My partner replaced her 11 year BMW 5 GT with a new X4 last month. The nav is slow (probably updates the view twice a second) and out of date. I think it needs new roads updating via a USB stick.
The Android Auto and Carplay integration are fantastic though - silky smooth (better than the phone they're coming from) and always up to date.
Who ever uses those built-in things?
Tesla, whose nav is pretty great and responsive
Rivian, who appears to have copied a lot of the Tesla UI elements (and, has lots of former Tesla employees) and the snappiness and great nav is part of that.
Any car using Android automotive (different from Android auto) such as the Polestar lineup. Basically gives you an Android tablet with Google Maps, so nav is great, and it seems to be all held to a certain level of responsiveness.
The thing that is not subjective though: the UI is responsive and the map data isn’t extremely outdated. Those are the two primary problems with “bad” nav implementations.
Also the reverse -- CarPlay knows where I have been, where I have searched, locations people have texted to me, locations in my calendar, etc. It's nice to not have to type in the address every time I want to go somewhere new.
For the calendar point, Tesla actually offers calendar integration and automatic navigation (if you enable it) to events that have locations near your current time. I don’t use it since my calendar isn’t heavily populated, but I could see that being super useful for certain people.
Are you sure it was Tesla?
Navigation does cost money though. Even maintaining a basic map.
I do. I use it only as a backup or corroborating source of info in situations where the maps are never quite right, but that happens quite frequently.
I spend a LOT of time out of cell-service though.
On my car, deep in the options, is a screen that shows CONUS, and lets you draw a box around the portion you want to download.
I have a box drawn around an area about twice the size of California. Hopefully your car has enough storage for that size, too.
On those occasions when I'm out of a cellular service area, the map shows a banner reading something like "No cell connection. Using downloaded maps."
All of which happened to me just last week here in rural CA.
That said, the maps got out of date and couldn’t be updated without a $200 SD card, which was annoying.
Of course, this never happens, because humans. Yet I still dream.
That's basically Tesla's secret sauce, their charger network + in-car nav makes taking trips in an EV pretty easy.
Android Auto and CarPlay are starting to incorporate these features though for cars that support sending those stats to the phone.
Anyway, for me at least, the benefit of the built-in nav is not about routing, which is basically always worse than Google/Apple at this point, but about having detailed, offline maps. In my experience, offline Google/Apple maps are less detailed, and you have to download them in advance.
I use all three, depending on my needs at the time - each of them have their strengths. I prefer Google/Apple maps for day to day routing and things like that, but if I'm somewhere with poor signal, I use the native maps to navigate, because they are just more reliable.
It's all subjective though, and probably highly specific to location.
I will never buy a vehicle that doesn't support it, nor would I ever buy one that locks it behind a subscription.
If I need to I'll keep older cars alive to avoid the enshittification. Older vehicles are easier to repair and maintain anyway.
Most aren't refusing, and only GM is attempting to backtrack on support right?
Even some of the fancy pants all technology automakers are putting it in their cars, like Lucid: https://lucidmotors.com/knowledge/vehicles/air/lucid-air-in-...
Rivian, Tesla, GM.
But within the other manufacturers it's model dependent, it's still not universal across all models. Toyota and Nissan both have a large line up without CarPlay in the base models. Same with Honda, some trims won't have it.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few as well, though I wouldn't be surprised to see BMW back out like GM with the direction BMW wants to go with subscriptions as well.
Ford stand to make hundreds of dollars a year from this.
The alternative is to use CarPlay/Android Auto and the navigation app of your choice for free. (Until like Toyota Ford starts requiring a subscription to use CP or AA. They had planned to do this several years ago but decided not to after backlash.)
Wow.
Compare that to the effort made to do your own satnav, or integrate an existing one, then get back to me.
What's the point when you can just use a phone anyway? Just rip it all out, save a packet on software development and partner with Brodit to add a nice stock phone holder for an extra 5 euros in wholesale BOM costs.
Due to safety and emissions regulations we just cant have a dead simple car even as a niche option.
Another alternative would be to use the dashboard screen - where the speedometer etc. used to be - to show the backup camera image, the speedometer isn't really needed when backing up anyway.
This didn't used to be true and I'm not sure if it is now but it is required in California, which is why they are ubiquitous. Fun fact.
Maybe the long-term goal is to push more people toward direct leasing?
It feels like such an obvious win that I know I must be missing something, I just don’t know what it could be.
GM dropped CarPlay support from some of their vehicles. They think subscription revenue is going to be at least $20 billion / year.
This subscription costs $140 per year; even accounting for price increases over time, if someone has calculated that its 10-year LTV exceeds $14,000 then I think they need to go back and review the spreadsheet.
