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Comment by rhtgrg | Hacker News Reader

Yes, removing CarPlay is not a great move, and is rightfully being bashed in this thread -- but these kinds of OEM integrations are far beyond a smartphone subsitute, especially given what's coming down the pipe for auto. As you allude to in your comment already, CarPlay is a "projection", a one-way deal -- whereas most of these integrations make heavy use of data from car sensors, which enables a lot of high fidelity features (including self-driving and advanced HUD indicators) that simply aren't possible with a smartphone, no matter how "independently upgraded" it is.

In the future, perhaps phones can integrate better with cars and enable that kind of experience, but we aren't there today.

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You are being down voted in part because you're factually wrong. Apple Carplay is not one-way projection. The phone receives inputs from the car, such as screen touches, the microphone audio from the driver for phone calls, button presses, GPS signals, and even wheel speed information for navigation in tunnels.

The reason this integration is not better is in no shape, way, or form Apple's fault. It is 110% caused by the atrocious hardware and software in cars, which is literally decades behind the rest of the world.

I still blame Apple and Google partly. Why do we need 2 proprietary projection methods? How about make one standard for any phone or device to connect to the in car display? They fight to dominate the automotive space, and all we get is more and more lock in.

Unfortunately, I know exactly why I'm being downvoted, and that's not it. It should be rather obvious that "screen touches" are not the category of comms I was talking about.

Perhaps you meant to say "this is why I downvoted you", in which case, I appreciate you taking the time to state your piece.

And I don't need that level of integration. The passive CarPlay UI projection is exactly what I want. It's not all about driving to charging stations. That is a rare occurrence.

CarPlay works surprisingly well for driving to charging stations.

You tap add waypoint (or whatever) in Apple Maps, then tap EV charging station, or tap siri, and say "DC fast charger" or whatever. (Tested with a Chevy Bolt).

However the navigation isn't as well integrated with range, etc, as was common on older vehicles.

If this wasn't a blatant "have Google pay us to force our customers to give Google their data" move, I'd be cautiously optimistic that they weren't just trying to shovel crapware into their cars.

My Ioniq 5 and (iirc) Teslas charge better if you use the native nav, as it starts preconditioning when a charger is the destination. For mine in particular, I’m not sure there’s another way to fire off preconditioning. May or may not matter but it can make a difference in cold.

That only matters in the rare times that I might need to drive long distances to a commercial charging station. 90% of the time I’m charging at home. I don’t want to give up my personalized experience just for the occasional time when I might want to use a different routing app.

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