- 4 months ago
Android Automotive is an operating system for cars. It was introduced in 2017, and soon adopted about two dozen brands. Majority use Google Automotive Services (GAS) such as Google Maps, Google Assistant, etc.. However some build their systems around Android, but rely on their own interfaces.
In this episode I'm looking at Renault's take on Android Automotive in the Scenic E-Tech.
If you'd like more infotainment system videos like this or if you have any suggestions as to how to make them more relevant to you, drop me a comment below this video.
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In this episode I'm looking at Renault's take on Android Automotive in the Scenic E-Tech.
If you'd like more infotainment system videos like this or if you have any suggestions as to how to make them more relevant to you, drop me a comment below this video.
🎥 I use stock music and footage from Artlist. 🎧
Use my code to get extra 2 months for any annual plan.
https://artlist.io/referral/2156690/Marek
Subscribe to my newsletter and receive new video updates by e-mail:
https://marekdrives.tv/eng
🎯 Do you like my channel? Subscribe here: https://bit.ly/SubMarekDrivesENG
💥 Follow me here:
https://www.wieruszewski.com
https://facebook.com/marekdrives
https://twitter.com/mwieruszewski
https://instagram.com/marek_drives
📢 I started a new channel - https://bit.ly/MareksGear, where I'm talking about the gear I use to make my shoe-string budget car reviews. Check it out, and please consi
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MotorTranscript
00:00most of us use android auto or at least google maps in the car
00:04so an infotainment system based on android like android automotive seems like a great idea right
00:12almost
00:26good morning you find me today at a charging station where i'm recharging a renault scenic e-tech
00:36it's an electric car like the megan e-tech it's an interesting car it's a good
00:45expansion of the megan e-tech like the original scenic was to the original megan so it's a nice car
00:55and it also runs android automotive like many renault's these days now android automotive is
01:03an infotainment system obviously based around android where you log in with your gmail account
01:09and you have access to your data like you know wherever you plan your trips etc etc
01:16there are also some apps which should be linked to your google account so in theory it all sounds
01:24very good unfortunately it's not always the case and i'm going to um tell you why and when okay so
01:36first of all at the moment i am not synced with android auto for some reason maybe it's because the
01:44car is
01:45in um standby mode rather than full-on mode because i'm charging here why am i charging here rather than
01:54using my wallbox at home i'll tell you in a minute so anyway if i were connected to android auto
02:03i would not have this phone icon here only an android auto icon here and if um a phone rang
02:13it would
02:14it would switch me to android auto from android automotive now that doesn't sound like that big
02:20of a deal but when you're driving and you have a planned route here within android automotive
02:27then switching to android auto which looks very similar and losing your navigation is a bit annoying
02:36especially that when you have when you're using android auto you don't have maps on the screen
02:44on the driver's display you have to use android automotive to have maps on the display it's weird like
02:51this but it's been like it for the past almost three years since the first time i encountered android
02:58automotive that was in in a volvo xc40 you can watch the review i link it in the video description
03:06and
03:06probably somewhere here on the screen anyway not much has changed in android automotive in three years
03:12it's still a bit clunky so for example if i have my podcast app um currently i'm using pocket casts
03:23since google killed google podcast which was a brilliant app but it still didn't work very well
03:29in android automotive and now pocket casts
03:34doesn't show me my podcast even though
03:39it should because um i have my podcast here i'm linked with my google account
03:49nothing nothing is here so i have to use android android automotive to to get there by the way sorry
03:56i
03:56noticed i'm uh i'm currently using the polish language so um i'll just switch quickly into english so that uh
04:06so that you know what i'm doing uh system language
04:17and let's go to english which is weird because my google account is in english so it should theoretically um
04:24um so it should theoretically work but it is what it is anyway um yes thank you i know my
04:30battery is low but
04:31it's it's good enough for this um okay so we're we're in english now okay so let's look at uh
04:41the main screen which is our map and from here i can
