Toyota to launch its own automotive software platform by 2025 | Hacker News Reader

Toyota to launch its own automotive software platform by 2025

reuters.com

30 pointsavonmach18 comments

I love Toyota for their reliability and design and drive one every day, that said, their software is unbelievably bad. I'm speaking about their entertainment systems circa 2016. It seems modern cars are becoming more and more software platforms, so strategically this makes sense but I hope they've hired the talent they need to execute. Seeing them fall further and further behind on electric and software is disappointing.

I agree. My Toyota has been in the shop on a regular basis for checkups, and so far has only ever needed regular stuff like tires and brakes. It's going on 60,000km with very little put into it, it runs great, and my mechanic is perfectly happy with its condition.

The infotainment unit is a giant stain on an otherwise awesome vehicle.

The cameras are so blurry. The bluetooth integration is awkward and unreliable. Using it for navigation is very painful. The screen is very low resolution. The list goes on and on - it's a terrible unit. It's only 3.5 years old but feels like it could be 10 years old. Hell, maybe the initial design and spec is 10 years old. It's kind of weird to have such a piece of garbage as the centerpiece of such a nice vehicle.

They make great cars but definitely some weird UI choices. 4Runner has an 8-segment LED based clock above the entertainment system, a different clock on the entertainment display (which is always wrong for me) and the carplay clock (which is always right for me). I wish they just put an iPad in the console instead. The Toyota app isn't so ugly and they could probably just port all the entertainment buttons to that.

Agreed about the problem, but not the solution. I love that Toyota still has buttons (and nice, big, rugged, built to last buttons).

The last thing I want is a damn ipad. I want a dumb screen that just supports android auto / carplay. No navigation, no infotainment, etc. Perhaps a simple radio mode. All other functionality required to operate the vehicle should be a physical button.

The absolutely dreaded music player on Toyotas was that bad, that they returned a 2-din slot on a lot of their vehicles past 2019 in Asian markets.

I hope they put some money towards their assisted cruise control (TSS). It’s downright scary. My 2021 RAV4 is all over the road when it’s using lane “keeping”.

All these horrible articles about Tesla self driving… the real problem is other car manufacturers putting their poorly implemented assisted driving in their cars. Toyota “safety sense” is worse than any other I’ve tried.

We had a recent RAV4 and the radar cruise was quite good, but the lane keeping was tragically bad and we turned it off very quickly.

Every car's entertaining system by now should just be a screen compatible with Carplay/Android Auto.

Agreed, I bet every auto manufacturer on the planet hates this decision though. The software platform will become more valuable as cars become more electric and self-driven in an economy where attention shifts from the road to the screens in the car.

Fuck Toyota. Toyota brought us the fine innovation: “pay every month for remote start to keep working”. I want nothing to do with their product or software decisions. They’re in the penalty box for the foreseeable future.

I thought they backtracked on that? Though I agree even thinking it was smart and then announcing it was completely bone headed

I doubt autonomous driving will bring end to any of their trouble.

They better spend money on adding unicode support to their music player.

Seems like a wrong move imo, they should just license android automotive for the short/medium term and focus on their strength - building cars.

Later on they can switch to their own OS if they want.

Counterpoint, given their position as a legacy car maker, they are positioned to transition to the next generation of software driven automobiles.

They provide the integrated hardware and software that becomes a car. As more sensors are added and engines with the electric transition are even more digitally controlled than ICE, it makes sense to own the base hardware and software.

This is their strength, building cars, which like it or not are just big robots running code, controlled by humans for now.

I have almost the same point. Being somebody like Toyota, they can not fear being captured by the upstream when they can rm -rf android at any time with an OTA.

Toyota can be to Android Car what Samsung is to smartphone Android.

Yeah, the last thing we need in our ECUs is Android.

Given that you now have to pay Toyota to unlock your car remotely, their desire to license software to other manufacturers is probably not a wonderful development.

The subscription was for remote engine start, not to unlock your doors.

And while I hate these kind of subscription plays with a passion, remote engine start is a way less important feature to me than unlocking doors.

Also, after the massive public blowback they have back-peddled he plan, we’ll see where it ends up.

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