I think it’s worth saying that the head unit failing in this scenario is very disruptive for two reasons:

First and foremost, the purpose of this journey in this car is to review the car. So if the head unit craps out, and he doesn’t make every effort to reboot it, and he mentions it in the review, he loses a lot of credibility from the users and industry folks. Could you imagine a review for a computer where it crashes or turns off, and the reviewer just says “welp, that’s all folks”?

My second point is that he is navigating in an unfamiliar place to a charger for the car. If you’re coming from Tesla or AA/CarPlay, this is something you expect to work flawlessly. And it’s part of the review that’s worth discussing whether or not it works.

In my opinion, even if he 100% knew where he was going, his behaviors are justified for a review.

I won’t touch this with a 10 foot pole. Stupid.

If they really wanted to make a play at beating CarPlay and Android Auto, they should make a superior product, but include both of the alternatives in the car. As a customer, I would still consider buying the car if it included CarPlay. I won’t even consider it with this, which means I won’t even be in a position to try GM’s alternative. It’s too big of a risk to spend $30-40k on a new car and hope their custom infotainment isn’t trash and works nicely with all the data and apps I have in my smartphone.

I can’t say I was inclined to buy a GM before but now I’m absolutely not going to buy one. The problems described in these reviews are safety issues.

I can honestly say that the phrase “my radio was stuck in a boot loop” is something I ever thought I’d need to say, but here we are.

Side note, you know what would be just absolutely perfect? Just Bluetooth. I don’t need to watch Disney+ while I drive. I don’t need up-to-the-minute notifications of the hottest celebrity news. I don’t need sports updates. I don’t need to know what my stocks are doing right now.

I just want to play music.

I struggle to imagine spending twenty minutes on the side of the road troubleshooting my car’s touchscreen, rather than just driving and dealing with it later. Maybe a quick reset, sure, but not more than that.

Who could have imagined that this might happen?

I mean, yeah there’ve been dozens of articles from unbiased analysts suggesting that GM was not in a position to take on this task, especially since Apple CarPlay and Google Android Play have already accomplished what’s necessary and are available to nearly 100% of GM’s customers, but a company the size and scope of GM couldn’t possibly be expected to listen to any of this analysis over these many months.

GM: I removed Android Auto and replaced it with Android Automotive

GM products are complete garbage. Avoid at all cost.

I expect nothing less. And even if they do make the software stable and usable it will be quickly ruined by micro transactions and subscriptions for basic functionality.

Trash software from a trash company.

The deep sleep by walking away is infuriating.

Give me an option to reboot entirely from the settings menu

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Yeah. GM doesn’t care about how good it is. Making it good is expensive. They can keep it crappy because you don’t really have any choice (other than buying from another manufacturer that will do the same). Plus they make money selling your data.

Wow one more reason not to buy GM not that I was planning on it to begin with.

One day We are have to come together, and find faith to figure out how to operate a car without entertainment systems and screens.

I know this is probably off topic but I’m always stunned in these articles how simple things like this cause peoples (the authors) brains to just meltdown. They seemingly become so helpless when they don’t have a screen to tell them what to do and where to go. As a species we have been so heavily spoiled that simple inconveniences are seemingly incomprehensible to people who are surrounded and coddled by technology at every moment.

That’s not to say I’m perfect and haven’t fallen victim to these things myself, but I at least try to make do and overcome without complaining to the world how hard it is, since it’s not hard at all, just a bit inconvenient. At least I’m not making sandals out of discarded tires, shit could be worse than my car not being able to tell me where to go for a few minutes. (Not trying to say people in those conditions live shitty lives, they’re just subject to their environments; they very well may enjoy their way of living but from my western, coddled perspective, it sounds subjectively unpleasant and I’m greatful for what I have) /rant

More on topic, it’s really sad and unfortunate that so many software based products are shipping in such abysmal and borderline useless states until months after release. Too many things are made now with the presumption that “we just gotta ship it and we’ll fix it later”. It’s annoying as hell but understandable with games, it’s not a critical piece of software. A car though? Even if it’s the infotainment system it’s still awful. I love my '06 car, works great, gets me where I need to go, doesn’t harvest my data or relies on a battery to open the door.

I’m reminded of an article from 2015 about how a Jeep could be “hacked” while in motion and the attacker could apply the e-brake or kill the engine. Scary stuff, and with a thousands of pound rolling machine, it better not have such flawed software.

Anyway, I wish we could go back to an engine on wheels and a protective shell, don’t need all the “gizmos” so to speak.