Slashdot Mirror
The Coming Wave of In-Dash Auto System Obsolescence
jfruh writes "Automakers are striving mightily to bring their in-dash systems into the modern age, providing integration with smartphones and other advanced features. The problem: while smartphones go in and out of vogue every few years, modern cars have lifespans of a decade or more. Add in the fact that many (though not all) manufacturers have no plans to allow software upgrades to their systems, and you might end up driving a car with a fancy in-dash computer system that's completely useless for much of the time you own it."
Many BMWs from 2000 or so have built in Startac phones... how useless are these now?
This is a completely new phenomenon with smart phones. At least I'll always have my 8-track player.
no plans to allow software upgrades what about when we have auto drive cars??? With the gov have to force them to have them for a least a few years?
With out software upgrades that will limit the use of them when they start to roll out.
I already know at least two people who have in-dash navigation systems, yet use their smartphone or a standalone GPS because either the automaker stopped providing map updates, or wants to charge an exhorbitant amount of money for them (as in, SEVERAL TIMES that of a stand-alone GPS or even a smart phone!)
Someone needs to come up with a docking module on the dash, to which you can dock a standard device that can be upgraded over the years. Kind of like the old "DIN" standard for car stereos, but more flat, intended for touch screen devices. Then when your in-dash system gets outdated you can upgrade it.
. . . [Y]ou might end up driving a car with a fancy in-dash computer system that's completely useless for much of the time you own it.
My first car had an AM radio, but I wanted FM, so I bought an FM converter for it. Car #3 had an AM/FM radio, but I wanted a cassette player, so I ended up buying and installing a radio with a cassette player in it. Car #4 didn't have a CD player, and I remedied that with a portable CD player and an adapter that slipped into the factory-installed cassette player. The current car has a radio with CD player and auxiliary input jack and Bluetooth, but I'm pretty sure it will be obsolete by the time I get rid of it.
Why would onboard computers be any different?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Either I get a Google self-driving car, or I drive myself places. I just need to Velcro my smartphone or tablet to the middle of my dash and be done with it. It's a car, not an appliance. At the present time, there's no need for a car to have its computers updated every year or two and why would we want to except for the enthusiasts out there? Cars are way too expensive for the vast majority of the people, debt is at an all time high, and we spend more on gadgets. I think we can afford not to upgrade cars.
I wonder if any of the auto manufacturers have considered working with Google and using Android?
I don't know everything.
Then please, please, please open source it, or at least let some third party support it. Car owners will likely pay to keep their car up to date if the car manufacturers can't be stuffed.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Anyone who has a Ford Sync system knows it is completely useless brand new.
I suspect that I'll be going out of my way and possibly paying extra to have HVAC and radio with real buttons and knobs and sliders that I can reach for and find while driving.
It is like the manufacturers go out of their way to avoid putting in things like analog auxiliary ports for audio. And heaven forbid they consider putting money into connectors for existing digital audio transport technologies (HDMI audio, TOSlink). And then they get fancy and start combining crap like trip computers and oil life indicators with the stock piece of crap radio.
NY state and others are passing stricter and stricter laws about phone use. The current law as written (though not totally enforced) makes using any electronic device while driving illegal unless it is a part of the car.
Chances are you could swap your 8 track out for a cassette deck or CD player.
I use an exogear universal tablet mount + a nexus 7 for my in dash needs :) ;)
No obsolecense there... if it gets old, i'll just replace the nexus with something new. And if I change cars, i can just take that with me...
it sends the audio to my regular stereo by bluetooth, and has built-in gps... so everything is fine
My wife's last car had an in-dash GPS. After a few years when the maps started showing their age and missing entire subdivisions, we looked into replacing it.
Turned out to buy the DVD from GM to update the maps was on the order of $700 or so. Which, was obviously way more than it would cost to buy a Tom Tom or similar.
I try to avoid such things because they do go obsolete far faster than the thing they're attached to. Though, the BlueTooth integration in my KIA is pretty sweet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ford has solved this with Sync: http://www.ford.com/technology/ Great system that leverages your ever changing smartphone.
