Report: “Android M” to support use as a car infotainment OS

But will car makers agree to cede control of the infotainment system to Google?

Read the whole story

 

[dfjdejulio]

They do not need to cede control to Google if they fork AOSP like Amazon and others have.

 

[THavoc]

Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

If I don't like what's in there, I would like to be able to d/l (or the dealer) another one.

 

[lostalaska]

I'm hoping it supports android apps and bluetooth. Sure would be nice if it could interface with my ODBII bluetooth module. Got it running on my phone right now and it's super handy when you want to know why the check engine light kicks on.

 

[flunk]

THavoc[/url]":23pyvxn8]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

If I don't like what's in there, I would like to be able to d/l (or the dealer) another one.

That sounds nice, barring that at least 10 years of guaranteed upgrades would really be nice. Cars last a lot longer than phones and these systems get dated really quickly.

 

[dfjdejulio]

THavoc[/url]":acqxyiax]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

Hm... best way I can see to do that is to make the system it runs on swappable, like an old school in-dash radio or 8-track player. So I think we'd need some kind of standard for the physical connectors between those systems and various speakers, displays, and input switches?

 

[jonah]

Car manufacturers do such an abysmal job with ergonomics and infotainment system UI that literally ANYTHING would be better.

 

[Kia]

What happens in 12 years when the car's os is no longer updated, but there's a security flaw that lets someone take over the car's breaks?

 

[psd]

Should they cede control? Heck ya! Stick to your core competency is the oft repeated business advice. All car makers have to do is specify an API or maybe we just need CAN to USB dongles.

 

[sk3l]

Kia[/url]":2ydjsyl3]What happens in 12 years when the car's os is no longer updated, but there's a security flaw that lets someone take over the car's breaks?

I think we're talking strictly about a "infotainment" console here, not anything hooked into the car's drive function or diagnostics. If it turned out that such a vulnerability in basically the car's music/navigation system enabled control of other areas of the vehicle, then that would be the ultimate bonehead mistake of all time, and it would be epic litigation bait.

 

[szlevi]

"Today the platforms for in-car OSes are usually Blackberry's QNX, Windows CE, or a custom-built Linux-based OS."

Yeah, except they are like 95%, 4% and 1%, respectively - in other words almost every advanced car out there runs on QNX. No wonder, QNX is a lot more than an entertainment platform: http://www.qnx.com/solutions/industries/automotive/

How about doing a little research before such a marketing article like this...?

"Nearly everyone we've spoken to in the industry has confirmed this—car makers are reluctant to cede control of their connectivity options to Apple and Google."

Understandably so. It's their brand that gets tarnished with the inevitable bug, not Google's...

 

[iolinux333]

All I need is a blank spot recessed on the dash designed to securely hold the phone or tablet of my choice, with a USB power connector right there too. And a cover door that closes automatically when the engine shuts off (manual/cheap clicky door is fine too) to hide from prying eyes. With bluetooth steering wheel controls, I can have the infotainment system of my choice that will never be outdated, running whatever software I choose.

The car manufacturers know this and are hoping like heck that no one manufacturer has the balls to put it out on the market, because that will ruin the cash cow for everyone.

Millions of us are doing this anyway with various kludgy dash mounts for our phones/tablets, and some are even going to the trouble of ripping out the factory overpriced garbage radio and cementing a tablet in it's place. All because no one will put a plain flat blank spot on the dash.

I predict it will be Kia first. Korea doesn't care about other's cash cows so much it seems.


Ah, this is what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtboDdHid9s

Just make it factory so it looks pretty, with interchangeable plastic inserts I can buy from Amazon to snap in my tablet of the day.

 

[iolinux333]

Oh, and I call dibbs on the patent to have interchangeable plastic inserts for the flat spot so that, say, an iPhone or Nexus 5 just clicks into place and automatically starts charging without having to plug in anything.

 

[TehCable]

Wasn't this already announced back at Google I/O in... May?

 

[THavoc]

flunk[/url]":1dnznc5a]

THavoc[/url]":1dnznc5a]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

If I don't like what's in there, I would like to be able to d/l (or the dealer) another one.

That sounds nice, barring that at least 10 years of guaranteed upgrades would really be nice. Cars last a lot longer than phones and these systems get dated really quickly.

Agreed. I don't think 10 years is too much to ask for really.

 

[szlevi]

THavoc[/url]":hzq3ttpy]

flunk[/url]":hzq3ttpy]

THavoc[/url]":hzq3ttpy]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

If I don't like what's in there, I would like to be able to d/l (or the dealer) another one.

That sounds nice, barring that at least 10 years of guaranteed upgrades would really be nice. Cars last a lot longer than phones and these systems get dated really quickly.

Agreed. I don't think 10 years is too much to ask for really.

