People would just buy a head unit for a fixed price, and use the built in screen only for adjusting aircon and whatever is vehicle-specific. Also carmakers would never give up to have a total control over their car screen like this. They are struggling for a decade now with more and more horrid iterations, with no end in sight.
I have an aftermarket head unit like you describe, but I wouldn't have installed it if my car didn't already have a space for it in the dash and a whole harness wired and ready to connect. I leave it off unless I need to pull up a map.
Your point about being unable to use the features of your car if you replace the factory unit makes sense, but is that type of lock-in a good thing? Again, what if your screen breaks and now you don't know what your AC is set to? What else can't you operate in your car without the screen?
The existence of a screen conditions people to expect and depend on a screen. The manufacturer increasingly requires you to use it to operate the vehicle. There may not be shops advertising flashes yet, but I expect they'll come; that or legislation that prevents anyone from tampering with them.
You could make laws to discourage people from attaching devices to their dashboards and interacting with them, but it gets murky when all the cars come from the factory with a device already in the dashboard that you have no choice but to interact with.
I think we may see that option go away in the next couple of years thanks to the backup camera mandate (which goes into effect in 2018). Once automakers are putting the screen in the car anyway, basic head units are probably going to go away.
Right? I just want them to give up. I know the era of the replaceable head unit is over, and probably rightly since modern screens are much larger than you could fit in those days. But please let me swap out the infotainment computer. I can find get a device that provides better maps, phone, and GPS in my old desk drawer.
Just let me flip up the screen and plug an SBC into some USB ports and a DisplayPort.
I don't think it is that unrealistic. It seems that for 1), aftermarket radios are available for most cars and can utilize the speakers. There are various adapters available. For 2) I can imagine HDMI or DVI, if necessary with a more sturdy connector. Stock monitors have supported multiple resolutions for 20 years.
For 3), it seems there is information available to access this from CAN or LIN buses or ODB. Lots of hobbyists do this. I can imagine you could buy an adapter for, say, "Ford 2010-2014", like you can do with various aftermarket parts.
It might be a niche market, but so are all kinds of aftermarket mods for cars. And I think if somebody did to car stereos what Nest did to thermostats, it would be phenomenal.
Problem is that a lot of vehicles have displays that stick up like a wart on the dashboard now. Though it would be great if you could reuse the display and just replace the internal components.
That's not a realistic option - most cars use their head units to control everything, from audio to car and safety settings. Those are essential features you'd be missing.
If it was purely penny pinching, they could have stuck with the cheaper smaller screens in the rear view mirror and put a blank panel in the dash instead of a stereo, like base model vehicles of the past sometimes had.
But most automakers are spending a couple of extra bucks on a nicer and more expensive screen in the dash because new car buyers don't want to spend new car money on a car with a dashboard that looks like it's from 2001, and it doesn't make sense to save $50 on a car if you can't sell it.
Not long ago, you used to be able to buy new cars without AC, power steering, power windows, power locks, automatic transmissions, painted bumpers, stereos, passenger side mirrors, cupholders, center consoles, etc. And it is still legal to do so. But consumer preferences have changed.
After market head units are a slowly dying industry. More and more new cars are coming with infotainment systems so tightly integrated with the rest of the car that they effectively can't be replaced.
My naive hope was just for the car to be a dumb second monitor, where the underlying standard just needs to have enough bandwidth and features like HDMI or Displayport, and then not need major changes for years and years despite the video out device evolving. Basic things like video out, audio out/in, night/day mode.
It's getting very hard, since lots of modern cars don't have space behind the dash for a head unit, since their infotainment screen is now not commonly attached to the amp.
If your car has space for a head unit, and a fascia is available, and a steering wheel controls adapter is available, and a backup camera adapter (sometimes eight needed for the cars with "birdseye" view systems), and a climate control adapter, and sometimes a navigation system adapter, you might be able to seamlessly install a headunit. It just might cost a lot.
Yes, please. I drive an early 2010's BMW with an aftermarket android head unit. The headunit was not a big deal for me but it was useful since maps were wildly out of date and upgrading them was a pain in the ass and having music, live traffic and all that is appreciated but that's all it is. Now... There one or two things I hate about the car. First one is not having a temperature gauge. Instead BMW added this fuel consumption gauge which couldn't be more useless. The second thing I hate is the way the indicator switch works. I got used to it but holy hell, why were BMW so keen on fixing a problem no one had. Keeping this in mind, the whole touchscreen control from everything from fan speed to driving mode is ridiculous: you actually have to turn your head and look at the screen, whereas in my car I can do that without looking at the buttons at all: I more or less know where the button is and it's size, shape and texture. Modern cars are the exact indicator switch problem BMW was trying to solve, but cranked up to 11.
Yes, a lot of cars here in Japan has aftermarket head units thanks to widely adopted 2DIN de facto standards. It's getting trickier as manufacturers copy Tesla more aggressively but if your car has a non-integrated A/C panel, separate from the main touchscreen, chances are the screen can be swapped out for something.
We had din sized standards for years. Every display now is still some sort of rectangle. There's no reason we can't come up with another din-like standard for displays. Put some fucking 10 cents RCA connectors on it so I can hook up some amps and speakers that don't suck. Put a CAN bus interface so that may head unit can read all that data from your car and display it. Then you can buy whatever infortainment system you want and keep your car from becoming a dated turd inside.
American-designed cars often had nonstandard sizes for car audio even before fully integrated entertainment systems became common. My 2001 Chevrolet has an odd, not-quite-double-DIN-sized space. If I wanted a screen for it, I would have to do some physical modifications to the dash or buy one that has a smaller main unit and a screen that sticks out from the unit (to avoid other overhanging things near it). For now, I'm happy to keep using the Bluetooth unit I put in it fifteen years ago.
Or, they can continue making their head units an upsell and offer a tightly integrated experience to people who want it, while also making a little extra money on the sale. They've been doing it witn nav upgrades for years.
This was my approach on most of the cars I've had over the years, but I'm finding it is either harder or less desirable as the headhunt starts to control more of the car than before, namely the A/C. My 2017 Honda Civic shows temp and settings on the display, despite physical controls, and I'm not sure how that translates to a new head unit anymore. Fortunately, I'm comfortable in my CarPlay cocoon. Have you had good experiences with head units that control more of the car? I have the itch.
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