Here’s what’s happening to Google’s driving apps for Android 10, all three of them

Google is in a weird place when it comes to its driving apps for Android 10, and it’s about to get weirder. Until the company is able to release its now-delayed Assistant Driving Mode or a stopgap solution it’s still developing, some Android 10 users may be stuck without a driving app for their phone. Unless you count Google Maps, of course.
It’s confusing, and that confusion spread across the Android world yesterday in the wake of a support document Rita El Khoury of Android Police spotted. Google’s document explains how Android 10 users can get the Android Auto app restored to their phones if it’s missing, and it includes references to products that hadn’t yet been announced, much less released. El Khoury rightly points out that it’s vague.
Fortunately, after speaking to Google, we have some answers. But to explain what’s happening, we need to start at the beginning.
Android 10 has a lot of new features, and one of them is that Android Auto is now built-in as a system-level thing instead of as a downloadable app. There are lots of benefits to this method; at the very least it doesn’t require car dealerships to explain how to install apps and it doesn’t ask users to jam through a million permissions.
So far so good, but alongside this move Google decided that Android Auto should only be the software that powers the interface on the head units of cars that support it. Where before there used to be a phone interface for Android Auto for people who have older cars, in Android 10 that has gone away.
The idea was to replace the phone interface with a Google Assistant-powered interface called Assistant Driving mode — that’s the video at the top of the post. Google had promised it would be released this summer — but now there’s no projected release date.
Which leaves the Android Auto team in a pickle: Android 10 users may be stuck without a phone interface when they’re driving. But it gets more complicated than that, because some people may still have the app if they upgraded from Android 9. Google’s support document is targeted at people who lost access to the Android Auto app for one reason or another.
But what that document also says is that Google is going to release a new Android Auto app in the Google Play Store specifically to keep the phone-only interface around. What El Khoury was rightly wondering is just what that app will be.
After speaking to Google, I think the answer is clear: it’s a stopgap. It seems that the Android Auto team is going to be able to get a phone interface out well before the Google Assistant team is going to be able to release the new Assistant Driving Mode.
That version of Android Auto should be basically identical to what existed before, but with one very large caveat: it’s not going to last forever. Google will sunset it as soon as the Assistant-powered interface is ready for wide adoption. Note that that could mean that both apps will co-exist for a time.
One obvious solution to this conundrum is to just point users to Google Maps instead. It has grown to include its own driving mode that lets you interact with the Google Assistant and Spotify. But for whatever reason, Google is promising a stopgap Android Auto app instead. It seems like the Assisted Driving mode is going to take much longer than expected.
All of this means that right now Google is developing the Assistant Driving mode, a stopgap Android Auto app, and Google Maps’ driving interface. That’s three apps — or four if you count the new Android 10 version of Android Auto that only powers car displays. Or, well, you could argue that Assisted Driving Mode isn’t an app at all (Google does).
Apple, by the way, avoids all this by not offering a phone-only interface for CarPlay at all. So while Google is complicated, it’s at least doing something.
So to sum up: Android 10 might remove the phone interface for Android Auto, but there are some solutions to get it back; and medium term Google is going to put something in the Google Play store to bring it back. However, long term the plan is for the Google Assistant to take over.
That explains what’s happening but it doesn’t explain what is happening at Google. There is a vision here, where interacting with your phone involves having the Assistant seamless handle apps for you so you’re not tapping when you should be driving. The upcoming Pixel 4 with its native Assistant capabilities may even come close to realizing it, too.
That may be a laudable goal or it may be a Google Plus-style mandate that everything run through the Assistant (or maybe both). But right now it’s just confusing.

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