Android Auto weather experience is broken. Can a raccoon fix it?

In early September, our Authority Insights team uncovered a potential new Android Auto feature intended to quickly inform drivers of weather conditions. As someone who regularly braves the various seasonal storms the Cape has to offer, I was genuinely ecstatic to learn of this development. But all that changed when I learned about the feature itself.

What if I told you this potential feature might involve a tiny animated raccoon parading across the dashboard, with the current conditions blasting down on it, and a tiny caption above it showing the temperature? Suddenly, it sounds pretty surreal, as if Google’s next April Fool’s joke spilled months too early.

I’m often critical of Google’s various antics, but I’ll acknowledge that it has produced some of the world’s most incredible software ideas — Google Maps wouldn’t be around if it didn’t. Unfortunately, a meme raccoon certainly isn’t one of them.

Right off the bat, I want to unequivocally state that I rather like raccoons. As a South African, I’ve never seen one in the wild myself, but the endless pile of videos detailing their antics certainly has me warming to them. They’re not my problem with Google’s possible feature, but rather Google’s implementation.

Right, now that I got the raccoons reading this back onside, animations intended to broadcast important information on Android Auto dashboards are a terrible, terrible idea.

Most of Android Auto’s UI elements are large, consistent, legible, and colorful, allowing a driver to glean essential details with just a flick of the eye over the screen while keeping their primary focus on the road.

Smaller, unpredictable elements on screen are less efficient for this purpose. A moving raccoon would force me to focus on the screen to read the weather data, drawing my eyes and attention away from the road. And given that this animation would be overlaid atop other details — seemingly the smaller music info tile — just increases the potential for distraction.

All this is rather ridiculous when you remember that Google’s entire focus with Android Auto is safety first. Yes, the system aims to provide drivers with access to useful phone-based functionality, whether it’s placing calls, navigating to new destinations, or selecting entertainment for longer drives. But an additional tenet is facilitating all this in a highly safe manner.

It’s why you can’t play YouTube videos on the interface (not officially anyway), or why you can only voice-search a destination while driving. Everything is built with road safety in mind, which makes the addition of a quirky raccoon weather animation even more baffling.

It’s safe to say that Android Auto’s weather experience has long been one of its biggest weaknesses. For those with the privilege of access to a weather tile, that information often disappears in favor of now-playing information or doesn’t populate temperature data at all. And, for peasants like me without access to said tile, we’re left with a weather icon that’s nothing more than a glorified shortcut to an Assistant/Gemini prompt.

It has addressed these shortcomings to some degree. In 2024, it rolled out support for third-party weather apps on Android Auto. This meant that any developer who wished to offer their users support for the dashboard screen could do so. Multiple weather apps now support Android Auto, including MyRadar and my personal favorite, Weather & Radar. However, these apps don’t dovetail with the larger navigation experience. It’s navigation details or weather info — either, or.

It’s a compromise I don’t want to make when driving into potential, unpredictable, and rapidly developing heavy weather.

Understanding the weather along a route isn’t just a nicety; it’s recognizing another potential driving hazard. Knowing whether the road surface will be damp, flooded, or slippery is essential to making informed driving decisions.

According to the Department of Transportation, over 260,000 people are injured every year in weather-related crashes in the US, with an average of 3,800 unfortunately succumbing to their injuries. These figures seem likely to increase as weather events grow more unpredictable and destructive year on year.

Drivers deserve more accurate, real-time weather information on the road — a mandate Google is certainly technologically capable of meeting.

Thankfully, and like many shortcomings with Android Auto, this isn’t an issue that requires a rocket scientist to remedy.

The best solution, I’m sure many motorists will agree, is an optional weather overlay for Google Maps that gives drivers the best of both worlds. Drawing on live radar and weather data, this overlay could help drivers visualize upcoming conditions en route without overlooking important navigation details. Better yet, since Maps highlights the entire navigation route, it’ll allow drivers to understand how conditions may change in the short and long term and alter their route if need be.

I’d award Google a bright gold star if it could provide automatic navigation advice and rerouting based on prevailing weather conditions.

Alternatively, looking beyond overlays, a simple snippet in the larger navigation dialog that provides the driver with weather data for the next major town on a route, every 50 miles or every 30 minutes, would be welcome. This bug needn’t be complicated either, but it should include a brief description of current conditions, temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed, and the chance of rain. This is all one really needs to gauge comfort and safety in advance.

Personally, since I try to use the display as infrequently as possible, I’d prefer that Google improve Gemini’s weather responses. There’s no denying that Gemini in the car is an absolute disaster, and the system itself needs improvements all around. However, given that voice prompts are the safest way to interact with Android Auto, I’d feel safer talking to Gemini about the weather than constantly referring to my screen.

Finally, and perhaps the easiest solution to implement, would be a dedicated Android Auto weather app that can be minimized to one of the smaller Android Auto UI blocks.

The biggest issue with third-party weather apps at present is their lack of integration with the broader Android Auto experience; they simply don’t support this use case. As I mentioned, there’s no way to enjoy navigation, entertainment, and weather without the system fussing. An official app, built by the same company behind Android Auto and one that knows its various ins and outs, should solve this shortcoming with relative ease.

You might be wondering why I’d even care about accurate weather info while driving. After all, if it’s raining, I should just turn on my wipers. If it’s sunny, I should enjoy climate control, right? Not quite.

Weather data on the road is a necessity. We’ve likely all been caught in a surprise storm that you could’ve avoided if you had the information at hand. It’s one of the many reasons I find Google’s weather raccoon so puzzling — does the company seriously believe this is a suitable solution to such a glaring problem? I hope not.

I should mention that this feature was uncovered through an APK teardown, a process that unpacks app installation files to find potentially newer features. This means that while the feature is baked into the app, Google may choose to ditch it or make it publicly available. At present, it’s not live, and I certainly hope it stays that way.

Google needs to bring a robust weather alert experience to Android Auto sooner rather than later. And as I’ve demonstrated, it could do this more effectively without an already outdated meme.