After months of promises, the icon of Gemini finally starting to appear on compatible edge screens Android Auto. For many motorists, this is the first real sign that the successor to Google Assistant finally arrives by car, while the former assistant had gradually been relieved of his duties.
Except that this launch, officially launched in November 2025, only really gained momentum at the very beginning of April 2026, i.e. almost four months of waiting for most users. And already, the community is torn between those who welcome a more natural assistant, those who still don’t have access to it, and those who actively seek to return to Google Assistant The Gemini experience annoys them so much.
Gemini Android Auto: why has the deployment been so slow?
Google announced the replacement of Google Assistant by Gemini In Android Auto from 2025, with a first deployment beginning in November on a few beta versions of the application. But according to 9to5Google, a survey published at the end of January 2026 still showed around 92% of respondents without Gemini in their car, despite having a compatible smartphone and installed updates.
Gemini Android Auto: what do we really gain compared to Google Assistant?
On paper, Gemini brings a much more natural dialogue than the old one Google Assistant. You can talk to him like a person, chain together several requests and ask him, for example, to read his emails, summarize a long conversation in Messages or check an itinerary detail without having to repeat the context each time.
The tool is also better connected to the Google ecosystem while driving. Linked to Maps and other navigation applications, it can search for a gas station along the route, add a stop on the fly or send a message taking into account the time and location of your next appointment. In theory, everything is done by voice to keep your hands on the wheel.
In practice, however, the feedback is very mixed. Some drivers welcome more flexible voice recognition, but others denounce a slow interface, bugs and responses that are sometimes off the mark. The Digitals thus relay cases where Gemini struggles to choose between two identical places and where he stops listening too quickly, forcing him to repeat the command.
Gemini Android Auto: who already has it, what bugs and can we still go back?
As a result, users are divided into three profiles on Reddit. Some have just activated Gemini and appreciate a more natural language, others still do not have access to it despite the updates, and a final category seeks to return to Google Assistant after failed attempts. 9to5Google points out, for example, that Gemini does not always detect the end of a task carried out using touch: the assistant continues to speak and waits for a response before closing the request, which distracts attention from the road. In its help documentation, Google finally warns that the current assistant will be removed from Android Auto after March 2026, making the migration to Gemini inevitable in the short term.