AirPlay - Tesla falls further behind in Infotainment

[Shuasha]

It *SEEMS* that Carplay/Android Auto would be fairly simple. All of the processing is done on the phone, the car is basically a dumb terminal that displays what the phone gives it and has a touch screen for controls.

I guess the main question is if the Tesla screen is able to take a display over USB.

 

[Boatguy]

I would like to see better smartphone integration, but there needs to be a standard interface that can work for all smartphone manufacturers. Maybe Bluetooth, but it's capabilities seem limited right now.

There is no "standard", but CarPlay and Android Auto cover 98% of all smart phones. If Chevrolet can implement support for both, then surely Tesla can do it.

 

[Caboom]

on the same principle...i don't understand why Tesla is the only car manufacturer that doesn't have the ability to have a voice command to dial the phone. You use voice command and then you have to choose from the flat screen the # you want to dial. Innefficient and dangerous. Also this is one of the most basic features in almost any car today.

what's up with that!!

 

[ShadowR55]

I don't think I have ever used the voice command features of any cars I've owned, they have always sucked at voice recognition. Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri on the other hand are great.

 

[Mknac]

I pick up my Model S on Aug 19 so I guess I'll find out. There are so many things I like about the S and reasons why I bought it. It just seems (from what I'm reading on these forums) there is a real lack in amenities of what most expect from a $85K car. Perhaps the "premium" is just for I paid through the nose for this car and not to mean a luxury car. I'm coming from a 2015 Taurus Sho completely maxed with the exception of massaging seats. Seems from what I'm reading the S is missing lots of little touches; changing the ambient lighting color, hooks for coat hangers, sun glass holder built in to the roof, seats not moving back when you park so you can more easily get out, air conditioned seats, Sirius radio, navigation system, smart phone integration etc. Ultimately I'm sure I'm going to love the car and I shouldn't get worked up about what I read here.

 

[Caboom]

I pick up my Model S on Aug 19 so I guess I'll find out. There are so many things I like about the S and reasons why I bought it. It just seems (from what I'm reading on these forums) there is a real lack in amenities of what most expect from a $85K car. Perhaps the "premium" is just for I paid through the nose for this car and not to mean a luxury car. I'm coming from a 2015 Taurus Sho completely maxed with the exception of massaging seats. Seems from what I'm reading the S is missing lots of little touches; changing the ambient lighting color, hooks for coat hangers, sun glass holder built in to the roof, seats not moving back when you park so you can more easily get out, air conditioned seats, Sirius radio, navigation system, smart phone integration etc. Ultimately I'm sure I'm going to love the car and I shouldn't get worked up about what I read here.

You will love the car! i have smiled everytime i've gotten in my car since i drove my p85 in Nov 2013
i have never considered driving anything else after that. I'm getting the P90DL and can't wait. there are things that could be upgraded but it is an amazing vehicle.

 

[raysspl]

Only a matter of time when Android Auto & Apple Car Play will be heavily integrated into the Teslas

 

[liuping]

Maybe this will embarrass Elon in to adding CarPlay support: HYUNDAI RELEASES DO-IT-YOURSELF INSTALLATION FOR SMARTPHONE INTEGRATIONS ON SEVERAL EXISTING MODELS

So now Tesla is not the only company adding new features after the fact via software updates.

 

[Boatguy]

Maybe this will embarrass Elon in to adding CarPlay support: HYUNDAI RELEASES DO-IT-YOURSELF INSTALLATION FOR SMARTPHONE INTEGRATIONS ON SEVERAL EXISTING MODELS

So now Tesla is not the only company adding new features after the fact via software updates.

Fabulous! Now Tesla is playing catch-up with Hyundai!

Elon - are you listening? OTA update from Hyundai rockets their infotainment system past Tesla. Hello? Hello?

 

[Mknac]

You guys are getting worried. My Ford Taurus Sho's infotainment/navigation/phone integration is great. Actually the Navigation is the best I've seen. Combined with Sirius traffic/weather it's impressive.

 

[jmsurpri]

I doubt the Hyundai is OTA update. If it's anything like my Ford Flex with Microsoft Sync, you download the update to a thumb drive, then plug the thumb drive into a USB slot in the car. Start the car, then let the car sit idling for however long it takes to do the update. Yes, for my Ford Flex, you actually have to run the car at idle the entire time the update installs.

