To some extent, sure - but I think you were pretty much right when you pointed out that relying on an online service when there are areas where coverage is spotty to say the least, would give nothing but trouble for the automakers.

That, and the fact that customers are pretty reluctant to start paying for something that was originally included in the price of the car. Hyundai has had pretty limited success with converting people into paying customers after the first three years were up to the best of my knowledge.

Even for an automotive company, making money can come with a price tag that may not be worth it.

You really don't need that much hardware to run one of the smaller gemma models like the gemma-4-E2B, and it will probably be able to use input from your GPS and most likely also use the internet connection in the car to do searches.

On Android phones you can run local models with the "Google AI Edge Gallery" - it works OK on my Samsung A25, which is anything but a powerhouse.

Also, like you said, these will definitely be models that are trained for this particular purpose, making them lighter a d more responsive than the general purpose models.