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Many People Don't Actually Like Their Car's Infotainment Systems (theverge.com) 110

Posted by EditorDavid from the touchy-about-touchscreens dept.
"People are getting increasingly fed up with their car infotainment systems," reports the Verge: According to JD Power's Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study, overall satisfaction among car owners is 845 (on a 1,000-point scale), a decrease of two points from a year ago and three points lower than in 2021. That's the first time in the 28-year history of the study that the consumer research firm registered a consecutive year-over-year decline in owner satisfaction...

Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle's built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car's native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls...

[I]t seems like most people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years... But it seems like people are warming up to native operating systems, as long as they're developed by Google and not the automaker. JD Power found that models that have Android Automotive with Google Automotive's operating system, AAOS, "score higher in the infotainment category than those with no AAOS whatsoever."

But here's where things get kind of weird: AAOS without Google Automotive Services (GAS) receives the lowest scores for infotainment of the three categories. Google Automotive Services refers to all the apps and services that come with the car when Google is built into the car — also known as "Google built-in." Ford, GM, and Volvo have all said they will use GAS for their current and upcoming vehicles... That's surely music to GM's ears, which recently made the controversial decision to block access to CarPlay and Android Auto in its future EV lineup in favor of a native Google infotainment system.
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Many People Don't Actually Like Their Car's Infotainment Systems More

Many People Don't Actually Like Their Car's Infotainment Systems

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  • Easy solution... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @12:51PM (#63706882)

    Give me a standardized tablet dock and an API to a secure and restricted portion of the vehicle systems. Let the manufacturers sell their vehicles with an optional default, and let me BYOD if I choose.

    It's not like you should be able to do anything dangerous that way (other than distracted driving, which should still be an offence and on the driver not to use an overly distracting system). Just let me do anything I could do with an old-style dash of knobs and buttons, as well as have read access to everything else.

    • Re:Easy solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @01:03PM (#63706910) Homepage Journal

      You're assuming that vendors want to compete to serve the customer. That is the world view of the naive economic theoretician.

      In the business world "commodity" is a dirty word, precisely because it implies you're competing as if you were in some kind of academic economics scenario. Nobody wants that, becuse those scenarios predict that your profits are goign to be squeezed down to a "normal" level. Instead what you think about in business all the time is how to *avoid* competing, at the very least how to avoid price comparisons.

      That's why so many services like cable TV or mobile phone services are packaged as bundles. They're marketed as great deals to the consumer, but in fact they're a way of making it impossible for the consumers to price shop.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        And that's why consumers put a suction cup to hold their phone on the in car audio system. The phone has a larger screen in most cases and it's easily upgradable.

        • Your phone has ascreen larger than 7 inches (which seems to be the standard in cars)?

      • >You're assuming that vendors want to compete to serve the customer. That is the world view of the naive economic theoretician.

        Not exactly. I was merely looking at a solution from the consumer's viewpoint. Greedy corporations trying to screw me over for an extra dollar... well, I have to deal with them but in a perfect universe there'd be a God guaranteeing all their execs a reservation in Hell.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          You're assuming that vendors want to compete to serve the customer. That is the world view of the naïve economic theoretician.

          Not exactly. I was merely looking at a solution from the consumer's viewpoint.

          I'm pretty sure the parent views looking at a solution from the consumer's viewpoint and assuming vendors what to compete to serve the customer are the same thing.

          But I still believe car companies who embrace Carplay and Android Auto would have an edge over their competition, because that is what their customers clearly want. If I was on the fence between two car models and one of them integrated with my phone better than the other, my decision was just made very easy.

      • The sales guy just smiled at me when I told him that I could buy a couple of iPads for less, and they would be more useful, than the built-in system in the mini-van he was trying to sell me.

    • Kind of like Carplay / Android Auto, you mean. Most cars these days come with a decent touch screen, amp, and speaker set. All you need is your phone. And they even integrate with whatever physical buttons your car manufacturer chooses to offer. Mine has a physical volume control and navigation buttons on the steering wheel, so I needn't bother with the screen once I'm on the road.