 

[trils0n]

You guys are getting worried. My Ford Taurus Sho's infotainment/navigation/phone integration is great. Actually the Navigation is the best I've seen. Combined with Sirius traffic/weather it's impressive.

The phone sounds crystal clear on my Tesla on both ends. Most people can't tell I'm in the car. Works great. Automatically connects to my phone without having to click anything. My brother's Ford Sync is a chore to connect a phone -- sometimes it works automatically, other times not...

Tesla's infotainment is the easiest to use and most responsive of any in car system I've used. Most in car systems are mazes of terrible UI design, and slow, low res screens.

The voice commands work well, but there aren't many of them. Navigate/Drive/Where is, Play/Listen to, and Call/Dial.

Navigate to is super useful, you can say an address or place name, and it just works. Navigate to 100 1st Street. Navigate to Whole Foods. Where is Whole foods. Drive to Whole Foods on Emerson. Navigate to Whole Foods in Palo Alto. My brother's ford has strict syntax requirements and if not done correctly, it just fails. Tesla's implementation is much more natural.

Same with call. My girlfriend has a non-traditional spelling of her first name, and a long German last name, but Tesla's system works perfectly. Cannot however, say Dial 867-5309.

Play or listen to for music commands. Can say: play Jimi Hendrix. Play All Along the Watchtower. Play All Along the Watchtower By Jimi Hendrix. Play Bob Dylan All Along the Watchtower. Natural, and just works. Cannot say Play FM 104.9 or play USB.

The google maps display in the Tesla is excellent. Huge, easy to see, and easy to manipulate. Traffic is displayed in real time from Google, which is super useful for making decisions. You can just look at the screen and see "oh the freeway is backed up for 10 miles, I'll take a different route". The nav, however, doesn't seem to take this info into account when navigating (it seems to use some other traffic data company).

What is there works great, mostly better than the competition. It's the stuff that isn't there that is slightly annoying. But mostly it just works. Not being able to voice dial a number has never been an problem for me. Changing music source is just a flick of the steering wheel control. So, not a big a deal that voice command cannot change between FM and AM and USB or Internet.

 

[markb1]

It should be less investment for Tesla to support Car Play and Android Auto than it would to implement and support whole API for app development, and the payoff is third party apps. Sure, there's potentially more an app can do if I can run on the touchscreen computer as opposed to your phone, but perhaps not enough for Tesla to justify that option right now.

 

[bob_p]

I agree - what Tesla has implemented works pretty good - and looks better than the counterparts in other vehicles, though we still have some annoying problems - like the USB auto-playing overnight, that I wouldn't expect to see in any other car.

The problem is that Tesla has only implemented a subset of the features present in other cars. And they are getting farther behind.

While it was understandable that the first Model S cars produced 4 years ago had basic implementations of the core media player and navigation apps - we are still running basically the same software today, with very few changes. We're still missing features like playlists and waypoints.

Investing in CarPlay and Android Auto may be better in the long run for Tesla. It's what the other manufacturers are doing - and once they have it, as new features are added on Apple and Android devices, they'd be available in Tesla cars, without Tesla having to do anything.

Though navigation still needs to be a built-in feature - because smartphone navigation apps will never manage trip planning and routing as well as the car's software, which is managing charging and energy consumption - something the smartphone navigation apps don't need to worry about.

 

[markb1]

Though navigation still needs to be a built-in feature - because smartphone navigation apps will never manage trip planning and routing as well as the car's software, which is managing charging and energy consumption - something the smartphone navigation apps don't need to worry about.

I think navigation cuts both ways. For trip planning with charging stops, you may be correct. But Tesla's traffic-aware navigation is not nearly as good as Waze. Considering I hardly ever need Tesla's trip planning features, it would be nice to have the option of Waze on the center screen. (Note that Waze is announced for Android Auto, but not CarPlay, as far as I know.)

 

[BertL]

IMHO, it all comes down to how Tesla really wants to differentiate itself (or not) over the long term. There are pros and cons to Tesla maintaining it's own Infotainment thing, vs primary use of CarPlay/Android Auto, vs some hybrid approach. Given Elon and Tesla's track record to date, even with MX coming out with effectively the same thing as MS has (except of course for obvious things like falcon wing doors, etc), it does not appear leveraging Tesla's Engineering team to maintain a leading-edge Infotainment system is their priority.

