Volvo has gone all-in on Android Auto, Google’s response to Apple’s Carplay. So if you are in the market for a fully electric crossover SUV, and you are also an Android user, you’re in luck! You’ll be able to take advantage of Android Auto with relatively little initial setup and be on your way. If you’re an iPhone user however, you will find the initial setup is more tedious and the user experience somewhat foreign to what you would experience with Carplay.
My Take
My gamble is that eventually, all cars will allow the user to choose their car operating system. As phones have become parts of our daily lives, they have also put us into camps of beliefs when it comes to aspects of those phones, such as user experience, design, privacy, and security. It may sound silly, but the Volvo XC40 Recharge not being able to run Carplay will be a big deal to some Apple fans. It’s the classic blue bubble vs green bubble debacle.
At the end of the day, for car manufacturers to allow users to install a phone-based operating system in a car over the base car operating system is an implementation detail. It is a small amount of work in comparison to the complex programming involved in the functionality of the car itself, so there seems to be no excuse for vendor lock-in when it comes to these car interfaces.
