify, I had to pray things would keep working. If they didn't, sometimes The Ritual would fix things. Other times, it stayed broken until the next update.

It may be problem with car infotaiment handling of Android Auto, not with Android Auto itself. Bugs in Carplay or Android Auto were very rare in contrast to infotaiment bugs that were causing CarPlay, Android Auto or Baidu Carlife unusable.

I have the opposite opinion. I prefer the entertainment system in my cars because they are not crippled by the network and they understand local media. They also know how to spell the word privacy, unlike Google.

I'm with you. I've had CarPlay and Android Auto in my past 3 cars, and could not be bothered to use them. I'de much rather just use built in navigation, stereo and local media. Involving my phone is just frustrating. Gerneralization, but for model years 2017 to present I've enjoyed Volkswagen's system the most. Chrysler's was not bad either. Ford's was terrible.

Now, wireless CarPlay... that's a game changer!

Our new car has wireless CarPlay and keyless entry and start.. and it's great.

Walk up, open the door, sit down, press start and drive off. CarPlay appears on your dashboard automagically.... No need to fish anything out of a pocket.

I hope someday I can get wireless CarPlay right from my watch and I can even leave my phone at home.

Having it built into the car still seems to be an improvement to me. I'm still yet to see any of these systems actually function at all. My '16 Subaru and Samsung phone both officially support it. But if I try to turn it on, you can take a guess from one of [incomprehensible error message | car does nothing, and phone locks up until hard reboot | car shows a blank panel on the screen until you press the home button]

I don't know how unusual my case is, but it seems like there's a greater chance that it would work if there were fewer "moving parts" that had to interface.

Agreed, especially with the addition of wireless CarPlay/Android Auto AND wireless charging.

Forgive me but the Pixel and iPhones do not have headphone jacks. I can only wonder what phone do you use. Alternatively you mean "plug in" as bluetooth/usb enabled.

Yes, Carplay and Android Auto either work over Bluetooth or a wire to the car's USB port.

Carplay requires actual wifi to be wireless, I'm pretty sure. It definitely doesn't work over Bluetooth! (You can of course pair your phone to your car with Bluetooth, but that's a different thing.)

Looks like it technically uses Bluetooth for connecting, but it does indeed require wi-fi for the actual carplay experience.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/717/?time=4... (click 'transcript' then ctrl-f 'hardware requirements' for transcript)

For carplay and android auto, you'd plug your phone in via a lightening or a usb-c cable. I think there is wireless carplay and android auto too these days, but I'm not sure if that's available on many vehicles at the moment.

Wrong. Pixel 4a does have the phone jack.

My Pixel has a headphone jack. It's the larger (3.5mm) of the two holes on top of the phone. However the poster is probably referring to USB or the wireless Carplay/Android Auto equivalents

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