For most of the past decade, the car’s center console has been the tech industry’s most awkward outpost — a place where smartphones reluctantly projected their interfaces onto unfamiliar screens, with limited success. Google wants to change that. On Monday, the company announced a sweeping redesign of Android Auto, the software that connects Android phones to car displays, along with major updates to its deeper in-car platform, Google Built-in. The changes, rolling out across the year, amount to the most ambitious overhaul Google has made to the in-car experience since the product launched in 2015. At the center of the announcement is a recognition that the car is no longer just a vehicle — it is, increasingly, a place where people work, relax and consume media. With more than 250 million Android Auto-compatible cars already on the road, Google is pressing its advantage. “Modern cars can be the perfect personal movie theaters when you’re parked or charging,” the company said in materials accompanying the announcement, framing a feature that would have seemed audacious in a product once defined by its insistence on minimal distraction. A New Look, Built for the Dashboard The visual overhaul borrows heavily from Material 3 Expressive, the design language Google introduced for Android phones last year, extending its rounded fonts, animated transitions and customizable wallpapers to the car dashboard. The effect, Google says, is an interface that feels personal rather than generic — tailored, as the company puts it, to look great whether a car’s screen is a wide rectangle, a circle or some proprietary shape that automakers have lately favored. New widgets allow drivers to place shortcuts — a garage door opener, a weather summary, a favorite contact — directly on the navigation screen, visible even while Google Maps is active. For drivers who have