Seconded. 10 years should be standard.

 

[THavoc]

dfjdejulio[/url]":194g80ii]

THavoc[/url]":194g80ii]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

Hm... best way I can see to do that is to make the system it runs on swappable, like an old school in-dash radio or 8-track player. So I think we'd need some kind of standard for the physical connectors between those systems and various speakers, displays, and input switches?

That's not a bad idea either depending on how it's done tho. Right now, there's no user access to the radio so it'd have to be a dealer only option and I can see them charging a fortune for it.

If it's user accessible tho, it would be prone to theft.

 

[Semi On]

But will car makers agree to cede control of the infotainment system to Google?

They really shouldn't be since they are so fundamentally bad at it, almost across the board.

 

[JPan]

dfjdejulio[/url]":a2fo7p7h]They do not need to cede control to Google if they fork AOSP like Amazon and others have.

Not sure, the open source part doesn't really provide much benefit as opposed to Linux base. The only real benefit would be the use of all the google services and that part you cannot fork.

 

[UnnDunn]

flunk[/url]":1i9442ls]

THavoc[/url]":1i9442ls]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

If I don't like what's in there, I would like to be able to d/l (or the dealer) another one.

That sounds nice, barring that at least 10 years of guaranteed upgrades would really be nice. Cars last a lot longer than phones and these systems get dated really quickly.

Keep dreaming. You'll get two years if you're lucky.

 

[szlevi]

THavoc[/url]":3c9jk78m]

dfjdejulio[/url]":3c9jk78m]

THavoc[/url]":3c9jk78m]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

Hm... best way I can see to do that is to make the system it runs on swappable, like an old school in-dash radio or 8-track player. So I think we'd need some kind of standard for the physical connectors between those systems and various speakers, displays, and input switches?

That's not a bad idea either depending on how it's done tho. Right now, there's no user access to the radio so it'd have to be a dealer only option and I can see them charging a fortune for it.

If it's user accessible tho, it would be prone to theft.

Actually as long as you're fine with swapping GUI/apps it is already doable - QNX can run anything on top of it, its own CAR or Apple'
s CarPlay or others.

 

[UnnDunn]

I would love it if the USB port in a car could be repurposed to provide access to the car's controls and systems. It would provide channels for OBD-II data, multi-channel audio, five video streams, feeds from the cellphone and radio antennas, and an extensible command channel for key systems such as climate control and drivetrain modes.

Devices of any OS would connect to this "Car USB" and provide apps to do all the common ICE functions. Of course, there would need to be some sort of authentication process before a brand-new device could be paired to the car, possibly involving some sort of coded sequence of turns or button-presses of the car key.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

lostalaska[/url]":tm3bduto]I'm hoping it supports android apps and bluetooth. Sure would be nice if it could interface with my ODBII bluetooth module. Got it running on my phone right now and it's super handy when you want to know why the check engine light kicks on.

If it were built into the vehicle's hardware, why would it need an external OBDII module and a bluetooth link, rather than just presenting something a lot more informative than a 1-bit indicator labelled "Check Engine"?

I have no reasonable expectation that they won't pull defeat out of the jaws of victory, coat it in craplets and banner ads, and then shove it into your face; but "actually informative error messages" are exactly the sort of thing that would be trivial now that a fairly large and competent screen is likely to be part of the vehicle's interface.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

szlevi[/url]":1gvc4o6w]

THavoc[/url]":1gvc4o6w]

dfjdejulio[/url]":1gvc4o6w]

THavoc[/url]":1gvc4o6w]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

Hm... best way I can see to do that is to make the system it runs on swappable, like an old school in-dash radio or 8-track player. So I think we'd need some kind of standard for the physical connectors between those systems and various speakers, displays, and input switches?

That's not a bad idea either depending on how it's done tho. Right now, there's no user access to the radio so it'd have to be a dealer only option and I can see them charging a fortune for it.

If it's user accessible tho, it would be prone to theft.

Actually as long as you're fine with swapping GUI/apps it is already doable - QNX can run anything on top of it, its own CAR or Apple'
s CarPlay or others.

That's a moderately heroic porting job, though, even assuming that there's no crypto lockdown on the existing firmware. QNX is a fully capable OS; but excising one UI and set of applications and switching in an entirely different one is...nontrivial.

 

[ronamadeo]

szlevi[/url]":h1c22czo]"Today the platforms for in-car OSes are usually Blackberry's QNX, Windows CE, or a custom-built Linux-based OS."

Yeah, except they are like 95%, 4% and 1%, respectively - in other words almost every advanced car out there runs on QNX. No wonder, QNX is a lot more than an entertainment platform: http://www.qnx.com/solutions/industries/automotive/

How about doing a little research before such a marketing article like this...?

Listing the available OSes is a valid statement regardless of the market share of each OS.

