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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.
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 Then when your in-dash system gets outdated you can upgrade it.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
I wonder if any of the auto manufacturers have considered working with Google and using Android?
I don't know everything.
Anyone who has a Ford Sync system knows it is completely useless brand new.
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
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.
Actually, you wanna get the 8-track to cassette adapter, then put the audio-to-cassette adapter into that slot and plug in the CD player. Then burn your MP3s to CD and your fresh El Camino is rollin' 21st century style. Best to operate the CD off batteries, not the cigarette lighter, lots of potential ground-loop issues with those older radios.
I am not a crackpot.
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.
http://www.mirrorlink.com/
This problem has been solved.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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
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.
I would question your assumption that any house constructed after about 1970 will last 90 years. More like the 30 or so they're willing to give you a mortgage for.
New tract home construction quality just doesn't impress me as being durable over the long haul.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
There's a 12AU7 burned out in my radio, so I can't use it for anything right now.
..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
Skating in the early 70s was a dreary exercise. I strapped a pack of NiCds onto an underdash cassette player tha happened to have a headphone jack, and presto, Skateman! yes, like wearing an iron on my belt.
Then I visited Manhattan for a training school and walked through J& R Music World. TPS-L2. Bliss.
You could Velcro a Walkman to the dash.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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
"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.
While silly, that line of CD-Rs still uses the blue azo pigments in cyanine dyes instead of the newer phthalocyanine that every other disc produced today, including all of Verbatim's other discs. I have found the longevity and readability of these discs to be quite excellent, especially on older drives.
Back then that chemistry was also available on DataLifePlus brand discs. Every single one I used to burn stuff on is still readable today (last checked this summer) while the Ritek discs I also burned at the time with the newer light green dyes are running about 2 good discs out of every 3 I pull. I believe older TDK discs also used the same Mitsubishi chemistry, but it's been a long time since such things mattered to me, since sneakernet with USB drives is more efficient.
Anecdotal? Sure, but that's my tale.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The late 80's had lots of GM experiments in proprietary dash layouts. The CRT touch screen system in the '87 Buck Riveria was perhaps the most (in)famous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onDbn0AWV5M
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I had an aftermarket GPS/iPod/Video system from 2007 that worked great with my iPod nano from 2005. No video from the iPod (obviously) but it was great. Then I decided to get a 6th gen iPod classic for the massive library and video.
Every few weeks the iPod would crash, whether I used it or not. I usually left it plugged in to its cable, and I wouldn't even know what happened until it "auto connected". One time I caught it in the act and I realized it wasn't the stereo failing, it was the iPod. Frozen, screen lit up to max brightness, completely unresponsive to controls. I had to wait for the battery to run out, then recharge it enough to turn on. That's why the auto connect has happening, it was literally coming back to life, realizing there's a cable attached, and trying to renegotiate. Then there was video functionality. Some times it would just switch off, and the only way to bring it back was to unplug the iPod, manually reset, and plug it back in. Oh, and, it would then forget it's place in the video.
Also, the head unit was pretty sweet and would display album art. Basically, if I put high res art on my nano, it would display high res on the display. With the 6th gen, it's like Apple intentionally downgraded the functionality and the same songs with the same high res album art were restricted to some ridiculous resolution, like 96x96. Looked god awful on the 720x480 display.
So before you blast the 3rd party system, it's pretty clear to me anyway that Apple doesn't like regression testing only as far as it can be made to look like someone else's fault.
More Twoson than Cupertino
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.
My grandmother drove a 60's Oldsmobile. The speedometer indicator changed from green to yellow when you hit dangerous speeds (35 mph). Of course, I never saw that when she was driving. There was a rumor that it also could change to red at even higher speeds.
And for those who think I'm joking, old car radios had a vibrator to convert the 6V DC into AC that could be used by the radio.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.