The procurement decisions for the infotainment system are made around 5 years in advance of the vehicle release. The tech is obsolete before the car leaves the dealership.

Because even the "big" tech from "big" companies is still shit. Have a 2020 LG TV with Google assistant built in, and it's a piece of hot garbage.

Example: I frequently switch between display profiles to suit what I need. Saying

"switch to cinema display mode" - works fine.

Saying:

"switch to user display mode" - 100% of the time results in the TV replying "which user would you like to select?".

Like...it's not my fault that the dumb TV has the custom profile named "User".

Google probably spent billions on voice recognition, but it's all worthless, because someone without an ounce of imagination just coded it to react to the words "change" and "user" as the user profile selector, the rest of the sentence be damned.

But back to cars - Google Assistant in Android Auto is equally shit. Try saying "hey google, open spotify", then "hey google, play music". 100% of the time, it switches from Spotify to Google Music. It's insane.

The move to companies naming everything "Brand Name Generic Name" coincided with the move to voice assistants in the worst possible way. "iTunes" is unique but "Apple Music" is just two nouns - and we see this across so many properties.

For the reason it took BMW so long to say yes to Android Auto - Amazon/Google will happily license the tech but want ALL the customer data off the car.

Here's an article from a few years back, from Toyota publicly stating they won't support Android Auto due to privacy concerns[1]

It's not just Amazon/Google, car manufacturers like Hyundai are selling data to Verisk, a data broker, who in-turn sells the individuals driving data to insurance companies and other entities [2]. They get people to "opt-in" by offering people free 'connected services' which has data-sharing buried in the T&C.

I'm sure other manufacturers are also going to do similar things as this allows them to generate additional, incremental revenue from user data about their end users.

[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/239477/toyota-android-auto-priva...

[2] https://www.verisk.com/press-releases/2018/april/hyundai-joi...

Few years back, and data collection techniques have only gotten more aggressive.

https://www.motor1.com/news/239477/toyota-android-auto-priva...

Android Auto at least works, and that in turn has voice recognition that works. It's completely "meta" that I have to use voice recognition on my phone to call a number that triggers bluetooth that activates the hands-free and speaker in the car.

I would argue that in-car infotainment systems should be nothing but a dumb terminal into your phone. We already have devices with voice recognition, navigation, multimedia, etc. Why don't we have a way to just use that?

I've been looking for a single DIN car audio device that is nothing more than an amplifier with Bluetooth, but such a thing does not exist. My phone already does Music/Radio/Maps - all I need is the car head unit to connect to it and playback the audio through the car speakers. I've even started thinking about some sort of home built version using parts from a cheap Bluetooth speaker system (minus the actual speakers).

BlueBus is nice; but it works with the stock BMW head unit (nicely supports steering wheel controls tho). It was for pre-bt-enabled BMW's but I think it's able to be adapted to all k-bus-based cars, so roughly 1998-2010?

There's plenty of old-school single DIN devices that have bluetooth in them. You'll usually find they have a radio and other junk (e.g. mp3 over usb) but most are fairly simple and it shouldn't be hard to find one that stays in bluetooth mode all the time.

Yes, but they all look awful! XD

I completely agree. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what happens. It's partly there already.

Android Auto is pretty much that.

If manufacturers use big tech voice assistance, it'd mean extra subscription for the car owners...really sick and tired of these "subscription" thingy. Microsoft Office used to offer one-time purchase, now it isn't an option. Are we going to have everything subscription eventually?