K Man
Car companies and tablet/computer/smartphone companies should work on a standardized touchscreen API. Car companies then install a general purpose touchscreen that is activated and controlled by whatever tablet or smartphone device the user currently has in her possession.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Multiple industries have had the same problem. The solution is to have a standard bus system and mounting hardware, sort of like computer cases and or rack mounts.
MIDI is an example of a bus that interconnects a wide variety of components that work somewhat harmoniously together.
Of course we are talking about car manufacturers who can't even standardize on most parts to their products from year to year. It's almost as if they make horendous amounts of money by selling disparate copies of what should be the same thing.
When I recently bought a car, I specifically searched for a model that does not have any touch screen jazzy GPS-smartphone-capable stuff thrown in. Apart from the slow upgrades that are offered by the manufacturers, I find it extremely distracting. A phone call can always wait, and I prefer physical buttons on the dash to skip music tracks or control the volume. Unless you have steering wheel mounted controls (which I admit, most cars have these days), I find the prospect of taking my eyes off the road to figure out where on the screen to touch to change route/track very distracting and potentially dangerous. Voice activated commands are not yet very accent-insensitive. I speak with a marked indian accent, and I find that a couple of systems were not able to pick up commands very easily. More distractions and it just ends up making the journey more tiresome. So car makers, please spare some of us the bleeding edge technology and give us cars that we can actually enjoy driving.
Lovely, useless, analog handsfree phone system
A car works for about 10 year... my sister is getting a new "smart home" which links everything to your iphone or android. Ignoring the security aspects of it.. makes me cringe when she doesn't get "your phone has a lifespan of 3 years, your house will last 90. Something is going to give" *sigh*
Best thing since FM radios in cars. Don't like the factory "whatever"? Pull it out and put in your own.
I've been amazed over the years at the very poor quality of in-dash software and functionality. My 2008 Subaru Legacy has a so-so Nav system and horrendously expensive map upgrades while my wife's 2011 Sienna has probably the worst in-entertainment/Nav system I've seen.
While my Legacy's Nav system is somewhat hackable, the Sienna seems resistant to any kind of tweaking to improve any aspect of its operation. Instead, we're forced to accept whatever execrable interface they provide, no matter how irksome it may be.
Both systems could be vastly improved if auto-makers would use a more modularized and upgradable approach to their in-dash systems. Rather than sticking us with a system that's more or less immutable, why not use a general purpose computer underneath whatever buttons and displays they choose to use and allow companies or individuals to provide software to support the various functions we'd like to see. Kind of a chumby approach to things. A user could plug in a NAV module, a way to expand storage, a better quality audio amp or whatever they need to interface to the latest and greatest cell phones.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Just give me a USB port and a cigarette lighter for charging and an AUX plug for sound. Bonus points for microphones, but those are strangely absent on most cars.
A tablet two years younger than an in-dash system will always beat the in-dash system. Controls are still a problem, but voice activation is improving. Either way, you can already by bluetooth devices for the steering wheel with buttons controlling a phone.
What the tablet cannot offer is decent speakers and a good microphone mounted close to the head, so that is what car manufacturers should provide.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
A 10 year old car might have a cassette player. A 10 year old car, 10 years ago, probably had an AM/FM radio with actual radio buttons. A 10 year old car 20 years ago may have had a tape deck.
Swapping out a the stereo for one that works with your iPhone 12 is about 20 minutes of effort, and will cost maybe a hundred bucks.
http://www.mirrorlink.com/
This problem has been solved.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
At the time of hardware purchase, one of the top questions is always "Does this come with some sort of software which isn't maintainable?" If the answer is Yes, then the result is either NO SALE or else the machine is considered completely disposable and its purchase price is evaluated with that in mind.
If the moment you have a problem with your car's dash, if you're willing to throw the car away or recycle it like you would do with an iPhone 5 or an x86 box that can't run anything but Windows 8 -- or if you have compelling evidence that there's a high enough probability that you will get the necessary maintenance from the single source -- then it's ok to buy it. (Nine times out of ten, locking yourself into single source maintenance is a loser of an idea, but yes, there are exceptions.)
