IMYM

Can A4 connect to AA over wifi instead of USB?

superswiss

Nope. AA over Wifi and CarPlay over BT is not supported by Audi. I'm not sure if there are currently any production cars from other brands that support wireless AA and CarPlay.

yvantheterrible

Android Auto coming to Audi dashboards, no phone required, it's in concept right now but who know if our A4 B9 will be included at some point.

Android Auto coming to Audi dashboards, no phone required - Android Authority

John Kane

Sure, no phone required. But you can imagine the special tier Audi Connect Monthly charge you will need to enable it.

yvantheterrible

Yes but that's the future of all high end cars I believe. It is a fantastic cash cow for manufacturers.

jimday1982

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I just picked up a B9 A4 yesterday and after getting Android Auto up and running, I'm hoping and praying there's a way to get it working wirelessly. Is this possible yet? If so, how do I go about making it work?

Timfoilhat

Not what anybody asked, but I have a spare phone with a SIM activated... with unlimited data. My thought is I could leave it plugged into the car all the time. Just use it for calls and Android auto data. Have unanswered calls on my normal cell forward to the "car phone". Would achieve nearly the same thing as "wireless" AA. Having the extra line costs $0 because I got it during a promotion at TMobile. Only thing I haven't checked is if the USB port is always on or switched power. If always on this might lead to a dead battery someday.

SchwarzS6

scoopman

Not possible -- this requires new hardware on the car side that your B9 does not have.

scoopman

I do this -- it works great, especially after you enable AA automatically coming up on the screen once it starts up.

To answer your question, the USB ports are not powered when the car is off and the MMI is asleep.

The one problem you can run into this time of year is what they call "thermal shutdown". Phones are designed to shut themselves down if they get too hot to protect the LiIon battery in them. So if you leave your phone in your car without a sun shade up / windows down a little bit, you might find the phone off when you come back. I've had to put the phone in front of a vent for a little bit before it'll turn on -- and also, if the phone is too hot when on, it will throttle back the application processor on the phone to reduce the heat internally, so you might find it'll run slower.

So long as you know of this limitation in the summer months, it's actually a great experience. Much better than AA wireless, which can be unreliable to start up and uses a fair amount of phone battery life.