      Only thing is for Apple to fix the damn autoplay. As in: disable it, rip it out, drag it behind the barn and shoot it, a
    • Renault did this with Dacia. They have a Dahttps://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/07/22/026226/many-people-dont-actually-like-their-cars-infotainment-systems?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed&fbclid=IwAR0uYUGCT3W_R4zqmDuH6kSAiTcYdBJFhqfDkUevj0A3sdb2e__wvZhz6qc#cia app and communicates with the car via a special cable. Only their app can talk to the car and anything else you do what you want..
    • If someone can force automakers to do it, it's the European Union. Let's hope.
    • Car manufacturers know that their electronics will be obsolete in 3-5 years. That works for them, because they don't want you to keep your car longer than that anyway.
    • I liked knobs and buttons.

  • And GM thinks they'll change this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @12:52PM (#63706886)

    Mary Barra made news by announcing GM will not support 3rd party Android/Apple phone based sysetms on their cars, believing they can produce a superior product that will make people forget about their phones. https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    Well, past performance is no guarantee of future results. But the prognosis for this is not very good. First, auto makers have a long track record of abysmal user interfaces, as noted in TheVerge's article here. Second, it's unlikely a lot of people will want to pay GM for the kinds of services they now get from/pay for on their phones (maps, music, etc.) Here "different" is just "wrong." And that's without considering the likely data mining that GM would want to do with the information they suck up from these dedicated system. Tesla's experience here seems to be mixed, my friend with a Tesla likes his system, but I know other people who have installed 3rd party interfaces to enable Apple CarPlay on their Tesla.

    Personally, I think Barra is off her gourd, and I will not be looking at any GM product for my own next vehicle purchase. Ford's CEO treated this announcement with glee https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

  • Radio and a CD player (Score:4, Insightful)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @12:53PM (#63706888)
    I've owned very cars. I drive them until the wheels fall off. I've found an FM radio, CD player, and keeping my eyes on the road to be more than enough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chill ( 34294 )

      Just add a Bluetooth connection to that and I'd agree with you. Personally, I can do without FM (or AM) radio.

      • My car's a bit older and doesn't have a USB port. But the radio does have an Aux connector and the dash has vents.

        So I have a vent-mount for my phone for when I want GPS, and I have a little USB-to-audio device to play MP3 files through the car speakers. It's easier to jam in a USB stick than to fiddle with my phone while driving, and I'd kind of like to stay on the road without hitting anything.

        Radio? Ugh. If I wanted to listed to awkward call-ins and DJs talking over music I can't choose, I suppose th

        • NPR, my friend. So much better, so much smarter.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kmoser ( 1469707 )
          This. The only way I want to be able to play music on my car is via the USB port where I can plug in a USB stick. The only problem is, my Toyota's OS doesn't recognize more than a few hundred files at a time, so I have to resort to trickery like renaming files and fiddling with ID3 tags to get it to work.

          • >The only problem is, my Toyota's OS doesn't recognize more than a few hundred files at a time

            Order a handful of cheap multi-colour sticks from China - they're a couple of bucks a piece, and I doubt you could order ones with low enough capacity that you couldn't fit a full drive's worth of music on each.

            You'll remember which colour has which collection on it soon enough, and just plug in whichever one you want with the playlist set to random.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kmoser ( 1469707 )
              The problem is I want my entire collection to be the playlist. There's no way I want to juggle multiple USB sticks. Fortunately I've hit upon a method of renaming and changing the ID3 tags so I've eliminated 99% of the issues.
      • That's pretty much my stance as well: I don't need more than the car radio to entertain me if it has a Bluetooth connection to my mobile phone. That way I can keep a library of good music on my phone and play it through the car radio when I am on the road. And the few times I use Google maps to find my way somewhere, the voice instructions also come over the car radio, with the music turned off temporarily.

