2016 Yahoo Autos Tech Ride Of The Year: Apple, Android And Volvo

Over the next week, Yahoo Autos will unveil the 2016 Ride of the Year awards, our picks for the best of the best among new cars and SUVs. Here’s the first, our Tech Ride of the Year.

Yahoo Autos invited me to help judge the Ride of the Year competition—as a technology judge, of course. Over the course of several days in Detroit, we tested, drove, and discussed 22 new 2016 car models.

But what do we mean when we talk about “car technology?”

Are we talking about information and entertainment on a dashboard screen?

Or do we mean driving technologies, the ones that make the ride comfortable, fuel-efficient, and safe?

I took my assignment to mean: both.

Dashboard Tech

If I had one reaction to the technologies crammed into next year’s car dashboards, it was: “Jeez!”

Many of these cars basically have iPads built into their dashboards—in some cars, several of them. The touchscreens can show you all kinds of information about the world around you, and entertain you in all kinds of fancy ways.

But they can’t avoid distracting you.

Car makers are caught in a bind: Infotainment sells, but using a touchscreen also requires taking your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel.

My favorite touchscreen systems, therefore, were the ones that use Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto. These systems are extremely simple, feature huge fat touchscreen buttons, and limit interaction to quick adjustments. They use voice interaction as much as possible, to help you keep your eyes on the road.

Lots of cars come with these systems. CarPlay, for example, was available on all the 2016 General Motors vehicles’ in our tests: the Chevy Malibu and Camaro, and Cadillac ATS-V and CTS-V .

Problem is, not everybody owns an iPhone or Android phone, so no car comes with just CarPlay or Android Auto. Any car equipped with those systems also have to have a generic layout of exactly the same functions—a duplicate, redundant, and silly arrangement.

Self-Driving Tech

We hear plenty about Google’s experimental, self-driving cars. The cars that you can actually buy today aren’t fully autonomous, like Google’s. But the nicer ones, with the nicer options packages, can stay in the lane themselves, self-park, and accelerate/brake themselves. You’re required to keep at least one hand on the wheel while driving.