If it's priced high enough that it seems preposterous to you to lose so much of the value within a year, then don't buy it. Nancy Reagan might have been strangely biased on subject matter, but she knew three magic words of strategy, which solve most of today's "consumer problems": just say no. If someone offers you an opportunity to do something stupid which is obviously contrary to your interests, just say no.
And if enough people make decisions using this basic common sense, then someone will eventually say, "Oh, you want maintainability? Ok, I'll take your money," and there's your GNU/Car. ;-)
I upgrade my big $6.95 book of Rand McNally road maps every couple years. It's not that expensive.
My Prius model year 2006 came in with the maps stored in a DVD that was updated in Feb 2005. Car is still going strong, giving me 45 mpg in summer and about 40 mpg in winter. No problems, no issues. Except for that stupid map-DVD. Toyota thinks the updated DVD is worth 200$. And furthermore, only an authorized dealer technician can do this impossibly difficult task of ejecting old dvd and inserting the new one, labor at 80$ an hour. And the local dealer charges 20$ a day "storage fee" if you don't pick the car up when they call you to say it is done. It is a rip off. No one in right mind is paying for this stuff.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
These rear view Androids might last 10 years?
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets
Oh yeah, this no update policy is going to go over real well when we have self-drive cars.
for the car
If by "a decade or more" they mean 25 years, then yeah, OK. Don't forget the used car market; when the first owner of a car moves to a new car, the old one does not go straight to the scrap heap, and for modern cars 25 years is pretty common.
In-dash car stereos suck... they always have, and they always will. Lets be honest here, these "Systems" are nothing more than glorified car stereos. If you want to save some money on your car, get one without this nonsense per-installed and install your own after-market system for $200. You can replace it whenever you want then. When you get the factory system, it's often so integrated, removing it becomes a real problem.
Seriously. Just give me a Bash shell. I'll alias some useful stuff to short commands. Voice dictation can reduce the safety issues with keyboard use. And when the car is out of warranty, the dealer has to add me to the wheel group for sudo.
Back in the olden times the stereos were so basic all you could hope for was a tape adapter to plug in something external. A standard operating set of commands with a USB plug is all that's really needed. All the car needs to provide is an amplifier and speakers plus some basic functionality on its own like a radio. The external devices progress much faster than cars, for obvious reasons so save money on developing soon to be obsolete systems and just provide a standard the phone/accessory manufacturers can work with and just amplify the audio and provide power.
My father-in-law has a 2009 Lexus RX 350 hybrid and the in-dash system is already showing signs of obsolescence. The most glaring thing is actually the built-in GPS. It doesn't take long for those maps to get out of date and guess what Toyota's solution is to upgrade the maps? Replace the computer. It would cost nearly $2000 to get updated maps loaded into his car. Toyota didn't think to have some simple way of upgrading the mapping data via USB or anything. They have to take the dashboard apart and install a new computer to upgrade the maps. That's just stupid.
This space for rent...
The car computer system should be modular and easy to replace by the user, in addition we need a regulation in the US for a standard jack on the I/O of our phones and other electronics.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
My Prius model year 2006 came in with the maps stored in a DVD that was updated in Feb 2005. Car is still going strong, giving me 45 mpg in summer and about 40 mpg in winter. No problems, no issues. Except for that stupid map-DVD. Toyota thinks the updated DVD is worth 200$. And furthermore, only an authorized dealer technician can do this impossibly difficult task of ejecting old dvd and inserting the new one, labor at 80$ an hour. And the local dealer charges 20$ a day "storage fee" if you don't pick the car up when they call you to say it is done. It is a rip off. No one in right mind is paying for this stuff.
A few years ago I updated the map DVD in my sister's 2006 Prius. The DVD came with instructions and it was easy to do. The dealership sold me the DVD and did not try to insist that only an authorized technician could do the job.
