🚗 Using AutoDrive with Android Auto

When your Android phone is connected to a head unit that supports Android Auto — either with a USB cable or wirelessly — AutoDrive appears on the in-car screen alongside Maps, Music, and Phone. Tap the AutoDrive icon and you land on a three-tab layout designed to mirror the AutoDrive iPhone CarPlay experience.

Android Auto is available to everyone, including free accounts — no subscription or upgrade required. It’s a companion to the AutoDrive Android app: anything you do in Android Auto syncs back to the phone instantly, and your existing drives, vehicles, drivers, and group selection carry over automatically.

Phone projection only. AutoDrive supports Android Auto (your phone projects onto a head unit). It does not currently target Android Automotive OS — the version that runs natively on cars like Polestar and certain Volvo, Renault, and GM vehicles. The two systems use different SDKs at submission time, and shipping in both at once isn’t supported by Google Play.

The Drive tab — start, monitor, end

When no drive is in progress, the Drive tab shows a single Start Drive button. Tap it and AutoDrive begins recording a manual drive immediately — same trip a phone-side Start Drive would produce, just initiated from the head unit so you don’t need to pick up the phone.

While a drive is in flight, the Drive tab flips to a live status panel:

• Duration — ticks every second.
• Status — Driving while you’re moving, or Finalizing… when AutoDrive has detected you’ve stopped and is closing the trip out.
• Vehicle — the active vehicle the drive is being recorded against.

An End action button at the bottom saves the trip immediately with full route, distance, and cost estimates. AutoTrack will keep working in the background after you end — the next time you actually drive, a new trip will start as usual.

You’ll see a brief on-screen toast confirming the start or end action so you know the head unit got the tap. Background drive detection runs the same way it does without Android Auto connected — the in-car screen is just a remote control for the same recording engine.

The Stations tab — fuel or charging, automatically

The Stations tab shows nearby fuel or charging stations. AutoDrive picks the right one for your active vehicle automatically:

• If your active vehicle is gas, diesel, or hybrid, the tab opens to Fuel — nearby gas stations with regular unleaded prices when available.
• If your active vehicle is electric, the tab opens to Charging — nearby charging stations with network and charging level (Level 2, DC Fast, etc.).

Each row packs the most-glanceable datum onto its second line. Fuel rows show <distance> · Reg $<price> when AutoDrive has a real backend price for that station; otherwise just the distance. Charging rows show <distance> · <network> · <kW> when the network and max charge power are known. Distances are approximate (straight-line haversine from your current location).

Tap any station to see the address. Turn-by-turn navigation hands off to Google Maps — Android Auto restricts non-navigation apps from rendering their own driving UI, so this hand-off is the safe and predictable behaviour.

The Traffic tab — incidents on your route

The Traffic tab plots nearby construction, events, congestion, and incidents within roughly five miles of your current location. Tap any pin to see the description, the road affected, and a severity rating — Low, Moderate, High, or Severe.

Use Refresh in the top-right to re-pull the latest incidents on demand — useful when you’re sitting in traffic and want to see whether something has just opened up or just gotten worse.

What Android Auto won’t do (yet)

Google’s Android Auto guidelines intentionally limit what non-navigation apps can render in the car. The current AutoDrive Android Auto layout does not include:

• A recent-drives list (use the phone app or AutoDrive Online for that).
• Voice commands or Google Assistant integration (planned for a future release).
• Custom turn-by-turn navigation (we hand off to Google Maps instead).
• Audio playback or media-session integration.

Troubleshooting

• The AutoDrive icon doesn’t appear on Android Auto. Make sure you have the latest version of AutoDrive from Google Play. On the phone, open the Android Auto app (or Settings → Connected devices → Connection preferences → Android Auto) and confirm AutoDrive is in the visible-apps list. Some OEMs hide the toggle until you’ve enabled developer mode on Android Auto — tap the Version row 10 times to reveal the developer settings if AutoDrive is missing from the list entirely.
• Stations / Traffic tabs are empty. Android Auto surfaces use the same data sources as the phone app. If the phone app shows the data correctly but Android Auto does not, disconnecting and reconnecting the cable (or toggling Bluetooth for wireless) usually resolves it. If both are empty, check that Location permission is set to Allow all the time — Android Auto needs location even when the phone is locked.
• Start Drive does nothing. Confirm AutoDrive has Location permission set to Allow all the time, and that you have at least one vehicle added on the phone — drives have to be attributed to a vehicle.