I stand by what I've said in other threads many times... engineers that are specialists (or generalists as your POV may be) with Infotainment are not the same as those needed to design batteries, new physical vehicles, machines and processes to put it all together -- so they are not interchangeable and I don't buy some number of "Infotainment and UI Engineers" can't be in place if it was a Tesla priority. If you believe that as I do, then maintaining a small team who continually focuses on enhancing Infotainment to ensure it IS and remains best-of-breed with continual fixes and true owner usability enhancements would be the approach I'd personally take. If CarPlay/Android Auto is part of that, well, it's another discussion -- because there are plenty of things unique to MS/MX/M3/etc that will never be provided by Apple or Google.

Think e.g what a differentiator it would be if Tesla combined its existing Navigon/Google Nav (let alone one with improvements we've discussed forever), with what MS/MX already has for onboard "real-time" trip planning, and then if they say bought EVTripPlanner and integrated all that functionality such that offline trip planning could be done and seamlessly sent to your MS via the Tesla App or your My Tesla Account... Some brands offer some of that today, but not the E2E planning to real-time that is almost there... then one day when that is all working well, Tesla could expand the capability to provide only a subset for other EVs to do trip planning so a free scaled-down Tesla App or My Tesla could be used for estimating the trip of other EVs, helping the cause, but at the same time giving a glimpse every time it was used how much better life would be with a full Tesla environment if you owned the vehicle too. That's the sort of thing I mean with using Infotainment as a differentiator.

Many of us hope 8.0 catches up, and that would be great, but I personally remain concerned that Elon still does not see the benefit to Infotainment as some of us do, nor does he likely use it every day like many of us do. As such, we may get some updates which we'll all love, but then we may be in for another very long dry period as Infotainment slips behind again and has to catch-up again one day. I hope not, but as smart as Elon is, I don't think he cares about or focuses on the "creature comforts" many of us consumers just expect. M3 will eventually change that, but hopefully not too late -- e.g. the last two service guys that came to my home in the last couple of weeks (a plumber & an exterminator) were very interested in my MS when they saw it in my garage, and started asking me questions about it. Both immediately said they want a Model 3, but interestingly, the exterminator's first point today after that was "but Tesla doesn't have a CD player or iPod connection does it? My wife's MBZ does and she uses it all the time. How do you play your music?" The plumber's first question was about "software bugs" he had read about where Tesla was very poor on the rankings fixing them. I addressed both and moved the discussion along of course to other questions they had, but my point is as others have also said, this next generation of potential owners are not going to be as forgiving with Elon's past approach allowing Infotainment and what I'll call "the basics" to lag they way they have. The next generation of potential owners simply expect certain capabilities and robustness of functionality to exist in what they consider to be a miraculous vehicle. Initial sales will be strong with M3, but broad adoption will be smoother, faster, and involve a whole lot less negative customer sat and press if more attention is continually paid to Infotainment.

 

[Argelius]

Elon has said this year that they won't be offering an API for creating apps on Teslas. His words were "to expect an app developer community to develop for a few hundred thousand customers when there's hundreds of millions of iPhone and Android is unlikely." See here.

This is the exact reason that Android Car and CarPlay should be offered as options in the Tesla. Let the smartphone folks focus on doing the app writing. That giant touchscreen should to able to serve as a display for (car appropriate) apps that are already on our phones.

 

[markb1]

This is the exact reason that Android Car and CarPlay should be offered as options in the Tesla. Let the smartphone folks focus on doing the app writing. That giant touchscreen should to able to serve as a display for (car appropriate) apps that are already on our phones.

That's pretty much what Elon is saying in that video. But he seems to think it's pretty hard to have a two-way interface (feed touch events back to the phone) so he's only estimating the delivery of mirroring for the middle of this year (which make thems already late). But I wonder how Android Auto and CarPlay can be so bad at "projecting a touch interface". Isn't that exactly what they are designed for? Of course, he doesn't actually mention the names Android Auto or CarPlay, so maybe he's talking about something else?

 

[BertL]

I don't know anything about Android Auto, but from the little I've read about it and CarPlay, they are similar in concept... Perhaps or perhaps not -- more knowledgeable people can take their shots at me about that.

Regardless, my understanding with CarPlay is it's really sort of an app that pops up on the vehicle's interface/touchscreen when an iPhone is plugged-in (Get that? No Bluetooth wireless, so as discussed elsewhere, the first question is if existing MS/MX USB ports could even support CarPlay providing more than just charging as they do today. That was an additional hardware and firmware function in my former Lexus, BMW and MBZ to enable "iPod" connectivity).

