Android Auto and Apple CarPlay: your car and your cell phone are now best friends

[Akrapovic]

Smartphones have long replaced our cameras and our music players. Now they are taking over our cars. Telephones are replacing things like our car's navigation systems, radios, and even allow us to receive text messages without taking our eyes off the road.

With CarPlay and Android Auto, drivers can even read text messages while driving and then issue a response that will become a text message in response. That's one of the most important functions of these systems, said Mark Takahashi, an editor at Edmunds.com.

"Text messages have become such an important part of communication today," he said. "Eliminating the distraction of texting while driving is essentially eliminated with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, it's incredibly useful."

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When it comes to keeping drivers' hands off their phones, CarPlay and Android Auto actually performed better than any of the systems that automakers have created, according to a recent Consumer Reports survey.

Even so, said Babbit of General Motors, automakers can not simply give up on creating a good interface of their own. CarPlay and Android Auto do not work for everything and depend on a strong mobile phone signal, which is not always available. Automakers can even integrate applications such as Spotify and OpenTable into the car in a way that could be better than what phone manufacturers can offer because General Motors knows the car better, he said. Also, not all car buyers have the latest smartphones that work with these technologies.

"Therefore, part of that is making sure that we bring, safely, your digital life to the car," he said.