Technology

Exactly.

The path forward with this kind of thing is for a defacto standard to emerge from out of left field, which is ever more challenging today, since auto manufacturers began integrating the head unit 2 decades ago (they saw what was coming, and took the opportunity to lock out third party stereo systems by integrating everything). Basically a push for vertical integration.

I don't know how to accomplish this given the vertical integration the manufacturers have developed. I do know regulation is the worst possible way, and should only be used as a last-ditch effort, because that's when you get malicious compliance and basically garbage results.

Seems CANBUS and OBDII provide an opening to these systems - for years I've wanted to utilize this connection to modify some car behaviour. Like the remote start on one car will only run for 7 minutes. That's a joke, it takes 30 minutes to get the half inch of ice off, and that's with me out there chipping at it too. Or how the heat/ac controls are fixed on remote start, and I'd like it to go max defrost/max fan immediately, and turn on the rear defroster. If we knew the signaling of this vehicle's CANBUS for these things, seems we could build a plugin module with wifi/Bluetooth and control it from a phone.

And if we have such a module, the manufacturers would have to react to it.

As a side note, I don't use or want a car play system. I've yet to find a use for it, I dislike massive screens in cars as it is, and those systems age fast anyway (I keep my cars a very long time).

I installed a mapping head unit in my car in 2010. It was alright, but even then the phone was just simpler to use, and the screen was more than sufficient (and a better display too). Since then I've had probably 4 phones, numerous OS and app upgrades, with the exact same head unit still in place (my car is now 18 years old, I intend to keep it at least another 10). My current phone blows away that head unit screen (I just recently put the factory, no-screen unit back in).

The fixed nature of car stuff is a major problem, and why I'm pretty indifferent to car play stuff. People need to stop replacing their cars - today's vehicles can last a very long time - my 18 year old car has 270k miles on it, and I would drive it cross-country right now. Using my phone for GPS, music, podcasts, whatever.