this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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Yeah that's not how I use my car...
Do you guys not have phones? /s
We should have taken this sentiment for the (industry) warning it was.
It's worse, that was when the industry realized we weren't using our phones how they wanted, so they had to start cramming this shit in our cars and door bells and thermostats because they couldn't reliably monitor the entire populace just through phones. ~~We~~ (corpos) need smart ~~smoke alarms~~ (surveillance devices), legally mandated in every room of the house, to keep us ~~safe~~ (monitored) 24/7.
Yeah, who gets into the car not knowing what the target is?
What I'd like to have is plain old Google Assistant, with its deterministic nature, plus a keyword that enables Gemini for more advanced stuff should I need it.
Especially looking up info while listening to a podcast or something like that.
Even my wife uses the car better than that, and she never waits for me to pull up the directions before starting driving
Yes, the non-determinism is crazy.
I have like one thing I use voice for usually. "Call ". With Google Assistant, it reliably called that specific person.
Now that my phone decided to gemini, it will sometimes make a call, and sometimes it says something like "I have found one contact with that name in your contacts, their phone number is 1-555-555-5555" Sometimes with some extra language clearly intended to be stuffed back into context to guide some next step that isn't coming, don't remember but something along the lines of "Contact match added to context to enable dialing the phone now" or something.
I'm perfectly fine with a different wake word or chaining it to google assistant, "Hey google, ask gemini ...." would be fine.
And yes, it might be vaguely useful for doing a maps search in the car, as that is a pain. A vaguely decent answer I can confirm is nice for things like a road trip stop for food or some small thing.
A few days ago, me to Google home:
"Hey Google, turn on the light"
"Sorry, I can't control powered devices."
"Hey Google, turn on the light"
"Turning on the light."
I had a similar experience getting it to summarize my maps info, it would alternate between correct answers and claiming it had no access to the data.
It definitely feels like it needs to start with Assistant, and if it's outside it's context, hand off to Gemini.
That's how to use your wife.
/s