Chevrolet GoGo Link represents the beginning of the end for overpriced embedded car navigation systems. This $50 option lets you replicate your smartphone’s navigation display on the center stack LCD display of sub-$20,000 Chevys starting this fall. It works initially with iPhones and Android phones. You have to have the Chevrolet MyLink touchscreen LCD and infotainment option plus the GoGo Link option. And a smartphone, which you probably have lying around.
GoGo Link projects the GoGo smartphone navigation app onto the car’s color LCD touchscreen. Drivers can control the nav system with the touchscreen. Voice instructions play through the car speakers. It’s on the entry Chevrolet Spark and compact Chevrolet Sonic. You can’t use just any app: You have to use the GoGo navigation app on your phone.
Chevrolet says it did extensive focus group testing before bringing the GoGo Link offering to market. Actually, Chevy managers could have done a quick happy hour session at TGI Fridays and gotten the same result asking three questions over the first round of drinks: “Will anybody in their right mind spend $1,500 for navigation in a $15,000 car when they’ve got navigation on their smartphones?” (No.) “What about if we, say, dropped the price to $795 for embedded SD card navigation?” (Probably not.) “What about if we sold a $50 smartphone connection that opens up access to the touchscreen?” (Where do I sign up?)
Chevrolet says it hasn’t yet determined if it’ll expand GoGo Link to other Chevrolet and GM vehicles. Translation: They haven’t determined how soon they’ll have to offer GoGo Link on $20,000, $25,000, then $30,000 vehicles. The die has been cast. GoGo Link has the potential to drive customers to GM as Sync did for Ford starting in 2008: When you’ve got an iPod or other smartphone with music and navigation, why should you pay the automaker for a dated, unlikely-to-be-updated CD player or navigation system?
South Korea’s EnGIS Technologies supplies the GoGo Link software.
We test-drove the Chevrolet Sonic a year ago and called Chevrolet “clueless on tech” because the essentials of a modern car — Bluetooth, USB jack — weren’t offered on the entry model and came standard only on the costliest Sonic trim line. Navigation couldn’t be had at any price. GoGo Link helps fill in some of the blanks from a year ago. It’s unclear what the actual cost is because you must have MyLink — the touchscreen LCD display — and to get MyLink you have to jump to a higher trim level with a cost more than $2,000 higher the one just below. Chevrolet isn’t saying how much of that is associated with MyLink. (The two lowest Sonic trim lines are supposed to offer MyLink as a standalone option but GM hasn’t yet shown pricing or the option on its site.)
Others are trying to bring smartphone navigation connections to the car dashboard as well. Sony just announced replacement MirrorLink radios. They only work with the handful of cars and SUVs that have replaceable radios with double DIN (7×4 inches) slots in the center stack. Sony uses compatibility software promoted by the Car Connectivity Consortium.
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