But, according to IHS Automotive, it's QNX: 44%, Microsoft: 17%, Linux: 4%, Others: 35%, and they expect Linux to be the fastest grower in the future.

 

[kliu0x52]

szlevi[/url]":1j0dlxoy]

THavoc[/url]":1j0dlxoy]

flunk[/url]":1j0dlxoy]

THavoc[/url]":1j0dlxoy]Personally, I'd like to be able to switch car OS at any time.

If I don't like what's in there, I would like to be able to d/l (or the dealer) another one.

That sounds nice, barring that at least 10 years of guaranteed upgrades would really be nice. Cars last a lot longer than phones and these systems get dated really quickly.

Agreed. I don't think 10 years is too much to ask for really.

Seconded. 10 years should be standard.

Microsoft supported XP for over 12 years, and Windows Vista, 7, and 8(.1) are each getting a decade. If Google wants their OS to be used for "serious" things, they need to at least match that.

 

[Elrabin]

Kia[/url]"htobahm]What happens in 12 years when the car's os is no longer updated, but there's a security flaw that lets someone take over the car's breaks?

Why on earth would the cars infotainment bus be connected to a drive/brake by wire system? Oh right, just like on airplanes, they're not.

 

[mycroftxxx]

jonah[/url]":s3nrkik4]Car manufacturers do such an abysmal job with ergonomics and infotainment system UI that literally ANYTHING would be better.

Audi's is head and shoulders above any other one I've seen; responsive, clean, easy to navigate. If more were like it, we wouldn't be so eager for Apple and Google to move into the space.

 

[Semi On]

mycroftxxx[/url]":1sz53mnb]

jonah[/url]":1sz53mnb]Car manufacturers do such an abysmal job with ergonomics and infotainment system UI that literally ANYTHING would be better.

Audi's is head and shoulders above any other one I've seen; responsive, clean, easy to navigate. If more were like it, we wouldn't be so eager for Apple and Google to move into the space.

They are the tallest dwarf. I love my S5, but the infotainment package isn't why. I still wind up using my phone to navigate and it's just a bluetooth speaker for audio listening.

 

[MechR]

Just like Harman's CEO, the Reuters report said that Android's startup time will need to be greatly improved in order for it to be a viable car infotainment OS.

Finally, someone notices! I hope any boot-time optimizations extend back to phones and other non-car systems, too.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

MechR[/url]":5tpmlbd3]

Just like Harman's CEO, the Reuters report said that Android's startup time will need to be greatly improved in order for it to be a viable car infotainment OS.

Finally, someone notices! I hope any boot-time optimizations extend back to phones and other non-car systems, too.

Android's boot time could be better. But, what if we don't ever have to reboot

 

[kindakrazy]

"Android is purpose-built to be integrated into something like car infotainment hardware"

Um, no. Android sure as hell is not purpose-built to be loaded into car infotainment hardware. It was originally designed strictly for cell phones, then they rejigged it to work better on tablets, and now they are working on rejigging it to make it work better on cars.

Simply put, what and how you should do something in a car, particularly when it is moving, is a lot different than what you want to enable when you are using a cell phone or a tablet.

 

[Ragin76er]

Kindakrazy, the OS itself is designed to run on virtually any embedded system (Android is not a true Linux system, it's a Linux kernel and embedded OS hybrid). Whether or not you feel the gui is right for a car is irrelevant as I'm sure they will have a well thought out and responsible gui specific to vehicles, besides everything has to pass the safety standards of multiple regulatory bodies which is why Google is limiting customization of it's interfaces by manufacturers for cars. This also highlights one of the beauties of material design in its ability to scale to devices of all sizes while maintaining coherence, and in my view good looks.

 

[BonzaiThePenguin]

kliu0x52[/url]":3i0bw072]Microsoft supported XP for over 12 years, and Windows Vista, 7, and 8(.1) are each getting a decade. If Google wants their OS to be used for "serious" things, they need to at least match that.

"Supporting" is absolutely nothing like "upgrading". Upgrading for 10 years would be going from XP to Windows 10, or iPhone OS 1.0 to iOS 11, on the same hardware. That's just absurd.

 

[HiggsForce]

sk3l[/url]":10x6bev8]I think we're talking strictly about a "infotainment" console here, not anything hooked into the car's drive function or diagnostics. If it turned out that such a vulnerability in basically the car's music/navigation system enabled control of other areas of the vehicle, then that would be the ultimate bonehead mistake of all time, and it would be epic litigation bait.

For various reasons electronics in cars are typically networked over a common bus with a standardized protocol. That includes the entertainment system, as well as the drive functions, brake overrides (needed to make ABS work), etc.

