Automakers Struggle With Pairing Smartphones To Car Infotainment Systems

Lucas123 writes "As Toyota owners have often found out the hard way, they cannot use Bluetooth to pair an iPhone to their car's Entune infotainment system in order to use mobile apps. Drivers can set up their iPhones as a WiFi hotspots, but there's a fee for that. Part of the problem is that Toyota bundles all of the available Internet apps — such as Bing, iHeartRadio, MovieTickets.com, OpenTable, Pandora and other data services such as local fuel prices, traffic and weather information — on the infotainment system so it can track how they're being used. The company suggests drivers simply plug their phones into the car's USB port. Toyota's not alone in its wireless dilemma. Part of the problem is automakers can't keep up with mobile app software upgrades, so they use proprietary interfaces. But that may soon be changing. Toyota said its next model year will include Bluetooth pairing, but it still doesn't solve the longer term problem of how to upgrade infotainment systems without waiting the two to four years that new car models typically take to roll off the lines. Some automakers, like Audi, are moving to modular infotainment systems that allow chipsets to be replaced on the fly."

Comments

I hate these things.

[atari2600a]

My girlfriend has a new Prius C. She tried to convince her father not to get the one w/ the in-dash computer but they got it anyways, & here's just a little sample of what you get: You can't seek FM channels backwards. That's right. You passed your channel by accident? You better have bookmarked it because you're gonna have to do it all over again. You can't play FLAC files if you use your phone as a USB mass storage device so get ready to haul around an auxilliary audio cable. Bluetooth playback works but there's no real means to browse on the computer-- you'll have to do song selection on your phone & better hope you don't have to rewind. Oh yeah, you can't rewind. The maps application is supposedly able to pull Google Maps maps/traffic/fuel price data through your phone but who knows how long it'll be API compatible. You're also stuck w/ bluetooth bandwidth as (I've tested) internet tethering over USB doesn't work. I say tear it out & drop in an Android 4.x anything (tablet, phablet, proper in-dash computer, even a glorified phone mount), but, you know, resale value & all.