Prospects for free software in cars

People can now bring in third party applications and software, via Android Auto and Apple Carplay. And that is a double-edged sword. In cars with really cheap and simple infotainment system such approach can help elevate your offering to a commodity level - now all your cars have Google Maps and Spotify.

On the other hand this makes it harder on the top end manufacturers, where the systems are actually better than what a smartphone can provide. It is hard to sell an expensive car if its infotainment is functionally equivalent to a Corolla. So one has to out-Android the Android or you risk losing much more than the 3k€ for the professional model of the IVI - you risk losing a sale.

Luckily there are some nuances to in-car usage that Android is not very well equipped to handle, like the fact that it is really hard to control things with a touchscreen while you are driving. Scroll wheels work much better. But Android apps are not as easy to adapt to that kind of input. There is also a plethora of extra sensors in a car that a tablet simply can not have, such as wheel rotation and steering angle sensors that can give you positioning information when GPS is not available or seat occupancy sensors with positional microphones to detect who is giving a command and adjusting climate only in the position where they are sitting.