That then leads us to the famous car stereo hack that granted one full control over the car simply by playing a carefully corrupted song from a music CD. See the Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces paper from 2011 for details of this and other fun attacks on ordinary production cars.

 

[bug77]

I'm not sure where this is going. Already a smartphone/phablet/tablet can do anything an infotainment system does. But you can upgrade your mobile device while you can't upgrade the built-in system.
The only thing car manufacturers are required to provide is a sound system to plug your device into; and maybe screens that allow you to do the same. Other than that, infotainment systems mean just paying for stuff you already have. And this will become more obvious as mobile devices become more powerful.

 

[digi99]

Considering how shi**y Lollipop was, is anyone really looking forward to this?

 

[raptormissle]

szlevi[/url]":1iol48hk]"Today the platforms for in-car OSes are usually Blackberry's QNX, Windows CE, or a custom-built Linux-based OS."

Yeah, except they are like 95%, 4% and 1%, respectively - in other words almost every advanced car out there runs on QNX. No wonder, QNX is a lot more than an entertainment platform: http://www.qnx.com/solutions/industries/automotive/

How about doing a little research before such a marketing article like this...?

"Nearly everyone we've spoken to in the industry has confirmed this—car makers are reluctant to cede control of their connectivity options to Apple and Google."

Understandably so. It's their brand that gets tarnished with the inevitable bug, not Google's...

Oh hey, how about getting your numbers right before trying to pathetically correct someone?

 

[bbulkow]

If you've tried the systems that try to use the cell phone as the "device" and just create a UI, you run into an immediate technical problem: with high resolution interfaces, attempting to wirelessly run a display just doesn't work. My phone ( like many ) has a 1920 x 1024 screen, I expect my car to have the same, and running that over any RF interface (even without battery constraint) is a serious challenge.

Everything gets laggy.

Therefore, based on this one technical reality, we must have the car's device be a full device. Given the low cost of cell phone hardware and screen, this is all very resonable, and the industry will line up to sell us that.

But then either we need a standard physical interconnect (which we have, DIN), needs a standard cabling (which we don't have), and car makers be weaned off the $2k "navigation systems". We'd have some competition in the car device area.

If ATT/Verizon figures out this is their next market, there might be enough power to "make it so".

But let's show another vision. I have a "car stereo". It's a small amp and speakers and a mic and a bluetooth radio. I then have a cradle for my cellphone (with power). Maybe I have a backup camera, which uses wifi (like dropcam)?

How is this not cheaper, better, more expandable?

That's what I'm running today..... even in front of a $1500 pioneer nav system which I didn't buy (was retrofit by the previous owner) because that pioneer UI system is TERRIBLE. It requires something like 6 screen touches to lay in a route, and if you upgrade the map to a recent version, you lose voice control.

Take the nav system out of the dash.

 

[kindakrazy]

bbulkow[/url]":3cpex1g7]If you've tried the systems that try to use the cell phone as the "device" and just create a UI, you run into an immediate technical problem: with high resolution interfaces, attempting to wirelessly run a display just doesn't work. My phone ( like many ) has a 1920 x 1024 screen, I expect my car to have the same, and running that over any RF interface (even without battery constraint) is a serious challenge.

Everything gets laggy.

Therefore, based on this one technical reality, we must have the car's device be a full device. Given the low cost of cell phone hardware and screen, this is all very resonable, and the industry will line up to sell us that.

But then either we need a standard physical interconnect (which we have, DIN), needs a standard cabling (which we don't have), and car makers be weaned off the $2k "navigation systems". We'd have some competition in the car device area.

If ATT/Verizon figures out this is their next market, there might be enough power to "make it so".

But let's show another vision. I have a "car stereo". It's a small amp and speakers and a mic and a bluetooth radio. I then have a cradle for my cellphone (with power). Maybe I have a backup camera, which uses wifi (like dropcam)?

How is this not cheaper, better, more expandable?

That's what I'm running today..... even in front of a $1500 pioneer nav system which I didn't buy (was retrofit by the previous owner) because that pioneer UI system is TERRIBLE. It requires something like 6 screen touches to lay in a route, and if you upgrade the map to a recent version, you lose voice control.

Take the nav system out of the dash.

First, car makers are only weaning themselves off $2k navigation systems by starting to integrate $2.5k navigation systems with built-in LTE, so they also get a cut of your monthly car cell phone bill AND they also get to sell your driving habits and vehicle issues to dealerships. "Time for your oil change. Northtown Ford is coming up on your right, you can have it done immediately."

And for crappy companies, wishing that cell phone companies would take over from car companies is like saying you prefer to be shot in the arm instead of the leg. Cell phone companies should be legislated into only being dumb pipes, [talk, text, data]. They particularly should be prevented from being involved in any manner of physical or software UI. Especially software, given their past 20+ years of screwing up UI's on cell phones.