Will there ever be such a thing? I know that you can use your phone on a mount, but having your phone integrated into your dash screen, steering wheel buttons, etc. Is a big convenience and I also think safer.

Would a drop in replacement be possible? Or would a whole new app need to be developed and integrated into every car manufacturer?

This is one google app that I still heavily rely on, unfortunately. I'm sure they are harvesting everything about me as I drive.

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[–] Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 52 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

There's 2 parts to this:

Android Auto app (on your phone)
Android Auto Head Unit software (in your car)

Both of which are currently proprietary,
and would need to be written as FOSS from the ground up by reverse engineering the above 2, which would be a huge undertaking.

Also flashing custom Head Unit software to your car will be very hard, is not well documented, and likely will void your warranty, giving low incentive for developers to even attempt it :/

The best you can do right now is aa4mg (Android Auto 4 MicroG),
which at least allows to replace the proprietary Google Play services with a privacy respecting FOSS alternative and Android Auto's dependencies with empty stub packages:
https://github.com/sn-00-x/aa4mg

Full disclosure,
I helped with writing aa4mg :)

[–] peregus@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

Also flashing custom Head Unit software to your car will be very hard, is not well documented, and likely will void your warranty, giving low incentive for developers to even attempt it :/

I hope that Europe will demand car manufacturers to allow the installation of an after market kit, or better, to install our own software. I'm sure that the open source community will jump in (I'll chip in for sure!)