The car’s dashboard screen is the last large display in most people’s lives that does not have a web browser, and Google intends to change that. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the company announced that Chrome is coming to Android Auto, the in-car system that runs on the vehicle’s own screen, beginning with Volvo and Polestar models. Several other additions arrived with it, one of which will make anyone who has been on a video call from a moving vehicle wince.
What was announced
- Chrome, signed in to the driver’s Google account, so bookmarks and passwords come along. Polestar chief executive Thomas Ingenlath called it “very good news”; until it ships, Polestar cars use the Vivaldi browser instead.
- Battery intelligence for EVs: Android Auto will show live battery status and, for a set destination, how much charge will remain on arrival — the number that actually decides whether a long trip is stressful.
- Video streaming and weather apps on the car screen.
- Microsoft Teams, announced shortly before CES, so that meetings can be joined from the road.
Google gave no dates for any of it.
Useful, and less so
The battery feature is the one that matters. Range anxiety is mostly arithmetic anxiety — will the charge last to the next charger — and putting the answer on the map removes it. A browser is defensible when the car is parked and charging, which for an EV is a regular twenty-minute stretch with nothing to do; carmakers already lock video and browsing to park mode, and Chrome will follow. Teams is harder to defend. Audio-only calls while driving are already allowed and already distracting; a meetings app on the dashboard is an invitation to look at it.
What it means in Bangladesh
Android Auto in its wired, phone-mirroring form is common here — most Chinese and Japanese cars sold since 2020 support it through the head unit — but the version Google described runs on the car’s own operating system, which only a few makers (Volvo, Polestar, Renault, GM, Honda’s newer models) ship. Those cars are rare in Dhaka. The likely route for Bangladeshi drivers is the phone-based Android Auto picking up the same features later, as it usually does, at which point the question of whether a browser belongs on the dashboard will become a local one. The battery forecast, at least, is something the growing number of BYD and MG owners here will actually want.
Why it only works when the car is parked
A browser on a dashboard sounds alarming until you know which software is being talked about, and the distinction matters.
Android Auto projects your phone onto the car’s screen and is deliberately crippled while driving: a short list of approved app types, large targets, no video, no free-form text. Android Automotive OS, which is what Volvo and Polestar actually run, is the car’s own operating system, and Chrome there is locked to park mode — available at a charger, unavailable in motion.
That is not caution on Google’s part so much as regulation. Type-approval rules in Europe and crash-liability exposure everywhere mean no manufacturer will ship a dashboard that renders a web page at speed. The feature is for the forty minutes you spend waiting for a battery, which is also why it arrived on electric cars first.
Source: The Verge, via Prothom Alo.
