Accord07
Well-Known Member
Having nothing else to do when I sat in a Mach-E at one of the roadshow stops, I paired my phone with it and tried Android Auto: once Bluetooth pairing was done, I started Android Auto manually on my phone, clicked through the acknowledgments on a couple of screens and Google Maps appeared on the vehicle's screen. For subsequent connections, initial handshake was completed over Bluetooth, then it went over Wi-Fi. When I deliberately turned off Wi-Fi on my phone to see what would happen, it disconnected from the vehicle but Android Auto turned it back on and reconnected.
My van supports Android Auto and CarPlay over USB only. It has all the hardware needed to operate over wirelessly, but during its development no production vehicle offered that feature and when it went into production only a couple of vehicles supported CarPlay over Wi-Fi and none supported Android Auto over Wi-Fi. Honda could have added it later through OTA updates, but as any typical traditional automaker, it chose not to do so. I did not expect them to add any feature that was not there when I bought the vehicle, so I am not disappointed. I contributed money toward a crowdfunded project building a device that acts as the intermediary to provide wireless Android Auto on headunits that only support it over USB. Having to plug in is somewhat annoying for short drives, when all I want to do is to listen to music and maybe look at the traffic, but for long trips I need to keep the phone charged anyway. Once I receive that crowfunded device, I will finally be able to enjoy the Qi charging pad in my van while Android Auto is running. When folks complain about the USB cable, most don't realize the superior audio quality it offers: playing music over Bluetooth A2DP uses sub-band coding capped at 345 kb/s, it is full 16-bit stereo PCM (although purists may argue those FLAC tracks on my phone, originally ripped from CDs, are upconverted from 44.1kHz to 48kHz). It doesn't matter when road and wind noise is high, but even I can appreciate it when listening to music while parked, which is something I do a lot as a parent with young children.
During a trip two years ago I went through three different rental vehicles, a Malibu, a Equinox, and an X5. Infotainment and navigation was the worst in the BMW, despite it being an upscale vehicle, while the other two showed the same Android Auto interface as if I was driving my own car. On another trip, I arrived at 1AM on the West Coast, picked up a Mustang at Avis, plugged in my phone and was able to use Google Maps instantly without having to spend any time on figuring out the infotainment system.
When Apple and Google got into this game some automakers embraced them, others were reluctant, a couple were outright hostile. Toyota, for example, resisted until the 2019 model year. It's a matter of how to monetize the data gleaned. I don't blame them for not wanting to just hand it over to those two companies, but they are at a disadvantage anyhow, as drivers spend more time with their phones than their cars. Obviously privacy is a trade-off, but Google Maps has a much better chance at guess where I want to go next, even before I ask for directions, because it knows where I went yesterday (or a week ago) around the same time, what I have on my Google calendar, which places nearby I frequent, where do I drive to the most often from the current location, or that last night I looked up a particular Ford dealership to check on its current inventories.
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