In our most recent episode of CleanTech Talk, I talked with Chanan Bos, CleanTechnica‘s Director of Digital Media, about infotainment systems in cars — electric cars, of course. To enjoy the discussion, listen to it via the embedded SoundCloud player below or on your favorite podcast network.
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If you want a brief summary of what we talked about before hitting the play button, here’s a rundown:
We talked about the three different groups or categories of automotive infotainment today: Tesla infotainment (it does its own thing), new Chinese “Smart Electric Vehicle” startup infotainment (similar to Tesla’s, sort of), and legacy automaker infotainment using Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Chanan brought up Android Automotive OS a few days. Note that this is not Android Auto. This is potentially a much bigger deal. Listen to Chanan’s take on it, and also read more on Android’s website, on Google’s website, or on Wikipedia.
Chanan also emphasized the need for any new automotive infotainment system to have a large screen and the ability to actually enjoy watching something or playing something. In 2021, it is a bit surprising to find such elementary infotainment screens in even high-end cars.
We also questioned what Chinese companies will do in Europe?
At the end of the podcast, we go into Tesla’s system in a bit more detail, especially focusing in on the fact (that is somewhat bewildering) that it lacks tons of integration with other apps, and even just Google Authentication. I asked Chanan if this was for security reasons, as that has been my best assumption, but he noted that security not an issue — after all, there is a web browser in the car that you can use to access the same things. To hear the whole discussion on these matters, hit the play button above.
We closed out with a chat about the initial bugs in the new Tesla infotainment systems that are in the new Model S Plaid.
We will be back on Sunday or Monday with a second part of this conversation, which tackled the matter of AI and autonomous driving. Check in again soon for that — and all the other cleantech news and commentary we’re publishing this weekend!
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