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Several years ago, the Transportation Business Insider team decided that infotainment systems in vehicles were becoming a huge selling point for consumers.
Our interest clearly coincides with the fact that car manufacturers have seriously enriched their offerings, ranging from WiFi LTE 4G connectivity to OTA (Over The Air) software updates to application suites that allow different types of e-commerce. in the comfort of a car.
So we created the Multimedia Information System of the Year award. Audi has won the award in 2016 and 2017, and the contest has grown stronger since then. Consumers are more demanding than ever on the technology and connectivity of their vehicles.
As we said last year, if you are not aiming for advanced technology, especially in the luxury sector, you are late. A really great infotainment system makes owning a car enjoyable; a bad system makes it a chore.
Security first
Car manufacturers must be careful to control the use of connectivity in vehicles. Both Consumer Reports and JD Power have reported frequent complaints from their owners regarding delicate systems.
Our methodology for choosing a year infotainment system has not changed since 2016. We consider a good system as a system that performs all its functions in a relatively transparent manner and with such an intuitive interface as possible.
At the moment, voice recognition technologies are still in their infancy, but we certainly appreciate the fact that the configuration of a manufacturer works as expected and is not more cumbersome than the more dangerous modes of Manual entry of information. We also appreciate it if an infotainment system is part of an automaker's business case for its vehicles and technology.
Reliability, ease of use, accuracy (especially with regard to navigation) and the ability of a system to operate while driving without endangering anyone have been our criteria of choice – this which involved debate and discussion throughout the year with principal correspondent Matt DeBord. , the senior transport reporter, Ben Zhang, and the deputy editor, Cadie Thompson.
The finalists this year were:
- Apple CarPlay
- Audi MMI-Virtual Cockpit
- FCA Uconnect
- General Motors MyLink / IntelliLink / Cue plus OnStar
- Tesla infotainment system
The big winner
Apple CarPlay is our winner of the infotainment system of the year for 2018!
You might consider this a strange choice, since CarPlay is not a stand-alone infotainment, but rather a software interface for iPhone designed for cars. It must generally integrate into the manufacturer's embedded system by being plugged into a USB port.
But the truth is that we now regularly use CarPlay to evaluate exclusive infotainment systems, especially with regard to ease of use. And CarPlay is portable. It can be used in several vehicles of different manufacturers. We often found that CarPlay was a handy tool when we encountered a poor user interface. Plug in CarPlay, and navigation is smooth.
Siri is better than most of the voice recognition configurations we test, and it's often more efficient to use Apple Maps or Google Maps via a smartphone than to rely on the in-dash navigation software.
Read more: Acura ELS Studio 3D is the car audio system of the year of Business Insider
Accessing your media, stored on your iPhone or streaming, is also easier with CarPlay. And, best of all, if you like certain aspects of your vehicle's infotainment system but prefer certain CarPlay features, you can switch back.
However, what has really earned CarPlay the title this year is the finding that Matt and Ben have made about young drivers. They really do not appreciate when CarPlay is not available – that is, regardless of the quality of a manufacturer's system, if CarPlay is not on the menu, they are disappointed – and they might consider this as a break in the market.
Ben is younger than Matt, who is not so focused on infotainment. Ben sees this as a disadvantage if a manufacturer does not provide CarPlay integration. Other younger staff members who reviewed the vehicles for Business Insider were even less tolerant in the face of a non-CarPlay situation.
In fact, this has become such a thing that we are now adding the Android Auto tests to our review process, in order to be fair to the other major technological player in this space.
Beyond the extent to which CarPlay allows motorists to use their iPhone more securely, the technology lets us think that Apple will involve more in the user interface of cars. What CarPlay is doing is quite modest, but in the coming years, Apple could redo the whole dashboard. We look forward to what the company offers.
The second
We certainly can not neglect the MMI system of Audi. As we said last year, when he won the award, it is the gift that continues to make donations. It does everything right, from audio management to superb and precise navigation, optimized by Google Maps. It also has a Bluetooth integration with connectivity Audi Connect 4G LTE and an application cluster.
And all this without being a touch screen system! A central infotainment screen appears in the dashboard, but you use a button, buttons, and a touchpad to access menus and functions. In practice, it works perfectly and, thanks to its organization, you will not leave the road eyes as often as with touch screen systems.
The Virtual Cockpit feature, available on most Audi models, makes the MMI a "hard-to-grasp" territory. Virtual Cockpit impressively transforms the main instrument cluster into a customizable digital screen.
It can, for example, display the navigation map and send the traditional gauges to the corners of the screen. This means that the driver's eyes are mostly centered in the center and front, instead of sneaking between the road ahead, the infotainment screen and the instruments (as well as the wing mirror).
Audi's MMI-Virtual Cockpit is a remarkable configuration that has made Audi the height of the US luxury market, previously dominated by the three major luxury car manufacturers: Mercedes, BMW and Lexus.
For the record, the other three infotainment systems we have envisioned this year are also excellent. Uconnect is worth noting, its effectiveness is often unknown and somewhat underestimated.
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