Show Notes: Get ready for car news

Let’s talk about the news

by Nilay Patel

Apr 10, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

A nissan rogue with tank treads for wheels

Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast.

Before every episode of The Vergecast I sit down, read through a bunch of news, and take a bunch of notes. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my week, and I started thinking it might be fun to do every day on the site. So, every chance I can, I’m sitting down and writing some notes on the news as though I’ll be talking about it later. Are you into this? Am I into this? I don’t know. But it’s fun to do! Give me some feedback and we’ll keep mutating this into something good.

CAR WEEK

It’s the New York International Auto Show this week, which isn’t as splashy in terms of car announcements as other shows, but still a major event in terms of industry news. Expect to see a bunch of it on the site, especially as it relates to all of the self-driving, car-sharing, and interior tech that the entire transportation industry is focused on right now.
There’s already some news, though: the Cadillac CT6 will be the first car with GM’s “hands-free” Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving tech, which goes head-to-head with Tesla’s Autopilot.
And Ford’s newest police car is a hybrid, which should save a bunch of gas in fleets.
Also, Nissan made a compact crossover Rogue concept with tank treads? Some things about auto shows never change.
Speaking of interior tech, we have a new edition of ScreenDrive up: Lauren Goode reviewed a 2017 Jeep Compass with the new CarPlay and Android Auto-enabled version of Uconnect. She says... it’s just fine. I have a 2014 Jeep with Uconnect, and in three years FCA has managed to update the system with a capacitive touchscreen and CarPlay. And the new system isn’t even available in all of FCA’s vehicles yet.
That is an absolutely poor rate of change — the best part of ScreenDrive so far is how revealing it is when you evaluate these systems at the same standards we expect from any other mobile tech.
And CarPlay and Android Auto are just not that complete or reliable yet — if what we all want is for these systems to eventually completely take over the in-dash experience, they’re going to have to get a lot better.

TV PARTY GOES WRONG

Vizio and LeEco called off their acquisition deal. The official press statement attributes the move to “regulatory headwinds,” but I think it’s safe to interpret that as “LeEco running out of money.”
This is probably a good thing for Vizio, which has always been successful due to aggressive technology decisions and quick execution. LeEco just seemed like a mess designed to slow things down.
But the big question is whether Vizio goes back to its IPO plan, which was in large part predicated on creating a huge advertising network by tracking viewing data. (Which got the company in some trouble with the FTC.) Anyway, that whole system was turned off with the company’s new Google Cast-based TVs — will Vizio try to bring it back if it decides to IPO again, or pursue something else now? Or do nothing? We’ll see.
(A cynic would note that a US company declining to sell itself to a Chinese company could probably get a nice sales boost if a certain president were to take credit for this move using a microblogging social platform of some kind.)

LIGHTING ROUND

Google is trying to get a display deal done with LG so it can source enough OLED panels to build phones. The company’s failure to produce enough Pixels has been really puzzling; it’s a great phone but it’s just really hard to get. Hopefully this clears it up for the future.
I love this bonkers 13.3-inch Sony DPT-RP1 e-paper tablet. Yes, it has a terrible name, but it’s pushing toward the idea of “just a sheet of smart paper” from the opposite direction of tablets like the Surface Pro and iPad Pro. The only problem is that it’s $719. And probably only available in Japan. But I want one anyhow.
Dan Seifert wrote about the Moto Z Play, noting that the combination of super-long battery life (all weekend!) and a couple useful Moto Mod add-ons has made it his favorite phone. The vehicle dock that auto-launches Android Auto is very clever, for instance. There’s a lot of hype around the new flagships, but it’s a strong case for better execution of the basics.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai is moving to keep cellphone calls banned on planes, which is probably the only thing he’s doing that’s completely uncontroversial.
Something is happening between Jay Z and streaming services. His catalog disappeared from Apple Music and Spotify over the weekend, and is now back on Apple Music but not Spotify.
Finally, I really, really want to play with Djay Pro on a Surface Studio. It just looks like so much fun.