For years, the center consoles of cars have been dominated by “infotainment” systems, which are designed to control everything from music, to navigation, to climate systems. Though they’ve gotten better over the years, these systems have been almost universally terrible, with confusing interfaces, slow response, and an overwhelming number of options. As a result, the best in-car navigation and entertainment system is often the smartphone in your pocket.

Google and Apple are well aware of this, and that’s why last year both companies announced new in-car systems — Android Auto and CarPlay, respectively — that use your smartphone for navigation and music, bypassing the car’s native user interface. The idea behind both systems is that if drivers are going to be using their phones for entertainment and navigation, they might as well use the displays and controls already built into their cars. And in doing so, Google and Apple can limit the dangers of distracted driving caused by focusing on a phone while behind the wheel.

Android Auto is finally rolling out to production cars, starting with the Hyundai Sonata. Android Auto does not fully replace the Sonata’s interface. Instead, it essentially runs as an app on top of it, launching when you plug in a compatible phone (Android 5.0 or newer) into the car’s built-in USB port. It turns the car’s infotainment system into the conduit for controlling Google Maps navigation, receiving messages, and playing music or listening to podcasts. It also lets you use Google’s voice search from behind the wheel, using the existing buttons and microphones already built into the car.

I spent two weeks behind the wheel of a Sonata equipped with Hyundai’s optional Tech Package and Android Auto to see if this is the future of driving (before the eventual takeover of self-driving robots, anyway). There were some bumps along the way, but for the most part, if you use an Android phone, you’re going to want Android Auto in your next car.

Firing up Android Auto is easy. Once you install the app on your phone, you plug it into the Sonata, pair it over Bluetooth (which happens automatically and is required for phone calls), and press the Android Auto icon on the Sonata’s 8-inch resistive touchscreen. Next, you’re presented with a familiar, but stripped down version of Android. At this point, the phone itself becomes rather useless — its interface is completely locked out in favor of an Android Auto splash screen. Google wants you to do everything through the car’s controls when you’re driving, so you might as well put the phone in a cubby hole and forget about it. Navigation works exactly as you might expect if you're used to Google Maps There are five panes to Android Auto: navigation, a phone dialer, information, media and music, and a diagnostic pane that can display the vehicle’s vitals like tire pressure or fuel efficiency. Hyundai is not supporting that feature, so in this car, the far right screen’s only purpose is to exit Android Auto back to the native in-car system. The navigation pane works exactly as you might expect it to: it provides you with all of the Google Maps tools available on your phone to get you where you need to go. It has traffic information, points of interest, and a dark mode for night driving. Entering in a destination can be done via voice or using an on-screen keyboard when the car is in park, and Google will provide information such as hours of operation and phone numbers for businesses. One tap on a phone number and you can call a restaurant to place a reservation, with the car acting as a giant speakerphone. There isn’t really anything missing from Android Auto’s version of Google Maps compared to what’s available on your phone, though for obvious reasons, it only provides driving directions, not mass transit or walking. Pinch to zoom actually works, despite the Sonata’s resistive touchscreen, and you can choose between an overhead 2D view or a follow behind 3D perspective. Navigation directions are blasted through the car’s speaker system, and the Hyundai has a special speaker in the center of the dash that’s designed to make sure the voice alerts cut through the din of road noise and climate control (the system will automatically lower the volume of music when providing an audio alert and turn down the air conditioning when it’s listening for a voice command). Android Auto’s dialer pane displays the call log from your phone as well as favorite contacts. Placing a call is as easy as tapping the number from the list, or you can pull up a standard dialer to input phone numbers manually. And, of course, you can press the voice button on the Sonata’s steering wheel or the Google button in the upper right corner of Android Auto to dial numbers by voice.

