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Comment by alFReD-NSH | Hacker News Reader

Something that most commenters are missing is that TomTom's most revenue comes from B2B deals, which are mostly deals with automotive companies for car screens experience and also providing maps data for products like Bing Maps.

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And most consumers would much rather have either CarPlay or Android Auto than the crappy software that is made my the manufacturers.

Is that true? Not saying you are wrong but is it just an anecdote? I anecdotally know lots of people that just use their car GPS and don’t bother with CarPlay/AA

80% of new cars support CarPlay

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes...

As far as I know, most cars that support CarPlay also support Android auto. I can’t imagine car manufacturers wanting to pay licensing fees to TomTom unnecessarily.

Which makes you wonder if there must be some good reason why they’re still doing it.

Anecdotally, people just use phone holders. I have never seen anyone use either the built-in GPS or CarPlay/AA.

False. People greatly prefer CarPlay if they are iPhone users, and already people are refusing to buy any car that doesn't support it.

Phone holders are over.

Even as early as 2017, the majority of car buyers already wanted CarPlay in a new vehicle and one-quarter of buyers said it was a "must have". That was five years ago. I'm sure the numbers are much higher now.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/29/apple-carplay-massive-succes....

Over 80% of new cars sold now support CarPlay. There's a reason for that: customers demanded it and walked out of dealerships if they didn't get it.

Is that a US thing?

Could be more of a US thing, sure. I don't have data at hand right now about CarPlay adoption in Europe. From this list, though, it certainly looks like European carmakers have very robust CarPlay support:

https://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/available-models/

As a data point: I'm european and my next car will have Carplay, no doubt.

On the other hand I currently use a phone holder because my car doesn't support Carplay and nobody in their right mind would get a new car just because of this missing feature. That's why the phone holder is such a popular solution. It's a slow process, but I have no doubt that most people will insist on Carplay / Android Auto whenever it's time to get a new car.

I use my CarPlay for NAV all the time.

Android Auto is crap. It only works with Google apps and some third party media players, when it starts. I gave up on it a long time ago.

This week I've been trying Android Auto out in a rental car. I'm not impressed so far. Google Maps has worked okay, but Spotify has not. I don't know where the line is between Android Auto and the Jeep Cherokee interface, but the turn by turn directions are super quiet compared to the music with seemingly no way to adjust. Squarely on the Jeep UI side, I've been using the car for 4 days and still haven't figured out how to turn the radio off but keep the screen and turn by turn directions running.

While I haven't tried it, Osmand recently added support for Open Street Maps on Android Auto. I'm hopeful the experience is decent, but not willing to pay for it at the moment.

... and yet car makers still feel obliged to provide turn-based navigation out of the box.

But the car manufacturers have a lot more leverage for negotiating if they don't really need the software.

I like BMW’s nav idrive better than the CarPlay integration and use it instead of google/apple/wake.

First because it uses the whole screen and heads up display and CarPlay doesn’t. But this is probably something that could be done with better integration.

Second because CarPlay takes over the phone and I want nav to keep running while I use the phone for other things. I know that I shouldn’t, but at stop lights I’ll read texts, HN, etc. with an active nav, I have to switch away from it while I use the phone. With the car running the nav, I can use my phone for whatever I like.

All I use Apple Maps for is to send directions to my car.

It’s kind of nice to just have a dedicated nav in my car.

You read HN at stop lights? How long are those stops???

“I don’t want to use CarPlay because if I do, I can’t be a distracted driver and do things that are illegal in many jurisdictions”

TomTom is actually developing their own distribution of Android Auto. Licenced and customized to manufacturers. The design concept looked very slick.

What is a “distribution” of Android Auto? Isn’t it just a remote interface for your phone?

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