04:50now it lost my last categories okay from here i can choose a supermarket in another town which is
04:57called wroclaw and we can see there are some charging stops along the way now these charging stops are
05:07chosen i don't want to say arbitrarily but um okay
05:15it's i don't have a choice of um of a network for example at the moment i'm using the greenway
05:25charging station and with the reno press car comes a greenway card so i can use the greenway network i
05:33have accounts in orland and i have my own greenway account and several other accounts but say i got a
05:40company card and i want to use just this one network okay so you could say okay i'll just press
05:45on the
05:46card here and choose greenway it's not here i think ionity is the only network here i know the other
05:58ones
05:58seem like they're dutch and maybe french maybe german i don't know most of you okay shell recharge i also
06:05know that but most of these i don't even know and most of these are not available in poland except
06:11maybe uh shell recharge and um and ionity so everything else is useless for me here there is
06:19none of the polish networks even greenway which apparently is uh very much in cooperation with
06:27with foreign companies while orland being a polish national company is not very good at that
06:33but there are several other polish networks which could be here and for some reason they aren't
06:39what i can also filter okay so this is filter by payment okay let's get rid of the trip
06:48from here i can filter by sort of charging
06:55um by charging speed by charging power and by plugs which is okay but i have no way of doing
07:07it on the
07:07go also while i'm driving with satnav on i don't see or even without satnav i don't see other chargers
07:16so
07:16for example i'm at the charger right now and in order to find it
07:24see i'm zooming in like crazy and it doesn't even show me the charger that i'm on
07:31it doesn't know that it exists it shows me a fuel station but it doesn't show me the charger
07:36uh i'll go somewhere else where i know there is a charger like uh somewhere around here i think yeah
07:49okay here's a bp there is no charger there but there's an orland petrol station on which there is
07:55a charger do we see a charger here no we have to zoom in
08:02and there's an lpg distributor autogas we zoom in and boom there we go there's there's the there's
08:10the charging station so oh and now it starts connecting to android auto see and this happens
08:16like in the middle of everything just just randomly uh so now i have to go back to android automotive
08:23so it's not a very good system for driving an electric car when i drive a bmw for example i
08:32see
08:32all the charging stations within whatever radius within whatever scale is on the map so i would see
08:38a charging station here a charging station there a charging station there and in android automotive i
08:44don't see that for some reason even though it should be there the the best i can do is go
08:50into points
08:50of interest and then i start seeing um charging stations so if i'm driving and i say okay my range
09:00looks a bit low i don't want to go all the way to the pet to that to a charging
09:07station that's set in
09:08the sat nav maybe i'll stop here for a toilet break and maybe i'll use a charging station if there
09:14is
09:14one available i can't just glance on the screen and see oh here's a charging station i have to actually
09:20go into the points of interest click on it maybe filter out some of the charging stations and then
09:27make a decision which isn't brilliant when you're driving it's just not as convenient as it could be
09:33so that's the android automotive bit not very good not as good as it could be now while driving
09:44i noticed that the range estimate for various goals is very conservative so when i was driving from
09:53warsaw to wroclaw that's about 350 360 kilometer trip satnav planned a charging stop along the way
10:03which would force me to go off the main road and drive a i don't know five or ten kilometers
10:10of the
10:10of the expressway to get to a charging point spend half an hour there get back and
10:17drive to my destination and at my destination have maybe i don't know 15 20 state of charge
10:25i decided to cancel that stop and go all the way forward and from about halfway i saw my
10:35end state of charge estimated state of charge upon arrival increase from minus one percent to about
10:4212 13 plus so the range estimate here is at least during the summer when it's whatever 25 30 degrees
10:51is very conservative i don't know what it's going to be like in the winter um so i was actually
10:57pleased with that what i'm not pleased with is i have no way of setting the state of charge upon
11:04arrival