I bought a VW Golf which had a factory fitted iPod dock in the arm rest. The salesperson couldn't understand why I wasn't impressed. It's been buggy and utterly useless - not being physically compatible with some models, not charging with others and the sound quality was appalling. Now Apple have changed the dock connector and there is definitely not enough room for any sort of adapter.
I fitted a 3rd party aux-in/SD card/USB adapter myself and I'm free to use whatever device I choose and it sounds massively better with same factory speakers/head unit. Why couldn't they have done that to begin with?
..and tried to tell them this
Don't put electronics in dashboards, build interfaces and docking stations
Concentrate on things like speakers, that must be designed to fit the space and don't change a lot
Needless to say, I was ignored
Interestingly, I've experienced the opposite with the iOS interface in my 2010 Nissan Cube. You plug the phone into a dash-mounted USB port and then control the music through the radio and the phone through a steering wheel bluetooth button.
At first the bluetooth voice dialing worked with my iPhone 3g, but I had to say the last name first. The music interface worked intermittently or only when I put it in airplane mode. When I got my 4s, the music interface worked like a charm. After an iOS update, I could even voice dial by using first name and then last name. It's probably all accidental, but Apple seems to be making sure that newer devices still work with the existing car tech.
so, standardize on a standard dock with micro usb for keyboard/touchscreen/buttons side-by-side with micro hdmi for video(/audio?) how hard was that? Ok, so you just added the requirement for usb & hdmi interface chips to stereos, but everything these days is (or will soon be) a computer anyhow.
Better yet, make all that shit wireless and you only have to worry about power connectors. And security.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But I've now got a completely running GNU/Car. Just one quick question: my lawyer just got back to me on the license terms. Do I really have to let my neighbor use the car whenever he wants? Because that sounds wrong.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Assume change happens. Make sure that and and all replacements are plug in compatible. It's been a solved problem since the 60s in many industries. Try not hiring 20-somethings that assume their latest brainwave will last forever.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"MirrorLink also provides a mechanism that ensures only approved applications are accessible while driving. Applications will be approved using a standardize testing process that will be introduced later this year."
I don't need that bit. Look, all I need is a wireless peripheral standard that will allow my smartphone/credit-card-computer (which will live in my wallet in 10 years) to make use of my car's (touch?) display(s), speakers, microphone, keyboard, mouse, various buttons...or whatever else it may have. I want the same functionality in my house, at the office and in my hotel room.
They'll fix dangerous bugs, same as they do now. It's called a product recall. On cars, it usually amounts to taking your car to the dealer and waiting while they replace a part. You won't get the software update that makes lane changes smoother on next year's model, but you'll get the bug fix for the issue where the car sometimes mistakes the ditch for the middle of the road.
no more AM/FM CDplayers coming stock with automobiles, just include an empty hole that will fit either a double din sized aftermarket stereo, plus have 12VDC terminals and speaker wires with stock speakers already installed, it is easy for people to wire up their own preference in electronics but the speaker system should be kept at a standard OHM and already installed in the dash and doors or wherever the automobile accommodates room for speaker systems
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Seriously - put a tablet-sized dock in the centre of the dash, and publish the interface standard. Include connections for power, data to select vehicle systems, audio, and a combo GPS/cellular/FM antenna. Replace the car radio with a DVD drive and a USB connector, plus whatever the current major portable audio connector happens to be.
Sell a factory tablet when the car is new, but sell the developer's kit and let anyone make their own as well.
eat up Martha?
I am very sure, my dealer knows I am a total sucker.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Hello,
We are running out of shit to steal from your cars, this sounds like a novel idea and will provide us with a great, renewable source of income. I look forward to breaking in your $1000 car windows and stealing $300 components like this. Thank god for low insurance deductibles, am I right?
Your's Truly
-Thief@craigslist.com
A number of cars with more advanced smartphone links, also do somewhat regular software updates. MINI is one, the Ford system another I think.
Once you just have a screen sitting in the car why would you NOT do regular updates?