Also, once the iPhone is connected and CarPlay is active, the iPhone touch display becomes disabled, and ONLY the functions in CarPlay and specific CarPlay-enabled Apps are available for display and use (Get that? Not all apps, and from the CarPlay app listings I've seen, there are e.g. no video apps, no games, etc... Apple doesn't want the driver becoming distracted using their interface, just as Tesla doesn't. )

Also, while CarPlay provides lots of benefits to Owners like a slew of apps (e.g. more streaming music and others), and functionality consistency as you move from one CarPlay-enabled vehicle to another, there would be some big things Tesla would need to rationalize like:

• Not every Tesla Owner will have an iPhone (or Android), nor will one always be plugged-in before starting the vehicle, so Tesla, like other mfgrs, have to still maintain their own interface for what they consider their basic functionality ...meaning, the additon of CarPlay/Android Auto is an additional cost to create and maintain.
• CarPlay won't control everything, so things like HVAC and other unique controls to every vehicle would still be dependent upon Tesla's touch controls and Tesla's voice controls if they so implement them one day -- i.e. as an Owner talking to the car and trying to control things, some things would be Apple/Siri enabled, others by Tesla alone. How should the existing Tesla interface be changed so some things are controlled by CarPlay and others are in Tesla's Settings/Controls (3 places to look for something?) or what controls are duplicated when CarPlay is available, and then have to be maintained both places? How does it work with two different voices responding and interacting with the driver depending on exactly what one is trying to control in their car?
• CarPlay uses Apple Maps (just like I suspect Android Auto uses Google Maps.). Period. How does that play with Navigon which seems to be closely tied to AP and all the fleet learning that has taken place, Google Maps, and on-board real-time trip planning? I can see TMC posters going ape if all that wasn't synced or clearly articulated what owners should and shouldn't expect -- even then, I bet there will be a flurry of both happy and unhappy people. There are already enough concerns when the IC and CID don't match up.
• I don't know if it's an option under the covers of CarPlay for a Mfgr to change the default, but standard CarPlay implementation uses iPhone data (meaning Owner's Cell Plan Contract) for maps, Siri, and all app data such as music streaming. How will Tesla owners possibly like now having to pay for data access to some things that today Tesla pays for as part of its built-in data connection, e.g. SLacker is available in CarPlay but if accessed that way, YOU get to pay for the streaming cost?
• As discussed elsewhere, no one here can address possible exclusivity or contract constraints that may prevent Tesla from implementing "competitive" mapping (non-Navigon, non-Google) or music streaming (non-TuneIn, non-Slacker, or in Europe non-Spotify) alternatives that CarPlay would mandate.

...just some random thoughts.

Again, I can be wrong on some of this as I don't have access to mfgr-versions of CarPlay interfaces, and have only played with CarPlay once for a couple of minutes, but as I did my own reading and research a few months ago when this discussion began elsewhere so I could understand what this CarPlay thing was in more detail, some Things at least gave me pause as to why it has taken most auto mfgrs a long time to get onboard with CarPlay and Android Auto. IMHO, Tesla is behind and one of the few that has not committed to providing these alternatives. Every mfgr has their challenges trying to move to a common Infotainment interface standard for the sake of its Owners. I'm glad most have or are at least trying to implement both the Apple and Google Android solution. Hopefully Elon and Tesla just don't try to be the last stubborn holdouts in this industry, and as I've said, find themselves and their company that so many of us want to succeed and be the best, having to catch-up to survive in the not so distant future.

 

[markb1]

Regardless, my understanding with CarPlay is it's really sort of an app that pops up on the vehicle's interface/touchscreen when an iPhone is plugged-in (Get that? No Bluetooth wireless, so as discussed elsewhere, the first question is if existing MS/MX USB ports could even support CarPlay providing more than just charging as they do today. That was an additional hardware and firmware function in my former Lexus, BMW and MBZ to enable "iPod" connectivity).

Apple did announce wireless CarPlay support at one point. I don't know if any car supports that, yet, or how it works.

And the USB ports in the Model S certainly can support it, as they are not just for charging. Today, you can play music off of a USB thumb drive, and in the past, you could actually plug in a keyboard and mouse to the Model S USB ports and control the touch screen computer. So it's just a software problem to support other USB devices.