After months, even years of resisting the tide, Toyota has finally relented and will bring Android Auto compatibility to some of its models for 2020. Last year saw the Japanese automaker finally add Apple CarPlay integration to its product offering for the first time.
Toyota has long refused to get onboard with the technologies even as most of its competitors incorporated compatibility with the two applications in their product lines.
The first of the company’s models to feature Android Auto will be the 4Runner, Tacoma, Tundra and Sequoia, with others sure to follow.
In some ways, this remains an unsatisfying announcement. With the exception of the Tacoma, these are not the top sellers in the Toyota lineup. Here’s hoping that the automaker’s big breadwinners get the technology starting in 2021.
Toyota’s long-time reluctance to embrace the Google and Apple apps is explained in part by the company’s interest in the Automotive Grade Linux project, which aims to develop the bases of a multimedia system many elements of which could be shared by numbers of actors in the industry.
But of course, one didn’t need impede the other, and Toyota has finally decided it needed to get friendly with the two ubiquitous apps.
