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Comment by deergomoo | Hacker News Reader

I want a 7-10” central display that spends 99% of its time showing CarPlay but also has a radio if I need it, the backup camera when I’m in reverse, and lets me change a couple of settings for convenience features like auto locking etc. Everything else can be dials, knobs, and buttons. My Mazda3 is perfect for this and I’m quite sad that I’m almost certainly not going to be able to find anything like it by the time I come to replace it.

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Most cars from the mid 90s until the mid 00s (sometimes later) have this: you replace the double-DIN factory head unit with an aftermarket CarPlay-compatible head unit. $200-$1000 (depending on how much you want to cheap out), easy DIY install or pay another couple hundred bucks to a stereo shop to install it for you. You now have a 7-10” central display that boots to CarPlay but can do radio/bluetooth/aux/satellite, and turns on a reverse camera when you shift into reverse. Climate control and everything else is still physical switches, because car manufacturers were still making cars properly.

Won’t be able to control auto locking and stuff like that though because it either didn’t exist or wasn’t controlled by the factory radio, because it was just a radio.

I did this to my old car, but I skipped the CarPlay cause that's too glitchy. It's just aux or bluetooth.

I have a 2024 Kia EV6, and this is pretty much what it does: Central screen displays CarPlay, backup camera, and infrequently-used settings controls, dials and knobs for most things, one secondary touchbar (row of buttons, but it’s really a touchscreen so the buttons can change) for climate controls. Pretty much perfect, although only wired CarPlay. (The 2025 models apparently have wireless.)

Climate controls, including in-seat heating, as well as radio/media is exactly the stuff that needs actual hardware knobs that are always in exactly the same place and that I can use by knowing where in 3D space they are by muscle memory and feel without looking.

You can get tiny USB dongles that convert wired CarPlay to wireless. I bought one and adore it! https://www.geekbuying.com/item/AB019B-Wireless-CarPlay-Adap...

We have an EV9, and the user interface is so pathologically bad that we’re planning to get rid of it.

Everything makes it beep. Beeps for “you will die now” are similar to “you put me in gear”.

There’s one exception: For many reasons, it turns off one-pedal driving. When it does that and is unexpectedly accelerating into cross traffic, it does not beep (until the collision alarm sounds, presumably, ask me if it kills me…)

Hyundai is actual buttons, not touch.

Halfway through reading this comment I was thinking “Yup that’s why I like my Mazda3.”

Fingers crossed that they can keep it up with an EV transition. In the MX-30 they did an HVAC touchscreen, but perhaps the years long gap between that and their next EV will be an opportunity to reflect on how stupid that was. (Ignoring Chinese joint ventures that just use someone else’s platform)

I would love to have both. The scroll wheel is convenient when I’m driving, but the touchscreen would make entering a new address much easier, as it’s very annoying to do now by scrolling, and voice dictation doesn’t work well in my language.

I do agree with that, and the newer Mazdas let the screen act as a touch screen when stationary for just that reason.

When I have trouble with voice input I just use my phone to enter the directions instead of doing it in CarPlay. Typing by scrolling through the alphabet with the wheel is not good.

Look at aftermarket MMI boxes. They do this for $150. (Screen and controls not included because they use the factory ones.)

Someone should tell an automobile manufacturer. It’d save them ~ $1B.

What is an "MMI box?"

Multimedia Interface?

Thanks. Seems to be some kind of Audi-specific branding.

No wonder these clowns still can't put together a car radio that works reliably, let alone an automotive interconnect system; they're still using the term "multimedia." Welcome to CD-ROMs, circa 1994.

Audi, BMW, Volvo, Mini, and others.

It think it’s a standard for “events happen on cam bus”, “there is a not-hdmi display in the dashboard”, and “there are analog amplified audio out jacks for the speakers”.

From the consumer end, it looks remarkably sane. Like “there’s a dev kit for the computer on github” levels of sane.

Is there?

Car companies have to worry about regulatory compliance, certification, approvals, as well as warranties; aftermarket manufacturers do not have such concerns (at least to the same degree).

It’s a box that forwards a carplay / android auto UI to an LCD, and snoops the cam bus for button press events.

The entire thing is $150, which is nothing compared to the rest of the warranty.

If regulatory compliance for a car stereo actually costs $1B in the US, then that seems like a bigger issue than “unfair” competition from China, and I’d like one of their $10K EVs, please.

If a stereo is defective, it might require a recall for replacement, which is very expensive. Additionally, anything which connects to the vehicle network has the potential to cause safety issues which can be even more expensive.

Shoutout to the thing I got for my mom's Merc where it's a literal 10 second installation to have carplay in a 2011 vehicle. Swap the built-in navi box with a $75 Aliexpress plug - bam, CarPlay/AA all wirelessly on the main screen and controllable by the standard navigation knob.

My Renault Megane e-Tech is basically this[1]. Well it's a 12.3" screen but if you're in the UK you can get the one with the smaller screen. Not sure why you'd want that though.

Anyway, it runs Android Automotive, but supports Android Auto and CarPlay as well. My SO uses the former exclusively and it's on as soon as she gets in the car, can't imagine it's any different for CarPlay.

If you run the Automotive shell, you can have a media widget at the bottom which can be set to radio, shown here[2], I listen to DAB that way.

It also has a row of physical buttons for the important stuff, like climate control, defrost and such. Media and volume controls are on the steering wheel.

[1]: https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-pictur...

[2]: https://cdn.automobile-propre.com/uploads/2021/09/megane-ren...

This is basically exactly what I have with my 2010 Chrysler 300 and 2010 F-150s with aftermarket stereos. And they didn't cost me $80,000.

New and a little older, maybe up to 5 years old Hondas are like that.

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