Why Your Car’s Infotainment Sucks, And Who's Going To Fix It

I’ve just spent a week driving the new Acura TLX. It has two infotainment screens that link together, with around 15 buttons on the steering wheel that mimic the 15 buttons on the console that, presumably, manage the settings on one of the two touchscreens while sending that information to the other screen. In all honesty, even after seven days with the thing, I’m not entirely sure how it all works. I tried to turn up the bass setting on the stereo the other day but instead turned on the butt cooler. For a brief moment I thought I’d wet myself.

And Honda’s system is far from the most complex on the market.

I’m not just being stupid: A recent study by Nielsen and automotive consultants SBD said 43 percent of participants thought their infotainment systems boasted too much technology, to the point where many didn’t even know certain features existed.

“It’s sort of an arms race — who can have the most technology in the vehicle — and consumers are confused,” said Nielsen Vice President Mike Chadsey, according to Automotive News.

The study said that of the 42 vehicles featured, the aspects most owners were least satisfied with were all relating to their car’s infotainment system — not fancy suspension that reads the road surface while you drive or adaptive cruise control or blind spot monitoring. Innovations like these, while perhaps appearing superfluous on the surface, most definitely enhance our daily lives, but things like smartphone integration or built-in apps or, dare I say it, voice recognition? Things that seem so simple and useful are often complex and, in many cases, seldom work at all.

Then you have technology touted by automakers as “must-have-features,” like a 30-gigabyte hard drive to store all your favorite music, even though said music is already stored on your cell phone. As one Jalopnik commenter put it, all you really need is a few accessible ports: “A phone plugged into the aux port can stream any music service without needing an app in the dash, it can play my music without needing a hard drive in the dash. My phone is what car manufacturers are trying to build into the dash, when all they need to do is accommodate my phone and any future phone I upgrade to.”

His point is valid, but people do like to see and touch something tangible when forking out tens of thousands of dollars on a new car. Which is where Apple CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto come in. Their mission is simple. Take the simplicity and features you enjoy on your smartphone and project them onto the car’s in-built screen. You’ll have all your contacts, messaging, maps, voice recognition, some apps, and music available easily and safely at the touch of a button, and the software can in theory be updated remotely for free as technology advances. (One day we could even have an app store where developers create applications to enhance our driving experience further — and most importantly, you can decide what you want and what you don’t.)

This seems like a no-brainer for the automaker: Keep managing your own core, proprietary software within the car but outsource the display’s look and functionality to a renowned tech company that can do it better than you can. Many automakers are already seeing the light — like Hyundai, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and others, including Honda — but some are still determined to fight for their own in-house systems.

Toyota told Bloomberg that it would partner with Ford to prevent an Apple/Google takeover, maintaining control over their vehicle’s dashboard. This isn’t an outlandish concept. After all, these automakers have invested millions, perhaps billions, over the years to create the ideal infotainment system — what a monumental waste of money it would be to give up and pay a tech company do what you couldn’t.