Smartphone support also gives you an easy path to get the updates into the car.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it isnt like these things are general purpose computing devices. hey... wait a minute....
I only have three requirements for a head unit:
- Independent Front/Rear/Sub outputs
- Auxiliary input
- Good sound quality
I have no interest in streaming audio services - AM/FM/HD Radio, Pandora, Spotify - I don't want any of it. Of course, going for a quality head unit, many of these features are included, but on the head unit I recently purchased, an Alpine CDE-HD137BT, they included the awesome option to disable many of these features so they don't even show up in the menus when cycling through the inputs.
A CD player is a nice bonus in the rare event that I don't have my iMod with me, but for the most part it isn't necessary.
I have an external Garmin unit with up-to-date maps for GPS. Having something I can take with me in anyone's car is convenient, and I don't own a smartphone.
The problem: while smartphones go in an out of vogue every few years, modern cars have lifespans of a decade or more.
Auto Industry perspective:
The problem: while smartphones go in and out of vogue every few years, our cars have lifespans of a decade or more.
Nothing would make them happier than if they could get away with obsoleting a car in 3 years in the market place. Right now the public wont stand for it (thank God) but the automakers would love it. The other thing is the automakers don't really see used market buyers as their customers. As far as passenger cars go they make their money off the folks that either lease or flip their car every three years or less. So they don't care if a second hard owner can get any use of the in dash system or not.
Did it help them make the first sale is all that matters. The re certified used segment might even get a new revenue stream offering to upgrade that stuff.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Car companies haven't figured out how to make power windows, seats, and locks keep working for 10 years, how can you expect them to figure out how to keep a computer working that long?
Considering what it costs to get a power window repaired, who is going to pay to repair/replace the computer in the dash if the car will operate without it?
Jaguar xj has linux with an vpn interface that shows the phone interfrace on the dash so you can use the dash to control function phone and interface with car functions.
Congratulations, your phone is now crawling with malware and is part of the Nigerian National Botnet.
Yeah, right.
If the in-dash computers operate with open standards and a consistent API, they can remain functional for quite a while.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
This situation needs a communication standard for phones communicating with dash boards that is forwards compatible due to consistency in the calls. That or, COM ports on all the in-dashs and firmware support.
as a giant NPR fan, what if I want to listen to you know...
Radio?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The dumbest thing I've seen is iCar, iPhone Siri integration. Yeah, let's tie ourselves to technology that's not only going to be obsolete (If it isn't already - have you seen its performance up against Google Voice search?) -- but is proprietary besides. Give me a cheap car with no gadgets but lots of industry standard ports and I'll be much more likely to buy your car.
THIS is why our Right to Repair should be made the unassailable law of the land: abandonware. Whether in your pocket, on your desktop, or in your car dash makes no difference; it is our property and we have a right to maintain, fix, and improve.
I recently bought a 2012 Subaru, and paid extra for iPod integration (among other things).
1) The iPod integration doesn't really integrate well.
It defaults the music app on the iPod, but will not play any music from iCloud. If I want to play Pandora, I have to go through a bunch of steps to get it to play, and they all reset if I shut the car off and fire it back up again.
2) The USB charging port is useless.
There's a USB port that will play MP3s from an iPod or thumb drive. It will also charge your iPhone (or Android?), but only if the stereo is on, adn USB is selected as the input. Listening to the radio? No charging for you!
3) There's bluetooth integration, but it's just fucking lame.
To switch pairing between my phone and my wife's phone, there's a minute of voice activated menu systems to crawl through. However, it won't work if the car is moving - the menu is purposely disabled.
This stereo, while sounding good, has such a craptastic interface I hate it. I solved their stupid interface problems by plugging a bluetooth audio receiver in the the AUX port. It has a USB plug so that my phone will charge. The best part of the Subaru audio system is that there's a 12v outlet and AUX port in the center console.
It's amazing how poorly designed the whole thing is. If they can't get something this simple to work, how in the hell could they design more complicated?
My rule is to wear gloves when test driving a car or shopping for a replacement radio. After all, 4-6 months of the year, I'll be wearing gloves when I climb into the car in the morning. Radio, heater, and all important controls need to be operable.
