Gemini for Android Auto and cars with Google Built-in shown off

We’ve long discovered clues suggesting that Google has been building up Gemini support for Android Auto and Android Automotive. Google had been tight-lipped about the feature, only confirming Gemini’s expansion to cars and more late last month. As part of The Android Show before Google I/O this year, Google is sharing more details about Gemini and Gemini Live coming to Android Auto and cars with Google Built-in.

Gemini is coming to Android Auto and cars with Google Built-in

Google says over 250 million cars support Android Auto (run through your phone on your car’s head unit). There are also more than 50 car models with “Google built-in,” which is Google’s branding for Android Automotive OS with included Google apps. Since Android Automotive OS runs directly on your car, you don’t need a connection to your phone.

Android Auto and Google Built-in have long supported Google Assistant, letting users navigate, communicate, enjoy entertainment, and more from the comfort of their cars. However, Google Assistant has been limited in what it can achieve, as users need to interact with it in a specific manner to get their desired results. Google recently announced that it has sunset Assistant in favor of Gemini, and that move is also extending to both of these in-car platforms.

Google says Gemini will be available on Android Auto in the coming months, followed by cars with Google Built-in. It will be available in all countries that support Android Auto, where Gemini is available right now, and in the more than 40 languages supported today. The rollout may take some time, so sit tight once it begins.

Users can interact with Gemini much more naturally than with Google Assistant, so they can focus more on the road rather than on the perfect prompt or tapping the right button. You can also fix your input through your voice if your input has an error. You’d still need to trigger Gemini through a hotword just as you did with Google Assistant.

Both platforms will also get Gemini Live support, in case you want the chatty digital assistant for a much more free-flowing conversation. Users will be able to say “let’s chat” within Gemini to start a Gemini Live conversation.

Gemini in your car can do all that Google Assistant can, and more. You can use it for navigation as always, but also use it with more complex prompts. For example, you can ask Gemini to find you a charging station, but you can also add modifiers like finding one on the way to the post office that is also near a park, all with voice interaction.

Further, Gemini can also help you with communication by summarizing the messages that you receive and even help you reply to them. The upgrade here is that you can set it to translate messages before sending to specific contacts, and Gemini will remember the setting for future conversations, too.

Gemini will also integrate with apps, so you can ask it to take actions in apps like Maps, Gmail, Messages, Drive, Spotify, Waze, Audible, and more. However, cross-device actions (like having your car do something on your phone, for example) have not yet been discussed, so we hope to see this implemented in the future.

Finer details about Gemini in your car

In your car, most of Gemini’s responses will be in voice, but they can also sometimes be in text. Gemini’s answers will be shorter while in the car, as it is necessary to keep driver distraction to a minimum.

For Android Auto, your phone will need a data connection for almost all Gemini features, but some features will work offline, though it is not immediately clear which ones.

Gemini will have offline support on cars with Google Built-in if the vehicle has the proper hardware. Car makers are upgrading the in-car hardware to make that compute power available so that Gemini can take advantage of more onboard processing power. Gemini data of cars with Google Built-in will stay on Google’s cloud and will not be available to car manufacturers.

Google also told us that Gemini Live will not be locked to the matched voice. Thanks to this, all people in the vehicle can have a collaborative discussion with Gemini Live.

Gemini definitely feels like a significant upgrade to Android Auto and cars with Google Built-in. Gemini’s superior natural language processing is bound to be loved by car users, and we can’t wait to try it out ourselves when the rollout begins. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more about the rollout.