        As an added bonus, any phone calls happen over the car radio as well, and I don't have to touch the
      • I've been listening to more FM over the past years while driving. I found a local station that is t part of some big media conglomerate that plays a lot of local and regional artists that I'll likely never hear on mainstream radio, but I might be able to catch in a bar sometime. It's not strictly just local music, but it's not whatever the record labels are trying to shove.

    • Not really enough with modern cars that have all sorts of fancy features. For example, here are a few things off the top of my head in my wife's new Subaru that basically require a pretty robust interface:

      Driver recognition system (figures out who's sitting in the driver's seat and adjusts various things to their personal settings)
      Lane departure warnings
      Adaptive cruise control
      Automatic braking
      Backup camera
      Front view camera
      360 degree camera
      Multi-mode X-mode
      Auto-downtilt side view mirrors

      Then there's Android

    • No CD player but I added a BT board to my indash AM/FM/CB radio in my 50yo truck. I don't need anything else.

    • My Jeep is 16 years old. It has a 6 disc DVD player in it.

      I made 6 double layer mp3 music DVDs when I got the Jeep and I've not changed those discs out since.

      Works for me.

  • Carplay or Android Auto (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mpercy ( 1085347 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @12:54PM (#63706894)

    Just provide a display, USB connection, and some buttons and let me provide the brains (my phone). Your "smart" infotainment system is crap, will be out-of-date in minutes.after I buy your car.

    • Re:Carplay or Android Auto (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @01:34PM (#63707000)

      This right there.

      A standardized API is 10 times more valuable than an interface that is rigid and unchangeable. Because this car will last me at least 5, and more likely 10 years. 10 years from now, your now sleek and spiffy interface looks as dated as a Model T.

    • ...Your "smart" infotainment system is crap, will be out-of-date in minutes.after I buy your car.

      I own a 2017 vehicle that received an update via wireless to the infotainment system last week.

      Must be a different level of don't-give-a-shit with your vendor.

    • Here's the kicker. The infotainment system in my car has similar hardware and software as my phone. The phone just isn't locked down, and receives more software updates. Personally I think they should update ISO 7736 [wikipedia.org] so consumers can swap out infotainment systems themselves again.

    • will be out-of-date in minutes.after I buy your car

      That's by design, so they can sell you "updates".

  • I replaced the CD changer in my car with an mp3 player since before the iPod (and no, it wasn't a Nomad :-) ). I've been using GPS since the days of Windows Mobile 2003.

    However, I can't use anything automotive makers or even 3rd parties come with, they're just shockingly bad. I've got two head units recently (actually one HU and one hidden bluetooth receiver/amplifier thing) with the only purpose to just connect the phone and listen from there to whatever I like. Even this degraded pretty quickly in the obl

    • I feel ya. My first infotainment system, in a 2003 F150, was so awful that I bought the ipod adapter and bought an ipod off ebay, used that instead. The adapter only supported firewire ipods, which lets you know how old this was.

      The system mostly outlived the engine (blew a head gasket at 250K miles and I'd finally had enough) in that the CD player had long since refused to read CDs anymore but that ancient MP3 player still worked.

  • The automakers charged thousands of dollars for their navigations systems and then Google Maps came along for free making their systems practically obsolete.

    • Practically, yes. Out of cell range, they become useful.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        as of the iOS 17 beta, apple's maps now defaults to inviting you to download data so it can function offline.

        hawk

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GoJays ( 1793832 )
        Google Maps has offline mode functionality where you can download a section of map for use when you don't have a signal, it's been available for years. I use it all the time. The offline map will expire after a set period of time, usually 90 days I believe.

        • You know, what would be cool is if you could tell Google Maps to automatically download offline maps for whatever area you're in, downloading them progressively as you travel, and keep them for an interval you could set. It would reduce the occurrence of "oh crap I just lost cell service. I wish I could have downloaded the map but it's too late now".

