Overall very happy. Some initial thoughts after a few hours of using it ('25 AT). What are your thoughts?
Things I like:
1. That it will auto start if desired when I get in the car and that there's so much flexibility in moving back and forth between AA and native apps. I thought I would use it in more of al "all or nothing" approach (e.g. always yes or not) but I can see how I might use it sometimes and not others, or may move in an out of it during a drive as needed. And, so far, it has no issues with me jumping in / out of it. That was a nice surprise. And overall, I really enjoy the integration of AA to the car's physical controls (buttons, etc). I know that's expected but I am really glad it's working and how it was done (as expected!).
1a. Learned a little trick that if I am not in AA and I long press the mic button to get Google assistant, it will open AA on my car display and interact (and stay open after the voice part is done). Easy way while driving to launch AA (I think!!). Love that I can easily access google assistant by voice via the button.
2. That the car will display the audio track and navigation next turns on the driver display even if it's coming from AA. That's pretty cool and unexpected by me (I had never seen carplay in use in the Lucid). This is great so if I want to have the map take the full AA display, I can still see the audio track. And of course I can see next turns even if I have something else running in AA.
3. That I can still use the car's native audio apps, especially Tidal, when using AA. Wasn't sure if that would be enabled .. it's available on my wife's older BMW with carplay but had no idea what would happen in the Lucid with AA.
Things I am getting used to:
1. Since AA is grabbing my phone's wifi, and the cell signal in my driveway is weak, I find my phone is disconnected from my house wifi when I get into the car. So if I need to plan on google maps on my phone or do something else, I might have to manually connect to my house wifi again. Will have to figure out the flow on this one.
Things I hope can be improved at some point:
1. Would love higher quality audio stream from phone to AA .. I think it's 44.1khz 16 bit (undetermined bitrate) but would love higher quality from the phone youtube music app.
2. Would really like the google map EV features available in Android Automotive (AAOS) version of google maps .. SOC at destination (with amazing accuracy), auto selection of charging stops, and automatic battery pre-conditioning if a L3 charger is the map destination. Unfortunately, even though my profile in google maps on my phone knows that my car is a Lucid, it shows only eco info etc. The AA google maps doesn't calculate charging stops or show SOC at destination. This makes me think that I'll use native maps for longer trips and google maps for non-charge trips, or some back and forth. I'm still doing route verification in google maps before a trip because I think it has slightly better data than the native here maps. and search in the native app is really not good. I also have paid ABRP so that's the best of both .. mapping in AA with charge stops planned. But I think I still trust google maps route calculation more (will have to play with that as I haven't used ABRP much) and also I think the use experience is great (turns overlayed over music app if the music app is taking full screen, etc). I tested and can see the car will only allow one mapping app to run at a time and the last one with the route started is the one that takes precedence and nav in the other is cancelled. Would love additional thoughts on this one and approaches to getting the best of all the mapping apps.
Not much commentary on the screen real estate .. I think everyone wishes it could use more and it's just not how it works with Google, so not a lot to say. I like that my wallpaper theme is used for the background color.
Took a long time, but THANK YOU LUCID TEAM!! (I've only had my car since Dec '24 so not that long for me
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