11:04so if i know that at my destination or my intermediate destination i will still be doing some driving and
11:13i know there is no charging station at my destination i would like to set some sort of a
11:20um some sort of a state of charge upon arrival which i can do for example in in a bmw
11:27so here i can't do that and that's also quite annoying that's why it was rooting me through some
11:33random charging station which i didn't really need especially that my final destination was actually a
11:40charging station i input a charging station as my destination and it still rerouted me to another
11:48to another charger along the way which i had to delete so not the best solution and it's not reno's
11:56fault
11:56it's android automotive it is what it is what is reno's fault though and this is interesting now if you
12:04go into
12:06vehicle settings there is nothing to do with ev here so you go into another sub menu which is called
12:14electric
12:14electric and in this menu you see energy flow which isn't happening right now you can set your
12:23charging programs so whatever time of day night and state of charge there is battery which sort of
12:32shows you you know how much you're going to charge and um whatever else and the current state of charge
12:39and there are some other settings and in these settings the only thing is the pedestrian warning so
12:45you can have a neutral expressive or a sound designed or composed by john michel jar which is i'm sure
12:53very
12:53french but there are no other settings what other settings would i like to find here and this brings me
13:00to why i'm at this greenway charger here there is no power intake setting so in most electric cars or
13:12ph evs within the infotainment system you can set how much energy is the car is going to draw so
13:22if you find yourself in a situation where the car can accept more power like this one can accept 22
13:29kilowatts ac which is brilliant by the way and it's it's standard on this car at least here in poland
13:35i think in all countries where you have three-phase charging 22 kilowatts is standard and theoretically my
13:43home wall box can put out 22 kilowatts the wall box but not my actual house my house can put
13:53out about 15
13:54kilowatts so when this car starts accepting 22 my circuit breaker goes and i have well just just the just
14:08wall box shuts off so i realized what's happening because i saw 22 kilowatts on the display and said
14:14i don't have that much at home so right let's uh let's tort it somewhere and the first thing you
14:21do
14:21is go into the vehicle settings and you set it to take whatever 11 kilowatts seven kilowatts three
14:26kilowatts whatever there is no such setting here unfortunately and i know this is my problem this is
14:33i chose this wall box i chose this wall box because i said okay one day i'm gonna get 22
14:40or more kilowatts
14:42so you know i'll have i'll have the same wall box which will be able to put out 22 kilowatts
14:47and if there is a problem i can always limit the uh charging power within uh within the car well
14:56i
14:56can't do that with in this car so that's why you find me here on sunday morning at a relatively
15:05slow
15:06dc charger it's putting out uh 50 kilowatts this one now i've tried charging on faster chargers
15:15this car can take up to i think 130 140 kilowatts in the peak the peak is quite low somewhere
15:23like between
15:2415 and maybe 40 percent state of charge so this is where it charges really quickly but even on a
15:30200
15:31kilowatt charger charging from 15 to 80 takes around 37 40 minutes and reno doesn't hide it if you go
15:41into
15:41their online charging speed calculator it'll show you this is what it does actually so i'm sure it's great
15:48for the battery longevity but not very good when you're actually doing a longer road trip now how
15:56often you're gonna do those longer road trips that's another thing at 120 kilometers per hour
16:03cruise control set to 120 it's using about 22 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers which isn't brilliant
16:12um so uh you know and again it's on par with what reno calculator shows so they're not hiding anything
16:20it's just using a lot of energy this is an 87 kilowatt hour battery and an interesting thing from 80
16:28to 100
16:29i know it's not recommended to do it with a fast charger but let's assume you don't want to make
16:34this
16:34additional stop along the way and you just want to charge to full you'd spend about 50 minutes to
16:41charge from 80 to 100 so it really doesn't make sense to dc charge this car to 100 just unplug
16:50it
16:51drive and make another stop along the way if you need to so it's it's a weird situation like this
16:57now going back to this 22 kilowatts ac and why it's potentially a problem now my home my house i
17:07can
17:07do whatever i want i can get 22 kilowatts for the house or i can get another wall box not
