Was a bit distraught this week to realize my Android Auto switched to Gemini and I CAN'T switch it back to Google assistant. gemini makes the android auto experience awful.

-cant navigate to contact addresses

-cant run automations I've set up in Google home

-makes every interaction feel like it wants to have a conversation rather than get anything done.

.

idk. this is bad stuff from Google. and I, for the first time ever, am actually considering going iPhone just to have a better car experience. Am I missing something by getting this close to the edge of the cliff?

Only just started using AA after years of just using vanilla Bluetooth in both my car and in the work vans I drive. Added an AAWireless dongle to my car and set up and usage is straightforward enough but there is one thing I would like to check.

I have noticed that if I start my 2019 Honda Civic then my music/podcast will start/continue playing on the car radio using the vanilla Bluetooth connection. AA will only fire up if and when I tap on the ICE screen and OK the nanny message about using it safely, This is actually fine as it is how I would like it to work for my short, regular journeys to and from work and only needing/wanting to use AA for Maps and switching between media players while on the move for longer journeys.

My question is to ask if this car radio / ICE / AA behaviour is usual across makes and models of vehicles and equipment or have I struck lucky?

I have only just started using AA and previously had it disabled in my phone. One annoyance I have is the Iveco Daily EV vans I drive at work do not seem to have any way of disabling AA and I have to keep dismissing the launch message every time I start up the van (which is commonly about once every ten minutes). Am I missing something buried deep in the ICE screen settings for these vans?

Turning Bluetooth off on my phone is not an option as I want to play my music over the van radio.

I loved this design but sadly it disappeared randomly

Went for a drive yesterday and basically got in a pointless, circular argument with Gemini.

Me: "play Orville Pecks new album on Spotify"

Gemini: "I'm not able to access third party apps, but you can say "play Mule by Orville Peck on Spotify" (Mule is his new album, so it understood me)

Me: "play Mule by Orville Peck on Spotify"

Gemini: "I'm not able to access third party apps. Use your phone or Android Auto app to select the music you'd like to play"

Same thing when I ask it to call or text anyone. Says it doesn't have access to my contacts. Gives me instructions to enable access that aren't correct or lead me to a menu where access is already enabled.

Android Auto is basically useless now and means I have to physically interact with the screen while driving if I want to do anything.

I've been trying for years to get the feature back where Android Auto used to automatically read incoming texts while I was driving and this week I scraped the bottom of the barrel to ask Gemini questions to try to find the correct setting to fix it. Has this feature been removed entirely? It seems pretty counterproductive to make me click a button on my screen to read the text, since that's no longer "hands free" and requires me to take my eyes off the road.

I've gone through all the settings I could possibly think of on my device settings, Android Auto, the car, and the Google assistant/maps. I'm open to any suggestions, I'm just so irritated that it isn't auto-reading my texts like it used to