Unfortunately, there are almost no replacement radios that have real buttons and knobs. That's one area where the auto manufacturers get it right more often than the gizmo vendors.
This is the exact reason why it's often worthwhile to skip the OEM in-dash system (if your car manufacturer is nice enough to treat it like an upgrade rather than a standard issue) and install an aftermarket audio system instead. No only do you typically get better audio quality and features from a 3rd party aftermarket system, but such systems typically are a lot easier to update. OEM in-dash receivers are often a few years behind all the aftermarket systems in terms of features, anyway.
if ($question !~ m/bb|[^b]{2}/i) { die(); }
Many feel that unsupported/end-of-life technology should be open sourced with the exception of times where the old tech was updated and is in use by still supported devices. Allowing the DIY community to create custom updates for end-of-life In-Dash systems, GPS devices, MP3 players, etc. would be incredible. If nothing else, think about how much tech is thrown away not because it doesn't work, but because the feature set was never enhanced when compared to new devices.
I have a two year old truck with an In-Dash system that already has stopped receiving software updates (can still get $150-$200 map updates though). While being able to add desired features makes me a happier consumer, it doesn't benefit a company making new/replacement devices. This also means that new devices would have to offer something better than the open source updates to old tech, but that is a topic for a different day.
Took out the double-din radio and now the only thing in the dash is the 7 inch touch screen. I've got a mini-itx computer in the trunk with the amp. USB GPS. Can upgrade any part if I need too. install my own software. I've been bumping and bouncing around with a 640 GB laptop drive for a couple years and it still works fine.
Tesla plans to do OTA updates and monitoring of their cars.
In addition, if you go and talk to the salesmen, you will find that they have the ability to plug several cards, replace the main-board, and outside apps can be created, and installed. Hopefully, they will not allow just anybody to install.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yesterday I had to wait five minutes before posting an additional message in the forum, but today I can comment right after while logged in. Does this happen during high bandwith times, or was something wrong with the server? Also, noticed I couldn't post as anon yesteday, but now the check box is back. Is there a reason for all of these missing/crippled forum options?
The way I see it, a goal of the dashboard electronics remaining relevant for the length of time the car is engineered to last (roughly a decade) really isn't some lofty ideal. The problem is the insistence on chasing the latest fads, vs. thinking about enhancements that stand up well on their own.
If you try to integrate heavily with 3rd. party devices like Apple iPhones, you wind up tied to Apple's upgrade path, instead of your own as an auto-maker.
On the other hand, if you look at such concepts as Cadillac's CUE, you're now talking about a customizable digital dash and heads-up display combo which offers features you can make use of for the life of the car (such as customizing the look of the gauges and readouts). With something as simple as a free downloadable software update an owner could load in via USB stick, this stuff could be refreshed or enhanced at will (and IMO, there's no huge risk of USB storage devices completely going away in 10 years). I'd also like to see more vehicles integrate their on-board diagnostics systems so it's not just a matter of storing trouble codes in memory someplace, never to be viewed until someone attaches an OBDII device to the port and fishes them out! There's a lot of good data streaming out of numerous sensors on today's vehicles, which could easily be collected and displayed in an end-user friendly format on a display in the dash. Again, since that's all part of an integrated system in the car anyway - it doesn't really matter of newer vehicles update the diagnostics standards. YOUR particular car is going to have what it has for that, throughout its lifespan, so making a nice UI to view it is going to be rather "timeless".
Obsolescence doesn't make any difference really. The only thing I use in my in-dash gizmo is the USB slot to play music. Other than that, I still need to drive the damn car myself. Until I can afford either a full time driver or a self driving car, an in dash system won't get any use.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Really. They stay on even when the car is stationary!
True story, bro.
Come on folks...this is a non-story.
Car dashboards always change with the times and are slow to react... 8 tracks, cassettes, CD players, passthrough audio jacks, ipod controllers, onstar, startac, builtin tube TVs, "trip computers", voice dictation systems, "car phone" holders, etc...
