On a balmy, 86-degree day in Mountain View, just outside Google’s sprawling campus, I sought refuge from the glaring California sun in a Volvo EX60 — or so I thought. The air conditioning wasn’t working.
To mitigate the heat even slightly, we opted to darken the transparent sunroof. And all we had to do was ask Gemini.
“Can you make the sunroof opaque?” Vivek Radhakrishnan, a technical program manager at Google, asked the car via voice command. Like magic, the electrochromic window stretching over us blocked the light beaming in from above. We didn’t have to rummage through the car’s settings to find the right button.
At Google’s I/O developer conference on Tuesday, I got an early look at a handful of new features coming to cars supporting Google Built-in and Android Auto. The upcoming capabilities, rolling out later this year, are designed to help you keep your eyes on the road while offering useful information. You can lean on Gemini AI to handle tasks like sharing your ETA, describing that landmark that caught your eye and even helping you order dinner.
Watch this: Google’s Car Update Helps You Keep Your Eyes on the Road
The Volvo EX60 comes equipped with Google Built-in, a native operating system for car infotainment systems that lets you tap directly into Google’s services. We could ask Gemini to identify a dashboard warning light, for example, or have it gauge whether a 65-inch TV we just bought would fit in the back.
Although we were technically parked outside of Shoreline Amphitheater, a giant TV in front of us simulated driving along a San Francisco road toward one of the city’s signature skyscrapers. We asked Gemini, “What’s that tall building in front of me, and can you tell me something interesting about it?”
Using the car’s front-facing camera, Gemini identified the Transamerica Pyramid, “which stood as the tallest building in San Francisco for 45 years.” We got some bonus information, too, as Gemini said, “Nearby, on your right, you’ll find the historic copper-clad Sentinel Building, a landmark that miraculously survived the 1906 earthquake and later became home to Francis Ford Coppola’s film studio.” It was neat to get that much detail and learn something new.
Afterward, we hopped over to the Kia EV9 (which thankfully had functioning A/C) to get a look at upcoming Android Auto features, which are available by connecting your phone to the vehicle. They include a more personalized dashboard design built on Google’s Material 3 Expressive, so you can display a picture of your cat alongside custom widgets, for instance.
While still parked, we then opened up YouTube and watched videos in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, which can make the time you spend charging your vehicle a little more entertaining. Once you start driving, those videos automatically shift to audio-only so they’re not distracting.
Magic Cue can pull information from your email, calendar or other apps to quickly respond to texts asking for your ETA or other event details. In our demo, an incoming text asked, “What time is the pottery class?” and Gemini found the date and time automatically: June 1 at 2 p.m. Google Product Manager Alanna Veiga just had to tap to send it as a reply.
If you want to make sure your dinner arrives home when you do, you can also ask Gemini to place an order through a food delivery app. Using voice commands, we asked it to order two fish tacos from Pacific Catch on DoorDash. Gemini then pulled up the DoorDash app on the connected phone and added those items to the cart, tapping through the steps as if it were a human. Once it was time to check out, all Veiga had to do was tap to confirm the order.
On vehicles with both Google Built-in and Android Auto compatibility, you’ll be able to use the new Immersive Navigation for Google Maps, which shows a 3D view of buildings, overpasses and surrounding terrain, as well as details like lanes, traffic lights and crosswalks. That can help you get a better understanding of your surroundings and make navigation clearer and easier.
The updates are part of a wider expansion of Gemini into cars, phones, wearables and smart glasses. And while the supercharged AI features might not be able to fix your broken A/C, they can simplify menial tasks and help you stay focused on the road.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