The fourth pane from the left is Android Auto’s media pane — it’s where you can play music or podcasts that are on your phone and have them come through the car’s audio system. The list of media apps that Android Auto supports right now is rather limited — Google Play Music, Spotify, Pocket Casts, and iHeartRadio are the highlights. (You won’t find Pandora, Rdio, or any app that supports audio books.) Notably, they all must conform to the same design and structure. Third-party apps are able to “brand” the media pane — Spotify’s player has an on-brand green play button, while Pocket Cast’s is red — but the same basic navigation remains the same no matter what app you’re using. Android Auto is limited by design — you're supposed to keep your eyes on the road That strict limitation is intentional: Google wants drivers to do most things using its voice search, so they’re not staring at the screen instead of the road. The design guidelines include a limit on how long a scrolling list (say, for artists or albums) can be in the media pane. I can’t scroll past the D’s in my Spotify library using Android Auto, locking me out of a large amount of music I might want to listen to in the car. Voice search for music can be used in third-party apps, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it works a lot better with Google’s own Play Music than with Spotify. I found the best approach was to figure out what I wanted to listen to before I got in the car and queue up those playlists in the app ahead of time, instead of trying to find something to play once I was already on the road. You can also skip tracks and control volume using the Sonata’s steering wheel controls. Android Auto’s most interesting pane, and the main reason you’d want to bother with it instead of just using Hyundai’s built-in navigation and music system, is the central information dashboard. It mimics Google Now on the phone, displaying cards for current weather conditions, upcoming calendar appointments, and recently searched locations (whether they were searched for on the phone, in the car, or on the desktop). These cards aren’t swipeable, nor can they be rearranged, but they do update based on your location and the time of day. If it’s 7AM and I just got in the car, the top card presented to me would be one-touch directions to the office; at 6PM, Android Auto would offer to provide directions home. Incoming messages are also given cards on the information pane (as well as pop up notifications in every other pane). Android Auto supports SMS and Hangouts messages, as well as a handful of third-party messaging apps, such as Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Kik. (Line and Facebook Messenger are unfortunately not yet on the supported list.) With Android Auto, you can’t actually _read_ your text messages: tap a notification and the system will read the message aloud to you with its mildly charming robotic voice. You can dictate replies or start new messages using voice control, but you can’t browse messages that have already been read. Messaging quickly became my favorite feature Messaging with Android Auto can be hit or miss: it didn’t work very well with the default messaging app on a number of phones I tested, but it was pretty reliable with Google’s own Messenger or Hangouts apps. Still, it quickly became my favorite feature of Android Auto — hitting a button and dictating a short message was often much easier than calling someone and hoping they’d pick up the phone.

What you won’t get in Android Auto’s information pane are alerts for many of the other apps that ping your phone all day long. Email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Candy Crush, or whatever else is hot at the moment won’t show up on the Android Auto dashboard, since they aren’t things Google thinks you should be using when you’re behind the wheel. This is where Android Auto is better than just using your phone for navigation and music — it prevents you from being distracted by the things that can wait until you’re done driving. Google Voice Search is mostly unrestricted, and mostly very cool But surprisingly, Google’s Voice Search feature is mostly unrestricted in the car. You can ask it almost anything you can ask your phone: What will the weather be like this weekend? Do I have any other appointments on my calendar today? Who won the 1983 World Series? Answers are dictated back, so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road to learn that the Baltimore Orioles beat the Philadelphia Phillies in five games. That kind of information isn’t exactly necessary when you’re driving, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Most of the time, I didn’t have performance issues with Android Auto’s interface: switching between panes was responsive and there weren’t many aggravating delays when touching things on the screen, even though the Sonata has a resistive display instead of a capacitive one like a modern smartphone or tablet. But, performance can vary depending on the phone you have: a brand-new LG G4 worked much better than my year-old HTC One M8. Requiring Android 5.0 Lollipop for Android Auto eliminates a lot of older and low-end phones, but Google could do some work improving the consistency of Android Auto performance. The system’s capabilities are limited enough so that I wouldn’t expect a year-old phone to lag at all. Then there were the times the system would occasionally crash or not recognize that the phone was plugged in and refuse to launch the Android Auto dashboard until I rebooted the device. (The Bluetooth pairing came in handy here — even when Android Auto crashed, I was still able to answer incoming phone calls.) That isn’t exactly something you want to do in traffic or on a highway at 80 miles per hour. Additionally, even though the phone is plugged into a USB port the entire time, that doesn’t mean it was charging my battery — many times I would unplug the phone to find it very warm and at the same or less battery than when I started.