          • yeah this should be the default behaviour unless you opt out. just tell it an amount of storage to use for rolling offline maps and except for edge-cases like phones with insufficient storage or people who drive a substantial amount off-grin, it should be painless.

  • Infotainment in a car? What a great way to increase accidents. I suppose that it will increase car sales, but how many dead people buy cars? It's not like voting. Anyway, they should put more compute in cars .. but in the form of ADAS/self driving. Then we can actually use the infotainment features. Maybe Ford can make "Carflix" or something like that.

  • Ask again in 10 years, when the in-car system doesn't support half the functionality you have on your new phone, and it will cost you $250 to update the maps at the dealership.

    • But to car companies, that's a constant revenue stream!

      • ...until Google does it for free...

        • I of course don't know the terms between Google and GM or other companies. It could well be those terms provide Google no -direct- access to the vehicle screen. I'd generally expect that to be the case, actually. So Google is just the operating system OEM to the car company. (Can someone familiar with how embedded Android is currently used in other devices care to comment?)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by larwe ( 858929 )
      In 10 years do you even think software updates will be available? You'll be there with - metaphorically - your 6502-based car with a 5.25" floppy drive and the 17yo at the dealership will be "uh... where's the USB port?". Cars should be cars, things that drive. In much the same way as TVs should be screens that display images from a separate source.

    • It already does. It's $300 for a set of DVDs for my current system, in a truck purchased in 2009.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Small advantage to the (current) in-car systems. The NAV works when you don' t have internet connectivity. [yeah, you can download maps from Google in advance, but ... ]

  • I recall reading an article a while back (a few years) where the automakers were bemoaning that people either engage with the onboard infotainment in the first few days of ownership, or they never use it at all. I fall into the latter category - if I was forced to buy a new car, my first act would be to connect Bluetooth audio (ONLY; not anything else that provides phone telemetry to the automaker) to the system, then put a suction cup phone holder over the car's screen. I don't want a mirrored, emulated, o

  • The biggest thing. The single biggest. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @01:30PM (#63706986) Journal

    Until my current ride (a Toyota with a JBL system), you turned the radio on, sound came out within a few milliseconds.

    Instead, I get boot-up time, splash screens. Why is this supposed to be an improvement?

    On the turn-off end, if I commit the sin of putting the car in park, stopping the motor, the radio shuts off, forcing the many-seconds penalty to get it back on if o was listening to something. (My prior VW kept the radio on 'til I took the key out).

    Awful user experience.

    • The 2008 Ford Fusion had/has a similar feature. You park, shut off the car, even remove the key, and the electric windows and radio stay active until you open the door. You can keep listening to or change whatever's playing and get some air circulating (or close the windows, in preparation of leaving), keys in hand, until you open a door. A nice feature for those radio "driveway moments".

    • Until my current ride (a Toyota with a JBL system), you turned the radio on, sound came out within a few milliseconds.

      Instead, I get boot-up time, splash screens. Why is this supposed to be an improvement?

      No, I'd say it's more a side effect of not realizing the reality of sound delivery today.

      Back in the day you only had to wait for the delay between the CD laser and the speaker. Or for the 150,000-watt FM radio wave to hit your car. Today, you're waiting on an IP address for the streaming to be enabled. And that's a computer behind the dash. Just a tad more complex than turning a knob to a frequency.

      • Radio. I still have radios that turn the sound on near instantly. I'm not confused about this.

        • Radio. I still have radios that turn the sound on near instantly. I'm not confused about this.

          It was more confusion around the concept of "improvement" for the consumers benefit. Hasn't really been a concern in mass consumer tech since the addiction to smartphones set in, and manufacturers knew they could exercise all the Corporate Arrogance that Greed ultimately desired.

          Like installing $2000 streaming audio systems as standard on the now $40K "base" model everything, because they already know you're gonna buy it anyway...especially after they colluded with every other auto manufacturer to screw cu

      • Who's not realizing it? It pains the users every single time they use it.

