Yeah, it doesn’t have downloadable maps or offline routing (at least yet). It does however cache the map tiles it downloaded, and it seems to also cache some POIs (e.g. I can see opening hours for shops around me even without the internet).

After some finaggling I managed to compile it (here’s the nix file I used to get the dependencies). It’s looking basic but actually promising! Here are some screenshots (sorry for potato quality, it’s the only one Lemmy allows me to upload at for some reason):

The search seems quite nice, it seems to search by names but also allows to search for (some?) OSM tags, e.g. amenity:drinking_water shows up water fountains around you. I’m actually annoyed that other apps don’t allow you to do so this easily.

The navigation also seems to work-ish, which is surprising for such a young app. The only remaining things before it’s really useful is downloadable maps and offline routing.

AOSP is controlled and maintained by a single bad-faith entity. We need a community-maintained, community-led replacement ASAP.

I’m not sure about the target though, amateurs working on their car or restoring old models?

Yeah, personally I’d be their target audience, if they announce it soon enough and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. I can also see some european manufacturers looking to decouple from the US tech being somewhat interested.

They may be working on a Linux-based car head unit, which is kinda between a phone and a laptop (like a tablet, which it basically is). If that’s the case, something like this would be a required app, and current (non-android) Linux offerings are somewhat limited (basically it’s just PureMaps and a couple forks, which all work but are a bit janky). If they end up with something useful, it would be great for both phones and cars.