17:15a problem
17:16however if you're charging in someone else's house or if you're using some sort of dodgy campsite charger
17:28you may cause a situation where you'll just trip the trip the breakers and uh you know you're going
17:36to make problems for other people so not being able to set your charging power here within the um the
17:46infotainment system is i think a bit of a miss on reno's part and i don't know why they did
17:52it
17:53or why they didn't do it but um it is what it is okay so let me just walk you
18:01through other things
18:02here um yeah google maps pretty much self-explanatory media it'll see now okay still nothing i can go into
18:12my android auto and then i have my media here and you know it works from here but you know
18:19that's um
18:20that's android auto of course it's going to work i can plan my route through here but you will not
18:28be able to see any charging points here any charging options along the route because android auto doesn't
18:35know i'm driving an electric car there are some settings which can make this more relevant for
18:42driving an ev but it doesn't have all the data from the car about my current energy consumption etc etc
18:49here are my apps which again it just doesn't work here very well and here are vehicle settings now
18:56there's i'm currently in the personal mode because personal mode means i don't have isa i have isa
19:03switched off you can configure which systems are going to be relevant uh in in isa
19:12so that's uh sorry in personal mode so that's uh that's good um then we have um let me just
19:22turn the
19:23car on maybe uh okay um anything else we can configure here um okay then we have hands-free
19:33parking which is absolutely useless we have a 360 camera which is useful uh we have seat settings and
19:42this annoys me greatly because um why not just make driving positions one two and three here apparently
19:51you can set different seat settings through driver profiles now i would love to know
20:02uh how many of you actually use driver profiles for yourself your wife whatever and my charging just
20:12stopped for whatever reason um i'll have to fix that in a moment uh do you really change your driver
20:20profiles and with it your seat settings or do you just uh keep it casual so to speak
20:25um electric settings i show you i showed you air quality really couldn't care less maybe if you live
20:33somewhere in shanghai or whatever china driving score yeah um whatever and then we have vehicle settings
20:45which do just about everything except your charging speed and your kind of all account settings here
20:52which are irrelevant to to driving a car hold on a sec let me see what's happening with charging and
20:59i'll be right back sorry about that i was magically
21:12unplugged anyway uh this is what android automotive looks like and it's not reno's fault
21:22just to just to put put it out there it's not reno's fault it's not reno's problem it's uh the
21:29problem
21:30with android automotive as such um jesus
21:39and uh yeah this just could have been so much better now that we have google because google theoretically
21:48does certain things good apparently it doesn't do very well with cars i wonder if and what the apple
21:56system would be like well maybe we'll find out one day now this as you may have noticed is not
22:04a car
22:05review it's an infotainment review i will be doing those every once in a while when on my polish channel
22:13i have
22:14some extra content which may not be relevant to my english-speaking viewers so i hope you
22:20enjoyed this episode more infotainment episodes coming
22:26soon-ish maybe once a month maybe once every a couple of months if there is any particular infotainment
22:33system you would like me to focus on or any other aspect of cars infotainment or maybe safety systems
22:41which you would like me to address let me know in the comment section below
22:48uh as you're watching this i may already have a reno reno scenic e-tech review on my channels but
22:57it'll
22:57on my channel but it'll probably be a members only video so if you want to support me become a
23:05channel
23:05member it's like whatever 50 cents or one euro a month and you get to watch many of my videos
23:14um weeks or even months ahead everyone else and there won't be any ads on them so anyway uh thanks
23:21again for watching and uh yeah i'll see you in the next episode which will probably be a car review
23:28of
23:28some sort i think it's a mini countryman if you like my sarcastic down-to-earth and possibly mildly
23:38amusing car reviews join me every friday at 3 p.m central european time and don't forget to subscribe
23:44and like this video as it helps me with the youtube algorithm thanks for watching and i will see you
23:50in
23:50the next one