        I increasingly just use headphones in the car.

    • Yes. It's why there is such a thing as Boot2Qt wherein a Linux SBC can skip all of the lengthy overhead of booting up and boot straight to Qt which what a lot of glass cockpit dashboards are using. Except that it's expensive and infotainment system makers operating on razor-thin margins can't afford it.

      I'm reminded of George Carlin's bit "AND THE GODDAMN RADIO IS THIS LOUD!!!"

  • Apple CarPlay is missing just one feature (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @01:35PM (#63707004) Homepage
    I don't want the passenger in my car to be able to read my text messages, emails, make calls. Just let me choose what apps to enable and which to keep hidden. Simple, obvious "feature" that somehow Apple cannot grasp.

  • Knobs and buttons... (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday July 22, 2023 @01:36PM (#63707008)
    ... I hate having to take my eyes off the road to find a button by sight on a touch screen. When my car had knobs and buttons, I had a location memory that allowed me to use the knobs and buttons without having to look where they were.

  • The only thing I care about is how good the carplay implementation is. Everything else is baggage that might as well not be there.

  • I have a 10 year old Ford, the info system uses MyFord Touch s/w by Microsoft. It's not great: it takes excessively long to do the initial cataloguing of an mp3 usb-key (and needlessly initiates a re-cataloguing like once a month), in certain situations it plays album tracks in the wrong order, it only displays album-artwork about half the time, and so on. Other issues too, but you get the point.

    Weird thing, compared to the newer Ford SYNC3 s/w, or to Jeep UConnect, or to whatever they call the gawd-awful system they use in Chevy's, etc, MyFord Touch is somehow amazingly good. I don't know if this is because potential customers don't consider this when evaluating cars for purchase (so it doesn't matter, sales-wise), but it would seem car companies have no motivation to try to make the info system, well, better.

    Seriously, if there was any open-source path to take decent info s/w, make a dozen bug-fixes, and install the modified version back into my car, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

    • You're lucky -- my Sony system absolutely refuses to transfer music off a thumb drive to internal storage. Apparently it's a digital rights thing. The only way to get music into the unit is to feed it a CD, push the "record" button, let it rip the CD, eject the CD, feed it another CD, push the "record" button... repeat until you're good and sick of it.

      I have a thumb drive with a couple thousand songs on it (ripped from CDs via itunes) that usually plugs into my motorcycle, but the truck refuses to use it.

    • I don't know what version of MyFord Touch you were using and if it's one from an alternate universe, but as someone who had MyFord Touch in a 2015 Fusion, in 2020 I paid for an upgrade kit to swap it to Sync 3 within that vehicle.

      The QNX based experience of Sync 3 (especially when Apple Carplay or Android Auto is used, but even as native infotainment) is so much more responsive and less buggy than MFT that it isn't even funny. Now I barely interact with Sync 3 - I have a USB that does automatic Carplay

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jddj ( 1085169 )

      My JBL system (mentioned above) sounds pretty good (for an OEM system), but disappoints in more ways than the one.

      For example, it displays album art for Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" whenever I'm listening to the local NPR affiliate. When I'm playing songs from the current band Big Thief, I get a cheesy picture from the 1980s of the band Chicago. For other stuff, I might get a guess at Jazz, or a picture of bongo drums.

      I like Kate and all, and I can take Chicago in small doses - the early stuff anyway, but..

  • I feel I'm kinda lucky in that I have a 2016 Audi where the media system isn't that advanced.
    I just slap my phone onto a cool after market magnetic holder and use bluetooth - job done.

    I get into my Wife's Range Rover Evoke - it's just nuts. A huge touch screen straddles across what feels like half of the dashboard.
    The damn thing even greets you with a little musical note 'Good morning" or "Good afternoon" or whatever - What The Actual Fuck.

