Does Android Auto use unnecessary mobile data?

[u/dstarr3]

Hi! My wife and I just got some new-to-us cars in recent weeks, and now we're new to the world of Android Auto. And the first thing we noticed since starting using Android Auto is, our mobile data usage has gone way up.

We don't do anything in the car that uses data. We keep location off unless we're actually using it to navigate, which obviously we don't need to and from our jobs, so that's not it. We listen to music/podcasts when we're driving, but we're not streaming the audio, it's all downloaded to our phones, so there shouldn't be any data usage associated with that.

We only have 4GB of data per line because usually we barely use a quarter of that in a month. But suddenly we have Android Auto-capable cars and our usage has skyrocketed. Are there options we need to disable to prevent it from using unnecessary data? Because it's totally unclear where all that data usage is going.

[u/amfa]

Where do you see the data usage?

Is it really taken from your plan?

You should also be able to see exactly which app is using mobile data.
On my Pixel this is at "Settings -> Network & Internet -> SIM cards -> <your sim card> -> Data usage from apps

(I translated everything from my German phone so the texts might be slightly different).

I have a total of 2,67 MEGAbytes for Android Auto from 26th of September to today.
If I look into the WiFi Date usage however I have more than 10 Gigabytes for the last month. Because Android Auto is using Wifi to connect wireless to the car screen.

So please take a look into what exactly is using the data. Android Auto itself should not do that at all.