The biggest problem with the industry these days is balancing all these new technologies AND safety. touchpads + giant LCD screens with reconfigurable interfaces = accidents IMHO.
$200 doesn't seem too bad for a GPS that integrates with your car electronics completely and seamlessly. No real worries about theft. No stupid suction cup mounts obstructing your visibility. No bean bag mount falling down under high acceleration and cracking the screen (one of my GPS' died this way). No specialty vent mounts breaking bits of plastic in your car. Find another dealer or figure out what part number it is and call their parts department up and order the thing.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
/endthread
http://youtu.be/HUlNZkgNG-s?t=9m30s
Why would I ever want anything else?
so my smartphone can have navigation apps and such that will just push data to my car. I could push video/images/audio/text...what ever my specific dash can support...so that if I have a cheapo radio it can still display turn by turn text directions, or if I have a 8 inch screen it can render it like a Garmin.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
...don't buy them? All I usually get is the premium sound system because aftermarket car audio stuff these days sucks entire barnyards of ass.
In-Dash systems will continue to be available as long as there is money to be made by the manufacturers and the installers. While it's true that car manufacturers keep finding ways to make it harder, installers and system integrators just keep getting better at hacking the system.
For example, I bought my car new in 2003 without Navigation, but it did have the "upgraded" Bose system. The Nav package was $2K and a garmin Nuvi was $600. 5 years later, when I was ready to get an in-dash system, I found out that the environmental controls were built into the OEM Bose head unit. Last year an integrator released a dash kit that consolidated the controls into the dash panel which allowed for the installation of an aftermarket head unit.
The point is that car enthusiasts and integrators are car hackers. As long as a car is popular enough, there will be options and/or hacks to enable head unit integration.
If your in-dash infotainment system quits working the car is still good for a few things, like driving.
When that ECU and related hardware goes out in, say, 20 or 30 years (let's be REAL optimistic) you're just gonna be SOL. Especially on cars where the ECU controls the A/C, brakes, transmission, etc. On a BMW there isn't much that ISN'T controlled by the ECU or its wicked stepsisters. My brother has an e39 M5 that has spent a total of MONTHS at the dealer for issues with the electronics. Some of them couldn't be diagnosed, much less fixed, even by the factory reps (their responses boiled down to "don't that beat all!") . He has tried every avenue available. It just hit the wall with regard to complexity.
My 69 Camaro will be low-techishly burbling along (reactive electronics in the engine: 1 capacitor and 1 coil.) People will still be driving them in 2069. At least a few. How many 2012 BMW's will still be drivable in 2069? My guess is zero. Even if you put it in storage, some of the solid state stuff will degrade over time, some ESPECIALLY if they're left unused. Chances of finding replacement electronic assemblies or components? Also zero.
Try repairing an analog synthesizer made just 15 years ago. In most cases it's difficult to impossible to obtain the parts. And I can only imagine how much more custom silicon is in a German made ECU.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
They already have display mirror capability, either via wireless or wired connections. The missing element is remote touch capability and that's not very hard to implement.
It'd be simplest to implement this via HDMI for the mirroring and Bluetooth for music and phone calling, but I'm sure there's some way to do it via wifi without disabling the phone's cellular data.
The people behind "Mimics" seem to be doing this, but it requires jailbreaking and apparently there are some gotchas in the video output and phone orientation.
An Apple-approved solution for touch mirroring would make this a total no-brainer.
WOW! That brings back memories! Use to work in a TV repair shop when I was in high school in the 70's. Use to get one or two of those, along with tractor radios, which always were filled with dead bugs & wasp nests. I even had one radio that came from a 6v system, had a vibrator inside to up the voltage.
There's a simple solution for this, that's already in place for audio. It's called Bluetooth. Any phone you have automatically integrates easily without fuss. What we need is corresponding wireless video and input standards (how about that, X11 from nearly 3 decades ago still has the right architecture).