    I hate it, with a passion.

    So, don't get me wrong here, I appreciate

  • I've only had experience with a few infotainment systems, and they score meh to terrible. In the early days you were buried in menus to find anything, which is bad karma on the road. The newer ones are starting to be more conducive to operating on the road but still have a long way to go.

    My current truck is a Ford and the infotainment system is Sony. A few things, like adjusting the air conditioning, are easy to do. Phone calls through voice activation work really well, once I got used to the system. I

  • Crash statistics? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by H_Fisher ( 808597 ) <h_v_fisher AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday July 22, 2023 @02:51PM (#63707134)
    On a related topic: Has anyone done a study of the rates of crashes caused by distracted driving in cars that have adopted infotainment systems with touchscreen controls vs. tactile buttons, switches, etc.?

  • Still relevant https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/teu2k/car_stereo_i_wanted_10_years_ago_vs_the_one_i/ [reddit.com]

    In my car, I like the built in speakers, and don't care about the rest.
    I'd much prefer a standardized slot/harness, so I can easily go to someone other than the dealer and get what I want.

  • Unless it comes with Carplay. Period. Heck, I try to only rent cars that have Carplay when I'm traveling...

    Yes, I am a fanboy, and proud of it.

  • is the ability to move the head unit to a different carrier... swap sims

  • Make something you plan to "support" (ignore) for 10-20 years, and let me know what your product looks like.

  • I had Carplay in my previous car that was 5 years old, it worked fine, but the navigation was abysmal so I never used it.

    My new car has Carplay too, worked amazing the first time, and the navigation was so well made with the cars own scroll-wheel-joystick it was a "joy" to use.
    But they can't even get that right.

    After a few days Android Auto refused to load, it would load when I start the car, and then reset, then try to load, over and over again, repeatedly.
    So I just use the FM radio now, and the GPS.

    Oddly

  • Most issues with infotainment systems, including Apple & Android, is that the controls are not conspicuous or apparent, and the size of the buttons are too small and too close together.

    Most easily solveable issues will go away if:
    -Buttons & icons were extra large - as large as Andre The Giant's fingernail, so I can reliably tap it while the car is bouncing around in the X,Y, and Z axis's
    -Different colored & shaped buttons - when all the button are square and half of them are green with a white s

  • Remember getting your car radio stolen? In the old days (pre-90's) cars came with radios that were a fairly standard size and would slot into the facia of the car. You would usually buy a car with a crappy stock radio, and then go to an electronics store and buy an upgraded one with better features. When thieves started stealing them, the car stereo (or quadraphonic) manufactures came up with removable faceplates or even ejectable units that you could take with you when you left the car. Finally, the stereo

  • Automakers know next to nothing about UIs, I've hated my cars console. The other thing that people hate is car makers trying to create revenue from charging for apps that suck, or a heated seat subscription

  • I use the navigation and so on in my Hyundai all the time. It just does the thing and does it well. Map updates are easy to do. And, yea, it does support Android Auto and all that, but I never really bothered.

  • We don't need no stinking maaps...

  • Sure, I can see how younger generation, used to their phones, get more used to a standardized interface causing a smaller drop in popularity but over 3 years, that seems a bit too quick

    I would guess something about the survey or how it is administered has changed

  • You mean the aux in?
  • to be honest, my wife, who seems to hate iOS, prefers Carplay to the infotainment system her car has, and will happily use it rather than the shite the car came with.
  • I have a 2019 Mazda 3: the display is non touch, everything can be run via four buttons around a rotating knob. I don't need to take my eyes off the road to do anything. The system, once learned, is intuitive and easy to use. The navigation works decently and doesn't rely on my phone, and can be updated via SD card. voice commands are reasonably accurate and simply to learn. I consider this system close to perfect.
    • on a side note, I've absolutely HATED all the other systems I"ve had on various rentals. Especially the ones that require you to touch a really inaccurate tiny screen to do anything.

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