Just think of what your insurance company would be willing to pay, for instance.
If there's anything I don't understand here, it's why they are bothering to bill the end users at all.
Connect what gas you buy, what grocery or gym you go to, what restaurants you eat at with your name, address, and probably ip. And note this is significantly facilitated if they have a direct billing relationship with the driver: that's how they're getting clean phone, name, ip (gotta login to put that card in), etc.
This doesn’t clarify it at all for me because this model already works without the bother of subscriptions. They’re generating the data either way, regardless of whether the customer is paying $140 per year or $1,400 up front.
I think the real reason is probably closer to “we want to be able to add recurring subscription revenue to our 10-K” than it is to “we want a better pretext under which to mine consumer data.”
Not if you're using CarPlay, it doesn't.
The automakers' best move is to incentivize drivers to use the company's nav system instead of their own phone, but instead they're penalizing them. That's the part I don't get.
It’s the foundational decision to make this an optional subscription instead of just pricing it into the sticker from the jump that I’m having trouble wrapping my head around.
I would LOVE to be able to use my modern Toyota's navigation system; unfortunately, this requires you to connect a modern cell phone (cannot use without it) which I don't own.
So for my new vehicle I instead purchased a stand-alone GPS unit ($60) which comes with lifetime map updates.
If I'm using a navigation system to actively guide me somewhere I usually use CarPlay.
If I'm just using it to display where I currently am and let me see the nearby roads sometimes I use CarPlay and sometimes the built-in Hyundai system.
CarPlay has a nicer looking map, but when not actively navigating it updates the display noticeably slower when I'm turning.
CarPlay's compass sucks--it just shows the heading as N, NW, W, SW, S, SE, E, or NE. Hyundai's does the more traditional spinning indicator that points North and has way better resolution. It's way better when I'm driving in some twisty place and am trying to understand my orientation--I can see at a glance rather than having to read CarPlay's text direction and translate in my head to a visualization.
CarPlay is quite a bit better at labeling streets. It usually names the side streets I pass. Hyundai tends to only name the bigger ones, and when it does the typography is less readable than CarPlay's. CarPlay is also more likely to show buildings.
Hyundai's colors are better at night.
Hyundai shows traffic lights, whereas CarPlay only shows them when actively navigating. I prefer to see them even when passively navigating.
The car is an EV and I think the Hyundai nav system has some features to help with finding chargers, but I haven't looked into that. I've got 48A @ 240V (11.5 kW) charging at home and in the nearly 6 months I've had the car I've never charged anywhere but home.
Honestly, there's a dozen other reasons I have no intention of owning a Ford.
I have 4000 songs on my Spotify. That would be $4k on iTunes. With Spotify being $11/month, it would take me 30 years of Spotify usage to break even with the iTunes model if I never bought another song. For every additional song I listen to, that subscription becomes worth even more.
With cars, I hope 1) customers have the option to pay up front 2) it allows for cheaper production with assembly efficiencies 3) it lets people granularly pick which options are on their car, as opposed to being stuck with whatever options come with a given trim package 4) there are always non-subscription cars around to keep manufacturers from rent-seeking behavior.
I haven’t bought a car in a long time, so I don’t know if any of those are true.
For example if the maps, traffic info, alerts, etc depend on a subscription there are couple ways it can go.
1. The subscription is actually for that data and the alert services. The car's systems only accepts those sources and so if you do not subscribe when the trial ends those stop working.
2. The data and services can be accessed on the internet for no cost (you made need a free account with the car maker's site). The subscription is for cellular internet service for the car.
In case #2 it might be that the car is only capable of using that cellular connection for internet access and so you will need to subscribe if you want things to keep working.
Some cars however can use a WiFi connection instead of their cellular connection for internet access. If your phone includes a WiFi hotspot you may be able to set the car to use that and then maps, traffic, and alerts might keep working without needing a subscription.
Also many cars will let you update data by downloading it on your computer and putting it on a USB drive and then uploading to the car from the US drive. You won't get traffic info and alerts that way, but at least you can keep maps from becoming obsolete.
Having recently bought a new car after last buying a car at the end of 2005, dealing with subscriptions was by far the most annoying change since the last time. Just getting information on what depending on subscriptions and what my options were if I didn't keep the subscription was a pain for nearly every car.
“CarPlay Ultra is Apple's advanced, next-generation CarPlay system that deeply integrates your iPhone with a vehicle's entire infotainment system, including the driver's instrument cluster. It extends the familiar iOS interface to all the screens in your car, allowing for comprehensive control of vehicle functions like climate, radio, drive modes, and vehicle settings directly from the familiar CarPlay interface.”
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