My car has a 1024x768 display and a very nice sound system (and that's reasonable); what's not reasonable is there's no way to feed the video (without expensive aftermarket installs -- the popular model for my car is $1K!)
-Malloc
They'll fix dangerous bugs, same as they do now. It's called a product recall. On cars, it usually amounts to taking your car to the dealer and waiting while they replace a part.
These days a recall doesn't even replace a part, a lot of flaws get fixed by re-flashing the ECU (which you have to go to the dealer to do, which is bollocks as you can re-flash an EPROM at home, lots of people do this to performance cars at home).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Perhaps they should consider automatically updatable system (at least as far as software goes, hardware and moore's law is a different beast entirely), but automatic over the 'net. In particular, just like connecting to a phone via bluetooth, there's no reason the dashboard can't connect to the phone via the phone's ability to serve as a wifi hotspot to your cell network. For GPS, they could continue to have the flash memory and/or dvdrom (its still less than 4gig compressed) in the system to serve slightly out of date data 'til the phone and google maps is back in network. Otherwise you get all sorts of apps available (internet radio) all built into the dashboard but available because the dashboard is networked.
Granted, on city-wide wifi networks it can be a bit of a stressload on those routers...'til 5-10 years from now when most cities have better and wide-spread networks.
But by going 802.11, it totally avoids any network specialties and patents by letting the phone deal with them. It just assumes a hotspot is in the car and goes from there.
Or another option is to build the capabilities into the phone and just have the screen serve as an additional monitor and touch-screen for it...but that requires Android and Apple agreeing on a few standards and not patenting any of them (and Microsoft following them), and how likely is that in the lawsuit land we live in today. Hence, let the dashboard designers just do what they want to do without caring about the source of the network and avoid a lot of patent issues that might never get resolved by the time the car is obsolete.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
See: https://www.ohloh.net/orgs/genivi and http://genivi.org/ for details. The current driver for the innovation is BMW but that will broaden as they get buy-in from other parties. There are 11 OEM's with many names you'd recognize and hopefully this (or something like it) will catch fire.
I want a car that is reliable and gets good milage. All the extra electronics crap manufacturers put in their cars for entertainment purposes serves no purpose other than to give car salesmen a way to really bump up their commissions. I know - I used to sell cars. Comparable aftermarket products are always cheaper, and at least as good.
Just wait until some genius figures out that it would be cheaper if the electronic controls responsible for controlling valve timing, fuel injection and so on would be cheaper if they ran off the same general purpose OS used to run the radio and little Jimmy's back seat car entertainment system, and the kid's video game ends up crashing the car.
In-car entertainment, the ability to make phone calls on the move etc. are all unnecessary distractions and increase the risk of accident.
Bah humbug.
I don't trust automobile manufacturers to ever know anything about what I might need or want in mobile telephone, mobile data, GPS or maps. Don't have ways to track me that I don't want or can't turn off. Phones go out of date and get upgraded. Car manufacturers think you need to pay twice (and a lot) for streaming music, GPS is redundant in cars, and map data is not well managed by the manufactuers and they expect you to pay for map updates. All ridiculous. Let me have my own mobile phone. Let me tie into a nice speaker system. Don't ask me to pay a premium for crap that you don't know anything about.
The Ford Sync system in my 2013 car is pretty useless now. It freezes, gets stuck, crashes, and othewiser fairly represents the usual Microsoft barrel-of-monkeys design. It has an inhuman interface. It refuses to take the most fundamental command, "F*ck off". The artificial female voice sounds like the mother-in-law in a bad TV series.
And we're supposed to let this thing drive us around?
I own a number of GM vehicles from 2000, 2001. Most of them have onstar. Worked great until around 2008. Then I got a notice to bring the car in so they could deactivate/remove them. For about $200 I could have replaced it with the new version of onstar that doesn't use the old analog lines. The great thing is using onstar they were able to remotely diagnose the car for any problems and even upgrade the software. I decided to not upgrade to the new system since the old cars aren't being updated at all any more.
I assume NPR is satellite, not FM? OK, add another antenna connection to the dock.